State Welfare Secretary Estelle B. Richman talked yesterday about radical change: forcing mental health, child welfare and public assistance workers to cooperate in meeting the needs of children and families.

Richman made it clear she intends to get this done even if she's a one-term secretary.

"The system is archaic, categorical and overrun by silos," she told the 200 people who attended the Norman J. and Alice Chapman Rubash Distinguished Lecture in Law and Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

The silos she's talking about are places in which regulations and money are stored. For example, at the state Welfare Department, there are silos for areas like child welfare, the program that replaced public assistance called TANF, Medicaid, Social Security and juvenile justice.

A child or family may need help from all of the programs. Richman believes it would be better for taxpayers and for children and families if the people who are supposed to provide the services could share information and money. "We need to focus on what children and families need and not on how to sort money into different buckets," she said.

To make her point, she told the story of a child named "Brian." He was placed at age 8 with a grandmother when his father died and mother went to jail. Caseworkers later discovered the grandmother was so overweight she couldn't get out of bed, and the house was deplorable. The boy, also overweight, was mentally ill.

The mental health department could solve the problem by placing him in a residential treatment facility. But the grandmother didn't want the child sent away.

So county social service departments got together to help the grandmother move to more suitable housing and receive nutrition services.

The boy got to stay with his family, his physical and mental health improved, and he started getting better grades.

Richman's crusade for change got support from every member of a panel that spoke after her, which included Marc Cherna, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.

Before Richman took over as secretary, Cherna met with frustration as he tried to integrate services paid for by the Welfare Department. Yesterday, he praised the department's reversal of policy, saying, "It is wonderful to have a leader who has said you have to do it and we will help you."

Richman received a more chilly reception when she asked county officials earlier this year to submit plans to coordinate services they offer to children through their child welfare, mental health and mental retardation departments.

One official, for example, asked her to come by and introduce to one another his county's three department directors.

She did it.

Another official suggested she give counties extra time, four years to be exact -- until 2008, when Richman could be out of office.

"I said do it by August," she recounted.