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38 Clearinghouse Rev. 583 (2004-2005)
Power of Working with Community Organizations: The Illinois FamilyCare Campaign - Effective Results through Collaboration

handle is hein.journals/clear38 and id is 625 raw text is: The Power of Working with Community Organizations: The Illinois FamilyCare Campaign-Effective Results Through Collaboration A bipartisan group of state legislators, administrators, ard By John Bouman governor's office policy staff convene to agree on a program model for FamilyCare, clearing away partisan Scenes from the Illinois FamilyCare campaign: issues and reducing the delate to a straightforward issue of funding. c/OI 4q Ic 0. C/ e 0 ,bo %. ' . ' o tl7 o'% o e-,% % '% ',, . ,oA t% q',_. n October 2oo2 some 3o,ooo working poor Illinois parents became eligible for health insurance through a newly created program called FamilyCare. Amidst alle- gations of influence peddling and other scandals rocking the state administration, a high-stakes election year, and unprecedented budget shortfalls, this outcome was unlikely. In each of the next two years a new administration extended coverage to 77,ooo more working parents. In the context of an ever-worsening state fiscal crisis, this expanded health coverage was equally unlikely. To a significant extent, these out- comes, like the vignettes above from the FamilyCare campaign, were the result of a very successful collaboration between community organizations and advocacy groups.' Such collaboration can be productive in helping both kinds of organizations reach shared goals, but it does not routinely happen. The proverbial failure to communi- cate-to understand each other's views of how to bring about change and of the w av the world works-commonly prevents collaborative work. In fact, organizers and lawyers/advocates often work at cross -purposes, butt heads, and frustrate one anoth- er's efforts.2 John Bouman Director of Advocacy IFamilyCare is an initiative on which many and widely varied supporting groups continue to play key roles, Materials Sargent Shriver National Center about FamilyCare, including a full list of supporting organizations, are available at www povertylaw org/advocacy/faim- on Poverty Law lycare.materials.cfm In this article I describe one relationship within that wider effort because it contains lessons that 50 E Washington St., Suite 500 may be useful for a successful collaboration between community organizations and lawyers or policy advocates Chicago, IL 60602 312.263.3830 21 use the term lawyers/advocates to refer to lawyers and policy advocates interchangeably-legal aid and other pub- johnbouman@povertylaw.org lic interest lawyers, nonlawyer advocates, and those who engage in either direct service or policy advocacy Clearir 1, ... P 1- r-, -F 0--- 1 -. . . - d Policy n January-February 2005 583

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