Families and relationships as the unit of wellbeing
7 everyday patterns to shift systems
This piece is part of exploratory work we have been doing into everyday patterns, and the role and power of re-patterning in systems change. In our introduction we shared seven patterns we have identified across our work and that of others that go some way to making visible active re-patterning for equity and powersharing. Here we examine the fifth one: Families and relationships as the unit of wellbeing.
This piece was written across 2022/2023 and reflects our thinking at this time.
The ways in which government organises its services and supports, relates to people, and measures change, focuses on individuals as the core unit. This puts primacy on a particular individual and western view of both people and wellbeing. As a result people are seen as separate to the relational context that is critical to human wellbeing.
This pattern is about working instead with family, or whānau as the unit of wellbeing. This concept is already integral to te ao Māori and other indigenous world views (e.g. Whānau Ora in Aotearoa New Zealand is “a culturally-based, and whānau-centred approach to wellbeing focused on whānau (family group) as a whole ”.
It is about exploring what it means to try and shift our current systems to recognise and engage in this way. On ways of working with, connecting to and ‘seeing’ people in relation to their wider context, relationships, families and whānau.
As such the pattern focuses on recognising the significance of family as a core human and cultural unit and centralises the importance of relationships for wellbeing. Wellbeing is seen from a family and intergenerational perspective, not just through an individual lens.
Seeing the family as the beginning point or base unit of scale for wellbeing opens up new opportunities for thinking about about enabling wellbeing. Starting from this pattern means shifting systems structures, behaviours and values accordingly. Investment is directed differently when it is about family success not just individual success. The design and structure of support systems is also different. What support looks like and where it starts differ when the perspective is family-centred, aspirational, holistic and long-term. The starting point may well not be a service, and support is unlikely to start with issues as defined by service agencies or support packages.
The repercussions across the support system of working with families as the unit of scale is complex, just as families themselves are complex, dynamic systems. For example, if one member of a family gains employment, this may have a range of implications for a family as a system, (not automatically positive), as it impacts on power relationships, family dynamics, status, priorities, availability for other family responsibilities. The whole family is impacted.
Understanding wellbeing means understanding the implications of change for the whole living, dynamic, complex system. In understanding the connection of relationships to overall wellbeing, the right responses and supports have the potential for cumulation of collective wellbeing.
Starting with families as the unit of wellbeing and engagement requires much more nuanced and flexible ways of conceptualising how support is offered, how criteria for accessing such support is defined, and how success is determined.
Just counting outputs from services won’t tell us whether overall families themselves are better off. Assumptions about what people “should” be doing to be productive or what is of most value i.e paid work over care, may be challenged when we understand the benefit of the whole. Or thinking about the benefits of intergenerational knowledge exchange and connection might trigger a re-prioritisation of approaches to training or support.
This pattern is about more holistic ways of recognising wellbeing and of supporting it in relation to the broader dynamics and intergenerational obligations and relationships of families. In other words, the family (both immediate and extended family) is considered to be integral to the way supports are understood, the likelihood of success and how this is measured.
Read the full breakdown to find:
- what mindsets, behaviours, practices, structures, values and spaces it may take to embed new patterns.
- an example from Uptempo NZ working with families as a collective to lift employment and economic outcomes
Link to PDF — Families and relationships as the unit of wellbeing
