Specific action plans are a vehicle for increasing staff understanding, facilitating program start-up, and solving specific problems related to the early phases of program delivery. "Action plans, complete with lists of tasks, timelines, and persons responsible, can provide blueprints to enable successful resolution of problems or challenges" (Rasinski and Padak 1994: 12).

The details of your plan of action will obviously depend on your particular circumstances. Some of the decisions and issues you will have to address might include:

• identifying similar situations in other communities and drawing from the experiences of others
• choosing a facility or location for the program (taking into account access for clients, availability, cost, co-location with other agencies, client perceptions or attitude, proximity to other services
• establishing family eligibility for participation (if there is a "target group," if it will affect funding or fundraising, etc.)
• the need for confidentiality and how this will affect referrals and record sharing
• defining roles and responsibilities (individual and agency) among the partners (see below)
• making use of available funds and resources
• recruitment of families
• promotion and public awareness
• program development
• funding and fundraising
• program and partnership evaluation (see below)

You will need to develop timelines for specific objectives as part of your plan of action. Please see Appendix B for an example of an action plan that includes project objectives, related actions, time lines, partners responsible, cost of activity, and measurable outcomes.

Determining roles and responsibilities
When negotiating roles and responsibilities for partnership members, remember that flexibility is going to be an important part of developing this program. A full third of the community agencies interviewed in 1995 said that their actual role in the family literacy partnership was different from their planned role. As the program is developed and delivered, roles will change and evolve in ways that are impossible to predict.