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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  1. Principle 1

1. Start with what matters to people: wellbeing

PreviousA message for those of us within systemsNext1.1 Be public about our historical roots and commitment to equity and wellbeing.

Last updated 4 years ago

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People need to be connected to others and to be helpful. We all need to feel we belong and are safe. We need to experience some predictability to life, that we have some influence over what’s happening around us, and to experience purpose and growth. We need to meet our needs for food, shelter and other basics without shame or danger in ways that are relevant to our situations. We need to know that small steps forward aren’t going to cause everything to come crashing down or cost us what was working in other parts of our life. We need to be able to hold onto, and build on, what matters to us. In combination and balance, these needs and experiences comprise our wellbeing.

COVID-19 brought home how universal our drive for wellbeing is. COVID-19 and the nation’s attention to police violence have also brought widespread attention to the ways that our systems and communities are structured to provide access to wellbeing for some, and undermine access for others, based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, identity, religion, national origin and more. The result is that the same actions — whether applying for a job, feeding a family, seeking healthcare or going to school — by two individuals of, for example, different races, have vastly different outcomes. Sometimes these play out quickly, sometimes over a lifetime. But the differences between systems that enable some, and that hold others back, is real. And because wellbeing is the needs and experiences essential in combination and balance to weather challenges and have health and hope, these are effectively structural limitations on resiliency and health.

So, while COVID-19 has threatened every aspect of millions of people’s wellbeing, access to wellbeing was already starkly attenuated in communities of color and for those facing poverty and adversity; the pandemic is adding to the chronic crises.

We must structure our communities and systems to align with, tap into and amplify the human drive for wellbeing. Making access to wellbeing more equitable is vital to preventing many of the harms our systems are set up to address.

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?

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