2.4 Track workarounds and adjust policy to reduce the need for workarounds.

Despite widespread agreement that fragmentation, conflicting mandates, systemic racism and structural barriers are causes of harm in systems, most data collection focuses on the people trying to navigate adversity (e.g., how many people got housing), rather than also tracking the structural barriers they overcame or didn’t (e.g., how many people had mistakes on their credit reports that couldn’t be fixed before their vouchers expired). This means that structural barriers are identified primarily through separate research and/or through community activism by those facing these barriers. This not only reinforces cognitive bias that people, not systems, are broken, but also overlooks low-hanging fruit for identifying where structural change could reduce the need for case management and workarounds.

Crowdsourcing What's Possible:

The principles and recommendations in this Blueprint are already being acted on by systems, organizations, communities and people across the nation. Do you have an example to share with us? Please share it!

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