The Role of Finance Reform in Comprehensive Service Initiatives.

The well-being of a large portion of American children is distressingly low. Integrated service delivery--which provides the broadest range of education, health, housing, and social services--is viewed as one way to remedy the failure of public and private institutions to deliver effective services that can ameliorate or reverse these problems and conditions. This paper focuses on exemplary examples of community-based comprehensive service initiatives (CCBSS) in five pertinent areas: (1) restructuring intergovernmental relationships in California (Bill 1741), Iowa (Decategorization), Virginia (Comprehensive Services Act), Wisconsin (Community Aids), and Tennessee (Children's Plan); (2) tying outcome accountability to budgets in Oregon and in Minnesota; (3) efforts to create cross-system decision making bodies in Georgia (Savannah Youth Futures Authority), Missouri (Family Investment Trust), and West Virginia (Governor's Cabinet on Children and Families); (4) linking education with human services in Colorado (Family Resource Schools), California (Healthy State initiative), New Jersey (school-based services program), California (San Diego's New Beginnings program), New York (Beacons program in New York City), and Kentucky (Kentucky Education Reform Act); and (5) building comprehensive services at the neighborhood level in Maryland (Lafayette Courts, Baltimore project services team), New York (Brooklyn Center for Family Life program, and the South Bronx CCRP: Comprehensive Community Revitalization Project), and Texas (Austin's Empowerment Zones programs). The paper concludes with observations and conclusions. (ET)