School-based mental health program development: a case study of interorganizational collaboration

Because of increased competition and financial pressure, more and more contemporary health care organizations are forming (or attempting to form) collaborative ventures. In the early 1980s, the New York City Board of Education and the New York City Department of Mental Health planned and implemented a collaborative program in the city's schools for an on-site school mental health program. In this article, I explore the difficult and attenuated process of interorganizational collaboration--including attention to the organizational, political, and interprofessional context within which such ventures are implemented--to examine how such cooperative program development can be successfully accomplished in today's competitive and complex health care arena.