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Whole Family Systems Resources and Tools
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
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.
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.
This brief offers the Future Services Institute’s take on the Human-Centered Design Process as applied to the public and nonprofit sectors. It reflects what the institute has learned in the past few years working with a range of approaches, provides an example of its application and considers how others might use this methodology to address complex issues.
This tool is based on principles that emerged through inter-agency and cross-sector efforts during 2017 and 2018. The tool intends to surface strengths and opportunities for implementing the principles for those who create policies or manage programs that affect families. This can be used in a team and will take 1-2 hours to complete. The ideas for changing policy and practice that surface from the discussion may range from quick, short-term changes to those with a longer time frame.
Theory of Change guides the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families work with a comprehensive description of expected changes and goals.
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.
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.
Examples of work
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this four-part webinar series, participants will learn about cash transfer examples from across the country and Minnesota.
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.
Supporting tools
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Supporting research and reports
This policy brief critically examines the evidence and theories pertinent to cash transfers and wealth-generating programs, highlighting bold promises, evidentiary foundation and challenges. The following section builds upon knowledge of cash transfers and wealth accumulation to design a realistic Just Futures Fund policy proposal. The estimated impacts are modeled for this bold policy design with racial justice and equity as our North Stars.
The Stanford Basic Income Lab aims to promote an informed public conversation on universal basic income and its potential to alleviate poverty, precariousness and inequality.
In this brief, the Center on Poverty and Social Policy explores three alternative income guarantee designs and three primary financing methods for the program benefits. A common argument against a universal basic income is that the cost is too high, and the benefits should be targeted. Using more general models of an income guarantee, the center explores the feasibility of applying a fundamental baseline tax reform, eliminating potentially redundant tax code provisions (personal deductions and child or dependent tax credits) while financing the remainder of program costs by either a proportional increase in federal income taxes, a consumption tax via a value-added tax, or a carbon tax. One major finding is that income guarantee policies could significantly decrease poverty.
In this evidence review, the Roosevelt Institute explores how unconditional cash transfers affected recipients’ behavior in three major natural experiments. While the amounts dispersed and time periods were distinct in each experiment, each provided money without set conditions or a means test. The institute synthesized data for the following outcomes: consumption; labor force participation (employment, hours worked and earnings); education; health; and other social outcomes, such as marriage or fertility choices. Each program shares different components of a universal basic income, a cash transfer everyone within a geographic or political territory regularly receives with no long-term conditions. By understanding the effects of these programs, the institute can generate answers to how an unconditional cash transfer program might affect recipients in the future.
This report reviews and compares several significant cash transfer programs in the United States. All programs under review have been piloted or scaled, helping to provide insights into the implementation and impact of these programs.
This brief offers lessons learned about how to protect recipient benefits, particularly in California, through the lens of the Abundant Birth Project, a pilot program aimed at reducing birth health disparities and improving birth outcomes for Black and Pacific Islander pregnant women in San Francisco by providing $1,000 per month for six months during pregnancy and six months post-partum.
This brief focuses on strategies to attain waivers that will exempt guaranteed income cash transfers from income eligibility determinations in various public benefits.
This public management innovation study focused on intervening in three human service policy fields where racial inequity is rampant.
- In child welfare, the state has the authority to remove children from their parents and terminate parental rights. The over-representation of Black and American Indian children is well documented and racial biases exist at each decision point in the service continuum.
- In early childhood education, there are significant racial disparities in almost every measure of service and attainment— from diagnosis of developmental and behavioral challenges to kindergarten readiness.
- The vulnerable cash assistance programs are built upon and perpetuate racial inequity. The results are clear—the administrative apparatus is not delivering unbiased outcomes in these and other human services fields.
This report compiles and critically examines 16 reviews of the evidence to synthesize key findings, identify evidence gaps, and derive directions for future universal basic income research, policy and practice.