Currently, oversight and regulation of residential schools are distributed across multiple state agencies, including the Department of Early Education and Care, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Department of Children and Families, and the Department of Mental Health, each of which play a unique role in the system. As a result, coordination is required to ensure the safety of all children in residential schools.
Interagency coordination and ongoing communication between involved Commonwealth agencies is essential to identify challenges and meet the needs of children at residential schools. The OCA has been working since 2017 to increase information sharing and collaboration between these agencies and departments by facilitating monthly interagency meetings designed to ensure adequate cross-agency communication, to discuss challenges to service provision, to identify trends that need to be addressed through collaborative efforts, and to serve as an early-warning system of potential crisis.
This group's work is born out of previous OCA work on the Interagency Working Group on Residential Schools.