HLTH 5433 Module 3 Relational Leadership and Collaboration Analysis Example

Relationships Before Programs: Relational Skills, Family Partnership and Interprofessional Coordination in a School Pilot on Health-Related Absenteeism

Student Name

American College of Education

HLTH5433: Leadership in Contemporary Health Education

Module 3 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 19, 2026

Introduction

Modules 1 and 2 introduced a district health and wellness coordinator using adaptive leadership and local data to launch a pilot on health-related chronic absenteeism at one elementary school, where 34% of students are chronically absent and asthma and dental pain are common causes. The pilot's plan is straightforward: identify students whose absence is linked to health, connect them with care and support families to get children to school. Carrying it out depends almost entirely on relationships, between the school and families, among school staff and between the school and community health partners. This paper examines those relationships, the frameworks that explain them and the relational skills the coordinator needs.

A Whole-Child Frame

The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model, a joint product of ASCD and the CDC, places the student at the center of ten components, including health education, health services, counseling and social services, the physical environment, family engagement and community involvement (Lewallen et al., 2015). The model's key point for this pilot is that these components must be coordinated, because a child's asthma is managed at home, treated in a clinic, monitored by the school nurse and affected by the classroom environment. The coordinator uses the model to show principals and partners that absenteeism is not only an attendance office problem but a shared concern of every component, which gives each person a reason to take part.

Families as Partners

Families are the most important and most fragile relationship. Many families at the pilot school have received truancy letters, and some fear that contact with the school could lead to court referral or child welfare reports. Others have had difficult experiences with schools themselves. Epstein (2010) described six types of family involvement that schools can support: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with the community. For this pilot, three are central. Communicating means two-way contact in families' languages, starting with a conversation about the child's health rather than a warning about absence. Decision making means including parents on the school's attendance team so that the pilot reflects what families say they need. Collaborating with the community means connecting families to the health center, dental services and housing supports.

The coordinator's first relational task is to change the tone of contact. School staff will call families of chronically absent students to ask how the child is doing and whether anything is making it hard to get to school, and they will follow up with help rather than consequences. For families of children with asthma, the nurse will offer to meet, review medications and help complete an asthma action plan with the child's clinician.

Coordination Among Professionals

Within the school and between the school and the clinic, the challenge is coordination. The nurse, counselor, attendance clerk, teachers, principal and the health center's staff each see part of a child's situation. Gittell et al. (2013) use the term relational coordination for teamwork that runs on relationships: people who hold common goals, understand one another's work and respect it, and who talk often, promptly and correctly, aiming to fix problems instead of pinning blame. Their work in health care showed that strong relational coordination among professionals is associated with better quality and efficiency.

Applied to the pilot, relational coordination means that the attendance clerk understands why the nurse needs to know about a pattern of Monday absences, that teachers know which students have asthma action plans, that the health center shares appointment outcomes with the nurse when families consent and that everyone treats absence as a signal to help. The coordinator builds these relationships through a weekly 30-minute team huddle, a shared list of students being followed, clear roles and a norm of discussing problems without blame.

Community Partners

The federally qualified health center, the county health department's asthma program and a mobile dental provider are the pilot's community partners. Each has its own goals, funding rules and pressures. The health center wants to reach more children and meet its performance measures; the dental provider needs enough consented students to make a visit worthwhile; the health department wants data on asthma outcomes. The coordinator's role is to find where these interests overlap with the school's and to make the partnership easy for each partner, for example by collecting dental consent forms at registration and scheduling the van on days with high attendance. A written memorandum of understanding will set out roles, communication and data sharing, reducing misunderstandings later.

The Coordinator's Relational Skills

Several relational skills are essential. Listening comes first: before proposing solutions, the coordinator meets individually with the principal, the nurse, the attendance officer and several parents to hear how they see the problem. Trust follows from consistency, doing what she says she will do, and from transparency about goals and data. Cultural humility matters in a school where a third of families speak Spanish at home; the coordinator works with the district's family liaison, ensures materials and meetings are bilingual and recognizes that families are experts on their own children. Conflict management is needed when interests clash, such as when an attendance officer insists on a court referral for a family the team is supporting; the coordinator brings such cases to the team for discussion, focusing on the child's needs and on the law's requirements rather than on personalities. Finally, the coordinator shares credit, highlighting the work of school staff and partners in reports to district leaders.

When Relationships Are Strained

Not every relationship will go smoothly, and planning for strain is part of relational leadership. One likely source is the attendance officer's role. State law requires the district to act when absences reach a certain level, and the officer may feel that the pilot's supportive approach delays action required by law. The coordinator will meet with the officer early to agree on a shared process: the team reviews each case before any referral, documents the supports offered and proceeds with legal steps only when supports have been refused or have failed. A second source is teacher fatigue. Teachers asked to notice patterns and make calls may feel overloaded; the coordinator will keep teacher tasks small and visible, such as a two-question check-in form, and report back on what happened to students they flagged, so that their effort is seen to matter. A third is partner turnover, as health center staff change. A written agreement and a named backup contact at each partner reduce the risk that a relationship depends on one person.

Assessing the Relationships

Relationships can be assessed, not only assumed. The coordinator will use a short relational coordination survey with school staff and partners each September and again each May, asking about the frequency and quality of communication, shared goals, shared knowledge and respect across roles. Family relationships will be assessed through brief surveys and conversations at family events, asking whether families feel welcome, understood and helped. Practical indicators, such as the share of chronically absent students whose families were reached by phone and the number of parents serving on the attendance team, will be reviewed monthly. These measures help the coordinator see where relationships are weak before they undermine the pilot.

Conclusion

The absenteeism pilot will succeed or fail on relationships. A whole-child frame gives every component of the school a stake in attendance. Family partnership, built through two-way communication, shared decision making and community connections, changes the tone from enforcement to support. Relational coordination among the nurse, counselor, teachers, attendance staff and clinic allows the right help to reach the right child. The coordinator's listening, consistency, cultural humility, conflict management and willingness to share credit make these relationships possible. Module 4 will examine the laws and ethical principles that frame them.

References

Epstein, J. L. (2010). School/family/community partnerships: Caring for the children we share. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(3), 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171009200326

Gittell, J. H., Godfrey, M., & Thistlethwaite, J. (2013). Interprofessional collaborative practice and relational coordination: Improving healthcare through relationships. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 27(3), 210-213. https://doi.org/10.3109/13561820.2012.730564

Lewallen, T. C., Hunt, H., Potts-Datema, W., Zaza, S., & Giles, W. (2015). The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model: A new approach for improving educational attainment and healthy development for students. Journal of School Health, 85(11), 729-739. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.12310