Feature Article Evaluating Interagency Coordination Efforts Using a Multidimensional, Interactional, Developmental Paradigm

Evaluation of interagency coordination is difficult due to the com-plexity of these efforts. This article provides a paradigm which de-scribes interagency coordination as a multidimensional, interactional, and developmental effort. Vive dimensions—climate, resources, policies, people, and process—are identified and defined. The developmental nature of these dimensions is explained through the use of developmental stages and developmental continua. The interactional nature is illustrated through examples. This paradigm can be used in special education as a training tool for those in-volved in coordination efforts, as a guide for the development and evaluation of interagency coordination efforts, and as a conceptual framework for research. INTERAGENCY COORDINATION IS a general con-cept used to describe a variety of efforts to reform the current categorical human service delivery system. Based more in philosophical belief than on hard evidence, in-teragency coordination has become a panacea for the prob-lems which plague this system. The complex (Magrab