As stated earlier, one of the objectives of this inter-agency meeting is to determine who is willing to make a commitment to this partnership. You may find that participants express concern over the time and staff commitment needed for such an undertaking. Bradford (1993) suggests that this "cost" needs to be balanced against the previous and current difficulties and costs experienced by families and professionals, which can be alleviated by the additional resources and better coordinated services offered by the partnership.

Remember, the final objective of hosting this inter-agency meeting is to form a group of people who are willing to be involved in planning, developing, and guiding a family literacy program. It will be easier to set a date for the first planning meeting while you are still together; you should try to hold it fairly soon after this inter-agency meeting so that people don't lose their interest and enthusiasm.

Finally, as you plan and host the inter-agency meeting, it is worth considering what it takes to bring about organizational or institutional change, for what we are talking about when we discuss partnerships truly is "changing the way we do things." Beckhard (in Hord 1986) says that institutional change (to more cooperative or collaborative modes) will not occur unless the following conditions are present:

• There must be real dissatisfaction with the status quo, a high enough level of dissatisfaction to mobilize energy toward some change.
• There must be in the organizational leaders' "heads" some picture of a desired state which would be worth mobilizing appropriate energy.
• There must be in the organizational leaders' "heads" a knowledge and picture of some practical first steps toward this desired state, if energy is to be mobilized to start (23).