Facilitators of Well-Functioning Consortia: National Healthy Start Program Lessons‪.‬

********** Since the earliest days of the profession, social workers have been leaders in facilitating interorganizational collaborations to improve service delivery. Charitable societies in England and the United States during the late 1800s, for example, were designed to coordinate the work of private agencies attempting to address the needs of poor people (Cox & Garvin, 1995). More than a century later, social workers are still major players in hospital-based consortia, coalitions of health and social service agencies, and other collaborative partnerships concerned with improving services while controlling costs. Furthermore, social workers have been instrumental in the work of a new form of partnership--community-based consortia. Unlike coalitions and hospital or health care consortia, whose members tend to be representatives of organizations (Caplan, Lefkowitz, & Spector, 1992; Mizrahi & Rosenthal, 1992), community-based consortia typically include individual consumers and community members as well as organizational representatives. The goal of such consortia often involves strengthening integrated service delivery systems in a manner that helps empower the people and communities who are working together for a common goal or mission (Bailey & McNally Koney, 1995; Fawcett et al., 1995; Kreuter, Lezin, & Young, 2000).