The focus of this chapter is on the school system, the way that system affects the people in it, and the process utilized by linking agencies. Four assumptions underlie the paper and can be used to guide the discussion. (1) Knowledge about the school as a social system can reveal some understandings essential to those who would seek to build and to participate in linking agencies. (2) Sufficient research evidence and experience with attempts at linkage exist so that some basic processes that these agencies perform can be identified. (3) Linkage, by definition, implies some concept of collaboration. Ways of organizing, or acknowledging this relationship can be inferred from field experience. (4) Certain conditions that influence both linker, agency, and school system can be identified. The paper closes with some vignettes that reveal some of these understandings, processes, and conditions as they affect the linkage relationship. Appendixes contain tables on models of linkage, roles of linking agents, and ways of organizing for linking as they are outlined by various sources. (Author/IRT)