Developing family-centered policy grounded in listening
A New Practice Lab Special Project
June 2025 - May 2026
Why This Matters For Families
While the past decade has brought important policy gains for families, the truth remains that raising children in the United States can be way too hard. Families know this. Why don't our policies reflect it? Household expenses typically rise with the birth of a child—just as family income often falls, and some families are forced to make difficult choices between working and caring for their child, especially during those crucial early months. The financial strain and emotional stress many families face stem from a complex mix of factors. And families who are economically precarious and raising young children have fewer resources and greater barriers to address those challenges. But all families deserve to thrive, and to have access to opportunities and support to achieve their dreams.
The Challenge
One thing is clear: our institutions need both fresh ideas and better ways of working to help families have agency and access what they need to thrive. Too often, policy is designed for families, not with them. Families are the experts, and know a great deal about what they need. We must build more pathways to strengthen family voices in how we design and deliver policies. Instead of studying programs, we must listen to people.
The New Practice Lab is part of a growing movement of leaders and organizations committed to designing and improving policies and programs in close partnership with the families they are meant to serve. This moment in time calls for fresh thinking and deep curiosity about what the experiences and dreams of American families are for a thriving life, as the foundation to build new solutions.
Our Approach
Central to all work the New Practice Lab does is directly hearing from families about their real experiences. In our partnerships with states, teams listen to families about how they have been impacted by policies and benefit delivery processes. We also listen to families about their actual experiences with policies and benefit delivery through our partnerships with state governments. And work with governments to make their programs, policies, call centers and forms all work better for real people.
We have also been running the Thriving Families initiative, a multiyear research effort directly engaging economically excluded families with young children to deepen our understanding of the evolving challenges through a holistic view. We start, in-person, in conversation with families about the challenges they face today and how they would start to design their ideal supports. We stay connected for 18 months via weekly digital messages (in English or Spanish) with prompting questions about a wide range of topics. These conversations shape our thinking on what matters to families.
The New Practice Lab is launching an iterative family-centered policy discovery process of listening, research, and policy development, beginning in the Summer of 2025 and carrying into 2026, that builds on our learnings from the Thriving Families initiative.
In the first phase, the effort will start with “directions” from the families that we work with through our Thriving Families initiative and will curate and organize ideas and actions that respond directly to what families need and hope for their future. While we will continue to focus on economically excluded families with young children, our definition of “family” will remain inclusive and reflective of the diverse ways people live across the country today. We will start with insights and principles gathered from conversations with families in Minnesota, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania over recent years, as well as from larger datasets on families with young children. These will turn into guiding principles and areas for exploration, informing a refreshed review of who America’s families with young kids are and what existing or innovative policies and ideas can expressly support their articulated needs and hopes for their support families.
In future phases, this effort will include a combination of mixed medium research review and synthesis, literature review, expert interviews and engaged work with families.
We will remain open and curious about new ideas that resonate with families' lived experiences. Rather than being driven by conventional policy frameworks or partisan ideologies, we will anchor our work in the voices of families—applying rigorous data and evidence to spark imagination around solutions that truly respond to their needs.
ORIGINAL OBJECTIVE
Understand what matters to economically excluded families with young children, what challenges they face, and what they need to thrive.
WHAT WE’VE DONE
Listen to families through our co-design workshops and diary studies in the Thriving Families initiative and develop summary insights and principles.
ORIGINAL OBJECTIVE
Understand who economically excluded families with young children are.
WHAT WE’RE PLANNING
Compare findings from the Thriving Families initiative against rigorous data and evidence.
ORIGINAL OBJECTIVE
Identify solutions that address what families need to thrive.
WHAT WE’RE PLANNING
In close coordination with our Thriving Families effort, explore ideas across the political and policy spectrum through research and expert interviews through a variety of forums like workshops / codesign sessions, gatherings, and surveys.
What We Learned
While this project is still in its early stages, by Spring 2026 we hope to have robust evidence about families with young children and possible solutions to inform the work of the New Practice Lab and the broader movement.
Next Steps
At the end of our first phase, we will provide an update on our learnings from families in the Thriving Families Initiative and share a snapshot of who economically excluded families with young children are.
This project will also build on the New Practice Lab’s learnings from our design and delivery sprints, to improve the public benefits delivery chains for existing policy and the future policy making process.
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