DOMAINS & ENTRY POINTS FOR ACTION | DEFINITIONS |
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Government (All Levels) | This domain targets structural actions that can be taken by governments through the governing systems of public and private sectors. It refers to macroeconomic, public, and social policies as well as underlying power structures |
Improve Regulation, Oversight, and Funding of Macro-Economic Systems and Policies | Increase effectiveness and impact of government regulation and oversight of financial sector, housing market, and employment and labour market. Ensure adequacy of funds for sustainable actions |
Expand Provision, Regulation, and Funding to Care, Education, and Transportation Services | Ensure governments oversee, regulate, and provide guaranteed level of adequate funding to quality essential care (e.g., childcare, health care), education, and transportation services |
Prioritize Redistribution-Based & Universal-Type Policies | Build and improve equity-based policies that redistribute wealth or span the socioeconomic spectrum. Such policies (e.g., progressive taxation, universal basic income, and raising minimum retirement pension) disproportionately benefit people who experience disadvantage |
Provide Sustainable Funding to Programs and Services | Ensure continued and appropriate amount of public financial assistance to support operations and service delivery infrastructure of organizations and governments, targeting areas that directly or indirectly impact people’s financial circumstances |
Organizational & Political Culture | This domain targets those processes that affect the delivery and sustainability of government, organizational, and community actions. It involves consideration of organizational culture and power dynamics |
Simplify Access to Benefits & Services | Remove barriers and bureaucratic ‘red tape’ that limit people’s access to benefits, programs, and services, including communication barriers (e.g., low literacy levels), strict contingencies (e.g., work-for-welfare), restrictive eligibility criteria, and onerous assessments (e.g., to qualify for disability benefits) |
Budget for Wellbeing | Create budgets that prioritize long-term human wellbeing over financial outcomes alone (e.g., balancing budgets through austerity measures that negatively impact health and overall wellbeing) |
Assess and Measure Long-Term Impacts | Use measures of human wellbeing to understand the long-term impacts of policies, programs, and services (e.g., social impact) Take a long-term approach to evaluation (e.g., cost–benefit analysis) |
Socioeconomic & Political Context | This domain targets social and political actions. It encompasses changes to the political and community landscape that, together, shape the availability of resources, opportunities for poverty reduction, possibilities for growth of the middle-class, and improvements in the distribution of power at the societal level |
Expand Access to Financial Services & Products | Increase access to mainstream and alternative financial services and products that are inclusive, culturally appropriate, affordable (e.g., low-fee or no-fee), flexible in terms of contracts and transactions, and responsive to people’s needs and circumstances Facilitate access to information about mainstream and alternative financial services and products |
Strengthen Employment Security (Income and Benefits) | Improve access to stable, well-paid, and regulated jobs with employee benefits programs for all workers |
Enhance Quality Education | Facilitate access to education and training to improve people’s long-term income prospects |
Improve Housing Security | Strengthen affordable housing policies, including high quality options for public housing Increase access to diverse affordable and supportive housing options in order to provide people with dignified choices that fit their needs |
Promote Neighbourhood-Level Advantage | Increase neighbourhood-level access and opportunities for education, employment, safety, and security (e.g., addressing high exposure to the criminal justice system or providing meaningful supports for poorly funded public amenities) Target family, community, and neighbourhood through multi-level initiatives to improve local services and supports |
Social & Cultural Circumstances | This domain is about political, community, organizational, and individual actions that shape or recognize social and cultural contexts, hierarchies of power, and people’s social backgrounds and identities (e.g., immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity) that accumulate to impact their financial circumstances |
Include Cultural Values of Financial Practices & Ways of Living | Recognize and respect the complexity and diversity of cultural values attributed to financial resources (e.g., money, goods) and financial transactions Build initiatives that recognize the symbolic and economic values of different ways of being and doing (e.g., pay for informal caregiving) |
Address Stigma & Discrimination (e.g., systemic racism and ableism) | Build initiatives to explicitly reduce stigma and discrimination of groups who experience cumulative disadvantage across the lifespan (e.g., racialized people) and intersecting challenges (e.g., Indigenous woman experiencing disability) in financial services, job markets, and school or workplaces Address financial abuse and barriers to both financial independence and intergenerational wealth-building that disadvantaged groups have systematically experienced |
Foster Connection & Belonging | Enhance community capacity, empowerment, and connections through community-led or participatory approaches promoting social capital and social cohesion |
Life Circumstances | This domain targets political, community, organizational, and individual actions that impact people’s complex life circumstances, multiple roles, and power relationships (e.g., individual agency and power within a household) that come together – positively or negatively – to shape their financial situation |
Develop around People’s Everyday Realities | Remove barriers to enrolment and participation in financial strain and financial wellbeing related initiatives (e.g., access to childcare, transportation costs) Ensure the timing and content of the initiatives are tailored to the target populations. Consider people’s values, life stages, life demands, and daily roles and responsibilities |
Consider Diverse Household Financial Circumstances | Create initiatives that are appropriate to people’s current financial circumstances, particularly for people experiencing poverty and facing unmet basic needs (e.g., food insecurity, energy insecurity, housing insecurity) Set realistic, achievable goals (e.g., building savings only after basic needs are addressed) |