Editorial Introduction: Collaboration and Partnerships with Families and Communities

Abstract

The ASCA National Model[R] (American School Counselor Association, 2005) emphasizes collaboration with stakeholders as a central role for counselors. School counselors are often the first or second point of contact for stakeholders (e.g., parents and community members), and some counselors rely heavily on community connections for meeting children's needs. More specifically, the ASCA National Model states that counselors should provide proactive leadership, which engages all stakeholders in the delivery of activities and services to help students achieve success in school (ASCA, p. 17). Effective counselors work with stakeholders to promote academic engagement and success, college-going, and youth empowerment. Indeed, counselors play integral roles in building partnerships with families, schools, and communities that help close achievement gaps, improve short- and long-term outcomes for students, and foster their educational resilience (Bryan, 2005; Bryan & Henry, 2008; Trusty, Mellin, & Herbert, 2008). School-family-community partnerships are collaborative relationships in which personnel, students, families, community., members, and other stakeholders work jointly and mutually to develop and implement school- and community-based prevention and intervention programs and activities to improve children's chances of academic, personal/social, career, and college success (Bryan, 2005). Certainly, recognition of the importance of school-family-community partnerships (alternately called school-family-community collaboration or connections or parent involvement) is not new. School-family-community, partnerships have been important components of previous education reform initiatives (e.g., Goals 2000). Moreover, the contributions of partnerships to students' academic, personal/social, career, and college success have been highlighted in numerous studies (Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Hill et al., 2004; Jeynes, 2005, 2007). The benefits of school-family-community partnerships are numerous for students and their families. School-family-community partnerships engender innovative and comprehensive strategies for facilitating student development and success (Henderson & Mapp; Henderson, Mapp, Johnson, & Davies, 2007). Partnerships with stakeholders are particularly salient for counselors who are challenged to generate solutions to the multiple stressors and problems (e.g., homelessness, poverty, academic failure, alienation) that many K-12 students face (Bemak, 2000; Bryan, 2005; Taylor & Adelman, 2000). Such partnerships have prompted innovative solutions to complex student problems by allowing counselors to access and channel family and community resources to meet the needs of larger numbers of students, drawing on these resources to provide programs and services that they cannot provide alone (Bryan & Henry, 2008). When counselors collaborate and partner with school, family, and community members, they create prevention and intervention programs that foster educational resilience in children; bridge cultural gaps among schools, diverse families, and communities; address students' academic, personal, college, and career concerns; and promote empowerment of students, their families, and their communities (Bryan; Holcomb-McCoy, 2007; Mitchell & Bryan, 2007). Indeed, one only has to examine the astounding results of the Harlem's Children Zone project to recognize the power of providing comprehensive school-family-community partnership programs and in-school and out-of-school supports for children (Dobbie & Fryer, 2009; Harlem Children's Zone, n.d.). The aim of this special issue is to bring innovative theory and models and leading research on school-family-community partnerships to the counseling literature and to spark discussion and research about roles and strategies for counselors in linking schools, families, and communities for student success. …