Over the course of a year, the Pathways to Prevention team (which consisted of the Service Design Team and Administration for Children’s Services) worked together to listen to, advocate for, and bring the voices of families and front-line staff into the process of designing and delivering the next generation of ACS Prevention services, while building a sustainable culture and practice of civic service design at ACS. We started with a question:

How might we engage families and providers to deliver a dignified service matching and delivery experience? This problem statement summarizes two clear objectives that this project aimed to achieve:

• 1. Create family-centered pathways into Prevention services.

• 2. Develop a process to design this experience with families and Prevention providers.

Our final project event also gave us a chance to reflect on the empathetic principles the project was designed around:

• 1. Pathways to Prevention is about listening. Hearing directly from families — about what they want, need, aspire to, enjoy — is fundamental. It isn’t a “nice to have,” it is the starting place — an essential ingredient — and our inspiration.

• 2. Pathways to Prevention is about social justice. Families deserve the highest-quality services possible, regardless of their income level. It’s on us as government to ensure they are treated with dignity and care.

• 3. Pathways to Prevention is about integrity. We want to walk the walk — if we say listening to families is important, it has to be embedded in everything we do. This includes program design, implementation, and how we hold our providers accountable.