.svg)
.png)
The human services portfolio is often the first touchpoint families in need have with the City. Most of these interactions help New Yorkers manage crises and regain a basic level of stability. But too often the people we serve continue to cycle back into crisis and back through our doors because our services are structured to address short term needs versus long term change. The City has an opportunity to build on this foundation of stability and help families go even further in pursuit of a sustainable economic mobility from generation to generation.
We need new models to help families access and complete the coordinated ECD and workforce programs that will lead to 2Gen mobility. For example, we have the opportunity to help families dream about what a future of economic mobility looks like and bridge them to the 2Gen programs that will get them there. We’ve begun designing this with HRA’s Homebase program focused on preventing homelessness. We prototyped new service experiences that help clients imagine a prosperous future for their family, make a plan to get there, and get coached in building individual agency and social capital.
.svg)
Programs that are focused on economic mobility but are individually-focused rather than family-focused, may be well-suited to becoming 2Gen, for example the DOP’s Anyone Can Excel (ACE) program. We prototyped expanding the ACE curriculum to include ECD enrollment for the young children of ACE clients and deepening the trust between client and probation officer—trust that is critical to enabling clients to build their own sense of agency and social capital. Another opportunity is with ACS’s Family Enrichment Centers (FECs): innovative, community-designed facilities helping families achieve stability across a range of needs. With their whole-family and human-centered orientation, the FECs could be an incredible platform for helping families go even farther and realize lasting economic prosperity.
Laws, policies, and contracts establish lasting requirements that impact families for years. We can shift these instruments to prioritize and support whole family mobility. An RFP for a service that is traditionally oriented around individuals could instead consider the whole family and establish high standards for family empowerment. Multiple providers of multiple services shifting to a whole family mobility approach will create a mutually-reinforcing, catalytic shift that families are encountering everywhere rather than at a single provider delivering a single service. Other approaches include pioneering new models of funding to enable whole family programing, changing policies that provide conflicting priorities for families and keep them stuck in public services, and creating intentional partnerships between agencies to eliminate service overlaps.
