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Whole Family Approach: Tools and resources
Resources and tools designed to support individuals and teams interested in furthering their Whole Family Approach work, building it into everyday practice and guiding policy decisions.
Core tools and resources
These tools are core components to using a Whole Family Approach.
This document provides an overview of the Whole Family Systems Initiative project. Learn about the goals, vision, team, grantees/sites and how it all started.
Minnesota has worked closely with Ascend Aspen Institute for nearly a decade. The Aspen Institute Six Key Components were foundational in creating the structure, vision and objectives of Minnesota's systems change work. The six key components recognize the interconnectedness of a families' well-being and ability to thrive. Whole Family Systems Initiative leverages this model to create holistic, multi-generational solutions to create equitable access to improve financial stability, social capital, health care and quality education.
The Leadership Action Framework outlines the four levels of change within equity-focused systems change efforts.
Taking a Whole Family Approach requires an understanding of the root causes of the challenges faced by the families and communities we serve. When applying the Leadership Action Framework, we start with our own personal work, and use interpersonal growth strategies, so that we can co-create institutional and structural changes in partnership with the communities we serve.
Human-centered design (HCD) is a specific methodology used to engage lived experience and family voice through community engagement. HCD helps us identify and better understand the root causes of problems that families and communities are experiencing in accessing and utilizing public services. This practice can generate collaboration, surface collective wisdom, and nurture the community-driven solutions that are needed to improve the lives of the families and communities that are served. This is not a linear process, but more cyclical and iterative.
Feedback loops must be bidirectional: information gathered from our engagement with communities and families should be used to inform leaders and decision-makers about necessary changes to practices, programs, and policies. Afterwards, any resulting learnings and actions should be communicated back to the families and communities involved, completing the feedback loop.
This tool works to help you spot what’s working well and where there’s room to grow as you bring the principles into everyday practice. It’s meant for anyone who shapes policy or runs programs that affect families. The principles all connect and build on one another—what you do in one area often depends on what’s happening in another. They’re listed in no particular order, because each one matters equally in creating real change for families.
Supporting tools and resources
Ascend at the Aspen Institute is a catalyst and convener for diverse leaders working across systems and sectors to build intergenerational family prosperity and well-being by focusing on children and the adults in their lives together. The institute believes in the power of co-creation. The institute brings together a community of well-connected, well-prepared, and well-positioned leaders to build the political will that transforms hearts, minds, policies and practices.
National Center for Children in Poverty undertook a landscape review of benefit calculators to inform our work on the Family Resource Simulator. The first of its kind when it was launched in 2004, the simulator is a publicly available online tool that helps states develop effective policies to support low-income families. Advocates, policymakers and program administrators have used it to improve state and federal rules for benefits programs that have helped millions of families with low incomes.
Bridge to Benefits is a Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota project to improve the well-being of families and individuals by linking them to public work support programs and tax credits.
The Early Childhood Systems Reform project was launched in early 2017 to create an effective state system of early childhood programs and services to ensure pregnant and parenting families of children up to three years old are receiving the supports they need in a manner that encourages their optimal growth and development and eliminates racial disparities in program access and outcomes.
The Family Engagement Toolkit shares ingredients for engaging families and stimulating feedback loops between them and collaborating partners. It pulls together several threads of conversation, learning and input from across Northside Achievement Zone’s collaborative team.
Since 2003, the National Center for Children in Poverty has managed and continued to expand the Family Resource Simulator, a policy simulation tool and benefit calculator that provides tailored data about benefit cliffs and gaps in economic supports faced by families and individuals with low and middle incomes. A corollary tool, the Basic Needs Budget Calculator, estimates how much earnings families need to make to cover basic expenses in each county the simulator covers.
The Integrated Services Assessment Tool was created by Olmsted County, a 2-Gen grantee. The tool enables comprehensive family assessment across various domains (income, employment, health, etc.). The tool’s content was developed in partnership with Olmsted County, Dakota County (Maryland), Boulder County (Colorado), and stakeholders across Minnesota.
The Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard is designed to visualize data from more than 30 guaranteed income pilots across the United States. This data and testimonies from participants shed light on how unconditional cash provides people the opportunity, freedom and resilience to build financial security. The dashboard launched in September 2022 with aggregate spending data, which will be updated quarterly.
In this four-part webinar series, participants will learn about cash transfer examples from across the country and Minnesota.
Guidance on how to treat unearned income sources when determining eligibility or benefits for the Minnesota Family Investment Program, Diversionary Work Program, refugee cash assistance, general assistance, Minnesota Supplemental Aid, housing support, Child Care Assistance Program and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
This inventory is a compilation of state-administered programs and services serving Minnesota children and families. This resource guide is designed to help connect Minnesota children, their parents and loved ones to opportunities and support available across the state.
Child poverty fell an unprecedented 59% over the past quarter century in the United States. This child poverty data tool can be used to explore how poverty declined among children in each state from 1980 to today, alongside changes in economic and demographic conditions.
Research and reports
Find research, reports and briefs that can help you understand and implement a Whole Family Approach.
This report explores the considerable income instability for all new families enrolling in the Minnesota Family Investment Program from 2013 to 2016. It makes clear that families’ incomes, without the program’s cash grants, vary to the degree that it would be almost impossible for a family to know from one month to the next if they had the income to cover expenses.
This report uses data to examine the effect of the child support disregard on Minnesota Family Investment Program grant amounts and child support payments. The department found that the disregard significantly positively affects the Minnesota Family Investment Program grant and is associated with higher child support payments for children.
In September 2018, Olmsted County began using master lease programs to provide shelter to community members experiencing barriers to housing. Master leases allow leaseholders to rent to third parties during the period of the master lease. Olmsted’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority has developed master leases with local property owners to provide housing to participants in two Olmsted County social service programs. The master lease provides a flexible way to supply lodging to people by removing obstacles to housing while reducing risk for property owners.
As part of the Minnesota 2-Generation Policy Network, White Earth Nation and the Minnesota Department of Human Services partnered on White Earth Coordination Assessment Resource and Education (WECARE), an initiative to provide wraparound services to individuals seeking assistance from Tribal programs. This collaboration also included program evaluation and data analysis. They leveraged the department's evaluation and analysis experience, commitment to evaluation and rich data of WECARE. This partnership provides an example of an effective collaboration, and how institutions can work together to achieve positive outcomes. Collaborative analysis of data collected by WECARE may lead to effective program changes that will better serve White Earth Nation citizens. Tribal and department staff worked together to analyze data in ways that honors participants, creating potential for strengthening program policy.
Ascend at Aspen Institute published a case study on Minnesota's systems change work and approach to achieving family well-being through whole family approaches.
The 2-Gen staff and team designed listening sessions for each of the 2-Gen sites and their partners to understand better how the community was coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd's murder. This report compiles the insights, lessons learned and feedback from these sessions. The department hopes this report sheds light on what the human services sector can learn from these uncertain times as we continue forward.
This report investigates how living in deep poverty can lead to poor health. It also looks at opportunities to address deep poverty and improve health outcomes. It recognizes the State of Minnesota’s existing programs as a foundation and looks at how it could help move people out of deep poverty more effectively.
This report gives an overview of the first year of the Early Childhood Systems Reform project.
This report summarizes how American Indians experience early childhood system barriers and failures and defines problems in the system. It responds to the lack of American Indian inclusion and involvement in government attempts to reduce American Indian racial disparities and improve early childhood policies affecting this community.
This is a basic overview of how guaranteed income could affect benefits families may receive or want to apply for. Policy Bulletin, 23-04-01 Unearned Income Policy for Public Assistance Programs, has guidance for Department of Human Services public assistance programs.
Department of Human Services staff interviewed those working in the 2-Gen partner sites in service coordination roles such as employment counselor, navigator and coach in 2018. The goal was to identify common challenges when families are served by multiple organizations, stress points within social services programs and other administrative hurdles creating barriers for families working toward stability. Northside Achievement Zone, Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood and Olmsted County Human Services, Economic Assistance and Employment Supports Division staff grounded questions about systemic barriers by asking interviewees to select families served by their agencies, providing perspective on systemic barriers and unmet needs for each family.
This report highlights the presumptive eligibility for child care prototype developed and piloted by the Northside Achievement Zone 2-Gen collaborative partnership to expedite access to subsidized child care for some families participating in the Minnesota Family Investment Program.
This report provides insight into designing guaranteed income programs to ensure they are implemented effectively and efficiently with employment and other social support services to provide families with economic security and social mobility. In the first of two sections, the challenge and policy options are discussed. In the second, a table describes key income supports and strategies for states and local leaders to ensure guaranteed income can be complementary and additive to have the greatest impact on families’ financial well-being.
The goal of this study is to understand policy implications of focusing on meeting basic needs today versus security and growth needs for tomorrow in the lives of the poor. Semi-structured interviews with 32 Boost participants reveal that families characterize their financial situation as just “making it” through use of budgeting, welfare, family help, extra work, and borrowing. Congruent with a financial needs’ theory of saving, we find that across study groups participants, in part, spend and save according to a hierarchy of needs (first spending on survival such as food and bills, followed by saving for security, and lastly, saving for growth needs such as education and retirement), with findings supported by actual spending data. Further, this study design allows us to see that, consistent with financial needs theory (and contrary to conventional attitudes about irresponsible spending), after survival needs are met, participants receiving guaranteed income use a portion of the $500 payment to save for their security and growth needs.
Broadband access is increasingly necessary for people seeking access to government services. And, yet, despite an abundance of state and federal funding and programs to improve access, many low-income Minnesotans do not have it. The Office of Broadband Development (OBD) states that nearly 92% of the state has access to internet speeds that meet the state’s 2022 broadband goals. However, when focusing on rural access alone, this percentage drops by approximately 10 percentage points. Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) helps households afford broadband and internet access. Yet, Minnesota is behind other states in ACP adoption. For instance, as of August 2023, only 27% of eligible Minnesotans had enrolled, compared to the national adoption rate of 37%.