The Problem

Across our country, health and social services address an array of challenges– poverty, homelessness, domestic and gang violence, addiction, mental and physical illness, and more.

But the people and communities who struggle the most often find that success in these services is fleeting at best, even when everyone does what they’re supposed to. The result is a revolving door of services that wastes billions of dollars and millions of lives.

Everyone needs safety, stability, mastery (choice and control), social connections, and meaningful access to relevant mainstream resources– what we’ve termed the Five Domains.

These Five Domains are interdependent. Progress in one domain cannot come at the expense of another if progress is to last. Indeed, progress in one domain must be accompanied by progress in the others, or else they spring back towards each other like a rubber band snapping.

Programs are often set up to help people who come to them achieve certain outcomes (e.g., safety for battered women, housing stability for homeless families). For people who have some assets to bring to bear in the other domains, this approach may be very successful.

But for individuals, families and communities that have challenges in all Five Domains, encounters with well-meaning service systems that support change in only one domain don’t lead to lasting change. For them, deeply individualized challenges in the other domains are the real barriers to sustaining the outcome that the program was set up to achieve.

And who is most likely to face constant threats and challenges in all Five Domains? People, families and communities experiencing intergenerational poverty, violence and trauma. For them, progress is short-lived, failures mount, and cycles are perpetuated.

Breaking cycles of poverty, violence and trauma demands practitioners, funders and policy makers support people, families and communities in meeting their needs in all Five Domains simultaneously. Interventions that practice the The Full Frame Approach do this.

The Full Frame Initiative is committed to breaking cycles by aligning systems, community practice and program evaluation around these Five Domains. Practitioners, policy makers, funders, and allies of those most marginalized individuals, families and communities all have a role to play in changing systems, changing lives.