| Sumario: | Various forces contribute to increasingly integrated social service delivery. In addition to an economic interest in creative responses that maximize resources, providers incorporate new knowledge to improve outcomes. For example, research on adverse childhood experiences (ACE) calls for movement beyond piecemeal interventions and fragmented services. In fact, research integration has served as an alternative tactic to Integral Theory that engages mainstream providers, policymakers, and researchers to consider comprehensive, whole-person service provision. The Restorative Integral Support (RIS) model, developed at the Committee on the Shelterless (COTS) to respond to ACE and other trauma, involves the intentional development of social networks within which evidence-supported interventions and emerging practices are integrated and brought to research. RIS highlights the role of leadership and policies/systems to facilitate social supports mobilizing resilience and recovery to enhance service impact. Recognizing that social service practice and theory developments can be advanced by creating and refining research measures, the Whole Delivery Measure (WDM) is offered as a multidimensional scale that captures ingredients involved in comprehensive, whole-person service delivery-leadership, culture, and systemic design. In addition to assessing the extent to which service providers are RISing, a WDM is key to determining results. For example, outcomes research using existing scales that measure only one or two quadrants (e.g., individual behaviors and systemic structures) without taking other quadrants into account is likely to find mixed results on "integration."
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