3 / 34
December 2016
Policy&Practice
3
director‘s
memo
By Tracy Wareing Evans
T
his issue is dedicated to partner-
ships, including those across
the public and private social-serving
sectors. On the heels of our annual
Harvard Health and Human Services
Summit, this topic is very much at the
top of my mind. For those of you unfa-
miliar with this annual event, for seven
years health and human service leaders
from all levels of government and from
the social-serving sector, in partner-
ship with Harvard’s Leadership for a
Networked World and Accenture, have
been gathering in Cambridge about
issues surrounding the Human Services
Value Curve. Each year, our members
and partners have the opportunity to
step away from their daily demands
and spend a weekend together “getting
on the balcony” to see patterns and the
bigger picture of what is happening in
our communities and in our nation. The
summit also provides an opportunity to
zoom in on the enablers and barriers to
achieving better outcomes for children
and families.
After this year’s summit, I am con-
vinced, more than ever, of the value
Designing Ecosystems Together
that cross-sector collaboration means
to our collective work and believe that
finding the keys to “generative part-
nerships” is at the heart of the system
transformation we all seek.
While in this short column I cannot
possibly capture the richness of the
discussion at the summit or illumi-
nate the many ideas sparked by the
case studies, I can share the following
four insights on how
together
we can
reimagine our current systems and
create a new, modern ecosystem that
supports all children and families to
reach their full potential.
Well-Being Is at the Heart
of Our Collective Efforts
Those of us working in the human-
serving sector, as leaders in health,
social services, education, law enforce-
ment, or criminal justice—from public
systems, social-serving organizations,
or social enterprise—we all share a
core belief that everyone should have
the opportunity to live healthy lives
and be well. We must frame the work
of the human-serving system to be con-
sistent with the recognition that we all
need support at times along the way—
throughout our lifecycle—if we are
to achieve wellness and reach our full
potential. This is a shared narrative we
need to embrace across sectors.
We Can Create More
Permeable Boundaries
Across Sectors
To do so, we need a more systematic
understanding of enablers and barriers
of the current ecosystems— recog-
nizing the complexities within them
and how deeply the cultural roots
are embedded. We need to get at the
right questions—some of which we
now know (e.g., the social determi-
nants of health), and others we have
yet to discover. As Susan Dreyfus,
president and CEO of the Alliance for
Strong Families and Communities,
noted: “This is our moment. We must
get at the art and science of shared
See Director’s Memo on page 27
Photo illustration by Chris Campbell