Summary

ALIGN Association of Community Services is a unified community of agencies representing the diverse needs of Alberta’s children and families by sharing information, experiences, and research.

PolicyWise for Children & Families partnered with ALIGN to develop a Toolkit for the ALIGN Wellness Initiative. The goals of the initiative are to support children and family serving agencies to assess child, youth, and caregiver well-being and share the impacts of their work.

Building on the initiative’s year two Framework, the Toolkit features resources and tools to support culturally responsive and inclusive child and youth well-being practice and assessment.

Policy & Practice Implications

• Children and family service agencies can apply the Framework’s culturally responsive and inclusive approach to assess children, youth, caregivers, and staff well-being across seven domains.
• The Toolkit’s 422 well-being indicators collected from youth, Indigenous practitioners, Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and immigrant and refugee serving agencies can be used by organizations to guide their program and client evaluations.
• Policy makers can support Indigenous knowledges and practices by embracing the value of Indigenous ways of observing, assessing, and sharing impact.
• Centering the voices of youth and caregivers with lived experiences in assessment practices can build trusting relationships while collecting and learning from meaningful testimonials of impact.