Wellbeing Blueprint
  • Start here.
  • A message for those of us within systems
  • Principle 1
    • 1. Start with what matters to people: wellbeing
      • 1.1 Be public about our historical roots and commitment to equity and wellbeing.
        • 1.1.1 Make history and commitments available on the web; co-create a report card with the community.
        • 1.1.2 Engage staff to shift this history.
        • 1.1.3 Collect and use disaggregated data.
        • 1.1.4 Eliminate biased decision-making data sets.
          • 1.1.4 A Toolkit for Centering Racial Equity Throughout Data Integration
      • 1.2 Use restorative and transformative practices.
        • 1.2.1 Fund ongoing restorative and transformational work.
        • 1.2.2 Default to restorative and transformational practices.
        • 1.2.3 Recognize why people may avoid telling the truth to the system.
        • 1.2.4 Use person-centered language in policy and practice.
      • 1.3 Center power for community decisions in the community.
        • 1.3.1 Recognize and support people's right and ability to vote.
        • 1.3.2 Make informal community assets visible.
        • 1.3.3 Relentlessly seek diverse and inclusive engagement in planning processes.
        • 1.3.4 Change structures before adding programs.
        • 1.3.5 Contract with local experts for community services.
      • 1.4 Change structures that force unsustainable tradeoffs.
        • 1.4.1 Adjust existing and potential policies to address tradeoffs.
          • 1.4.1 Playbook and Tools: Policy-level Tradeoffs Analysis
        • 1.4.2 Pay for performance that optimizes wellbeing.
        • 1.4.3 Create policies with clear mechanisms for alternative responses.
          • 1.4.3 Example - St. Louis County Family Court
        • 1.4.4 Align staff policies to address tradeoffs.
      • 1.5 Structure procurements for wellbeing.
        • 1.5.1 Develop core procurement elements that use equity and wellbeing as a framework.
      • 1.6 Adjust benefits and expectations in recognition of the trauma we are all experiencing.
        • 1.6.1 Respond with the context of people's decisions and choices in mind.
        • 1.6.2 Encourage staff to use the information and resources they share with constituents.
        • 1.6.3 Examine emergency policies to ensure they don't replicate the harms they are meant to address.
  • Principle 2
    • 2. Push against harms being concentrated in communities already facing the greatest adversity.
      • 2.1 When deciding where to bring resources, start with the least capitalized communities.
        • 2.1.1 Start with what communities need to thrive, not just what individuals need.
        • 2.1.2 Leverages and supplement what's working in communities.
      • 2.2 Address bias in expectations.
        • 2.2.1 Remove criminal history as an automatically disqualifying event.
        • 2.2.2 Set aside funds to offer higher security deposits to landlords.
      • 2.3 Support and create space for the nascent businesses that come out of this crisis.
        • 2.3.1 Create inclusive innovation incubators.
        • 2.3.2 Adjust regulations that limit new business creation.
        • 2.3.3 Examine licensing requirements.
      • 2.4 Track workarounds and adjust policy to reduce the need for workarounds.
        • 2.4.1 Collect data on barriers and workarounds in Management Information Systems.
        • 2.4.2 Use data on barriers and workarounds to inform ongoing systemic transformation.
      • 2.5. Use the different access to people’s homes to help, not to surveil.
        • 2.5.1 Provide guidance to guard against implicit bias when "entering" people's homes remotely.
      • 2.6 Separate out sanctions from treatment and help, and adjust both.
        • 2.6 Example: St. Louis County Family Court
        • 2.6.1 Vacate or reduce sanctions.
        • 2.6.2 Allow people to make community restitution by supporting their families and neighbors.
        • 2.6.3 Adjust treatment expectations in consultation with the individual.
          • 2.6.3 Tool: Adjusting Case Plans In Response to the Pandemic
      • 2.7 Make access meaningful.
        • 2.7.1 Improve access to and use of tech to reduce barriers.
        • 2.7.2 Ensure that professional, credentialed translation and interpretation services are available.
          • Example: Found in Translation
          • 2.7.2 Example - Found in Translation
  • Principle 3
    • 3. Build on, instead of undermining, social connections and social capital in communities.
      • 3.1 Remove obstacles to family members helping family members.
        • 3.1.1 Allow family members in public housing to take in family members in times of crisis.
        • 3.1.2 Keep families close.
        • 3.1.3 Expand models and approaches that reimburse family members for caregiving.
      • 3.2 Enable social networks.
        • 3.2.1 Make it possible for people to gather.
        • 3.2.2 Apply intergenerational and social-network oriented approaches in policy.
        • 3.2.3 Encourage multi-family economic strengthening and resiliency efforts.
      • 3.3 Enable expansion and leverage of community networks.
        • 3.3.1 Partner with community to support change driven by community.
        • 3.3.2 Reduce false divides between community-strengthening activities and services.
      • 3.4 Leverage community expertise in making bureaucracy work for people.
        • 3.4.1 Hire people who know how to navigate the system.
        • 3.4.2 Look for expertise first in communities most affected.
  • Principle 4
    • 4. Build financial security.
      • 4.1 Backstop loss.
        • 4.1.1 Provide specific, low-barrier help with the financial and human costs of COVID-19.
        • 4.1.2 Provide a COVID-19 benefit.
        • 4.1.3 Enact/extend a moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and utility shut-offs.
      • 4.2 Ensure access to basic nutritional and economic supports.
        • 4.2.1 Reduce friction points for people accessing benefits.
        • 4.2.2 Suspend benefit cutoffs for at least six months after the end of the public health emergency.
      • 4.3 Don't fund staffed anti-poverty programs when what's needed are direct payments.
        • 4.3.1 Relax restrictions on publicly issued flex funds.
        • 4.3.2 Expand child care.
      • 4.4 Address the wealth gap.
        • 4.4.1 Address the benefits cliff.
        • 4.4.2 Invest in baby bonds and children’s savings accounts.
  • Principle 5
    • 5. Span boundaries.
      • 5.1 Tap people’s humanity.
        • 5.1.1 Include arts and culture in community assessment, design and change processes.
        • 5.1.2 Build partnerships to increase access to careers in the arts and related industries.
          • 5.1.2 Example - Bridge Builder Arts
        • 5.1.3 Allow for joy and levity.
      • 5.2 Advocate.
        • 5.2.1 Conduct and be open to cross-system, cross-field advocacy.
        • 5.2.2 Redeploy frontline staff to serve as navigators and advocates.
        • 5.2.3 Reduce the divide between services and advocacy.
        • 5.2.4 Fund and allow for non-partisan, non-electoral advocacy as part of direct services.
      • 5.3 Expressly engage across sectors and with community leaders to make the transformation.
        • 5.3.1 Use funding across systems to address structural barriers.
        • 5.3.2 Convene multiple industries to workforce development funding.
  • Principle 6
    • 6. Set our default to sustaining transformation beyond the pandemic.
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Start here.

June 24, 2020

Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here.

The Wellbeing Blueprint is not a fixed document. We’re introducing it in June 2020 with the intent of shaping it further over time. The more people and groups participate, the stronger it will be.

We encourage you to explore, take action, connect with others, and join us in making this vision a reality.

I. How is the Wellbeing Blueprint arranged?

The Wellbeing Blueprint is arranged around six principles:

  1. Start with what matters to people: wellbeing.

  2. Push against harms being concentrated in communities already facing the greatest adversity.

  3. Build on, instead of undermining, social connections and social capital in communities.

  4. Build financial security.

  5. Span boundaries.

  6. Set our default to sustaining transformation beyond the pandemic.

Each principle is followed by a brief discussion and recommendations, many of which have sub-recommendations as well.

Recommendations are of two types: very specific concrete policy changes; and specific, different thinking to apply, or different factors to consider in making decisions and creating policies.

Recommendations and sub-recommendations have illustrative examples; these are being built out over time. Some recommendations are accompanied by tools or playbooks.

The hierarchy on the left-hand panel of your screen will allow you to navigate through these.

If you are particularly interested in a specific recommendation, please be in touch.

  • We may put together a cohort of similarly interested leaders from systems and communities around the country to work together on a specific change project.

  • We may have tools or playbooks to support your taking this on on your own.

  • We may be able to link you with others doing the work already, or who are interested in connecting, whether or not there’s a cohort.

II. Centering on Community

Systems need to change. Systems won’t change-- they can’t change-- without centering on community.

Centering on community means starting with the following question: What matters to you?

If, for a community, the answer is, for example, “No matter what, we can’t accumulate savings. We’re pushed back by every system, at every turn,” then that’s the starting point for engaging with the Blueprint. Whether you are a juvenile justice system, a hospital, superintendent of the local schools, or Commissioner of Elder Affairs, the structures of your system probably have some bearing on this issue. Working with community to address those issues is a core element of centering on community.

In summer 2020, we’ll be working with community leaders to create a playbook for systems leaders to engage with communities in this way, and for communities to hold their power and voice in this process.

III. Where do I start in the meantime?

There’s no one way to engage with the Wellbeing Blueprint. The Blueprint isn’t a recipe. No community will interpret and carry out its elements in the same way. There is value in starting at any point in it.

Entry points include:

  • The principles: The recommendations and sub-recommendations in the blueprint are not meant to be all-inclusive. In strategically considering the principles, you may uncover additional points of misalignment in a system or in your community that you want to address. Go for it, and let us know-- because your experience will help everyone.

    • A tool to get you started can be found here:

  • The recommendations and sub-recommendations: A specific recommendation or sub-recommendation may align with a “pain point" for you -- something specific you have wanted to take on or need to take on quickly.

    • If you are interested in taking action on a specific recommendation, go for it or contact us to discuss it more. You will make everyone’s work stronger if you let us know how it goes.

    • If you’d like to work with others, consider joining an action cohort-- a time-limited group of leaders from different sectors and geographies committed to taking action on the same recommendation. The Wellbeing Blueprint will support these efforts.

    • If you don’t know where to start, consider working with others to take a pulse check and identify either a recommendation or a principle to focus on. Here's a pulse check tool to get you started:

  • Community pain points: If you lead a system and have been grappling with a current or long-standing community demand that has felt insurmountable, or that you just don’t agree with, consider using this tool to investigate different paths forward. This is not a replacement for centering on community, but may help you move through a stuck place.

No matter what, we ask that you stretch. This moment calls on all of us to act decisively, yet we also must act in ways that are new and potentially less comfortable.

IV: How do I make it stronger?

  • Submit an example.

  • Email us to join a cohort of people across geographies and communities and fields working on a specific recommendation or around a specific topic.

  • Let us know what’s missing, and engage with us to fix it.

  • Bring others into the discussion.

NextA message for those of us within systems

Last updated 4 years ago

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If you would like to be part of shaping this agenda, please email .

cohort@wellbeingblueprint.org
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Wellbeing Blueprint Discussion Guide
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Wellbeing Blueprint Pulse Check.pdf
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Wellbeing Blueprint Pulse Check Tool