Assessing Perceptions of Collaboration Among Diverse Stakeholders in Implementation Teams: Preliminary Results from a Project-Developed Collaboration Survey

Background and Purpose: Collaboration among systems of domestic violence (DV) and child welfare (CW) is tested by long-standing tensions in central client population and purpose definitions. It has been argued that while DV advocates place adult survivors and their safety and well-being at the center of practice, CW focuses on children’s safety and well-being. Therefore, intervention implementation teams working at the intersection of CW and DV must consider the functionality of their collaboration. The federally funded Quality Improvement Center on Domestic Violence in Child Welfare (QIC-DVCW) seeks to develop, implement, and evaluate a collaborative model aimed to improve the lives of families experiencing DV and involved in the CW system. This presentation will showcase the QIC-DVCW-developed Collaboration Survey, highlight results from the project’s teams, and discuss how the survey can be used to improve multi-system implementation teams.

Methods: QIC-DVCW implementation and management team members (n=133) were invited to complete the 44-item Collaboration Survey, which assessed perceptions of collaboration across 21 domains. A total of 72 respondents (54% completion rate) answered items on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The overall scale demonstrated high reliability across the 44 items (α = 0.952). Summary scores were calculated for each of the 21 domains and ranked from highest to lowest for the overall sample. One-way ANOVAs with post-hoc tests were run to assess significance of differences in each domain’s mean across stakeholder groups, defined by working in CW (54%), DV (18%), or other collaborating fields (28%).

Results: Overall, the three highest-rated domains were mutual respect, M(SD)=4.24(0.78); transparency, M(SD)=3.88(0.93); and principles, M(SD)=3.86(0.58). The three lowest-rated domains were resource sharing, M(SD)=3.07(0.92); cultural humility, M(SD)=3.33(0.81); and dismantling structural oppression, M(SD)=3.36(0.97). For most domains, there were no statistically significant differences in ratings across the stakeholder groups. However, one-way ANOVAs indicated significant differences in mean scores for cultural humility (F(2,65)=3.348, p =0.041). Among the stakeholder groups, DV partners rated cultural humility lowest (M(SD)=2.93(1.04)) compared to CW (M(SD)=3.35(0.67)) and other stakeholders (M(SD)=3.67(0.75)).

Conclusion and Implications: Preliminary results evince high consensus across stakeholder groups. At the group level, there is trust and mutual respect across individuals. The lowest-rated domains highlight the need to allocate time to have explicit and challenging conversations around both engaging the process and distributing resources using an anti-oppressive lens, which tap into more systemic-level issues that teams must address when working together to change large systems. The highest-rated domains suggest there is a strong foundation to have these conversations, providing hope for improved collaboration to better serve adult and child domestic violence survivors and people who use violence. Overall, the Collaboration Survey results may allow implementation teams to improve communication while raising awareness of the multi-level forces that influence the strength and functionality of system level collaborations.