What Becomes Possible When Systems Support Place-Based Communities

Walter McKenzie
4 days ago
4 min read

Over the past decade, place-based communities have shown what’s possible when people stop working in isolation and start working as a system.

Across the country, leaders have built shared tables, aligned around cradle-to-career goals, and created common measures. They’ve proven that when communities move together, outcomes move too.

Now imagine the impact if the systems around this work consistently reinforced the way place-based communities already operate. Not more meetings or more initiatives, but funding, accountability, standards, and training that pull in the same direction around a shared vision for children’s wellbeing.

But we're asking our place-based partnerships to do extraordinary work inside systems that were never designed for coherence. We're asking them to be heroes. Funding streams pull in different directions. Performance measures reward narrow slices of success. Professional standards train caring adults in parallel. Training and technical assistance are siloed by sector.

Imagine if coherence were the default. With shared agreement on what wellbeing means, existing funding streams could reinforce wellbeing in practical, everyday ways:

Health policy and Medicaid: In some states and communities, Medicaid already supports school- and community-based services. With clearer, shared definitions of wellbeing, Medicaid could more consistently recognize participation in high-quality afterschool, mentoring, or community programs as preventive supports when those programs demonstrably build belonging and trusted adult relationships.
Mental health and prevention funding: SAMHSA and other mental health funding streams already include prevention and early intervention. A shared vision of flourishing could help these dollars more reliably prioritize relational, preventive supports in schools and community settings, not only crisis response.
K–12 education policy and funding: Under federal and state education policy, including Title I, many districts already invest in attendance, engagement, and student supports. With shared definitions of flourishing, leaders could more confidently treat these investments as core strategies for strengthening third-grade reading, academic achievement, and long-term success, not as peripheral add-ons.
Afterschool and youth development funding: Afterschool funding already reaches millions of children and often prioritizes safe, supportive environments. With a shared wellbeing framework, policy and grant guidance could place greater and more consistent value on continuity of participation and relationship quality, not just enrollment counts or hours of operation.

To get there, we need a shared definition of wellbeing and how we measure it.

Without it, rule-makers are left guessing how to write guidance and measure success. Communities then do the extra work of translating across systems themselves.

We cannot understate the need. According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, about 40 percent of adolescents report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, with rates exceeding 50 percent among girls. These are not fringe indicators. They are signals about how young people are actually experiencing their lives.

And wellbeing doesn’t compete with long-standing priorities like third-grade reading, academic achievement, or high school graduation. It strengthens them. When children feel safe, connected, and engaged, they are more likely to attend school regularly, persist through challenges, and learn effectively. Skills like self-regulation, motivation, and relationship-building are not distractions from learning; they are part of what makes learning possible. Wellbeing helps ensure that investments in instruction, curriculum, and academic supports actually stick.

Deep-rooted place-based networks like StriveTogether, Harlem Children's Zone, and Partners for Rural Impact have moved mountains to break down silos and align supports in their communities. Imagine what becomes possible when the systems around them make that work easier, not harder.

We’ve seen this kind of shift before. In early childhood, From Neurons to Neighborhoods helped align science, policy, and practice around a shared understanding of development. That clarity didn’t prescribe programs. It reduced guesswork. It shaped systems.

We believe the elementary years now deserve that same level of shared clarity.

When coherence is built into the system, caring adults don’t have to compensate for misalignment. They don’t have to be heroes just to meet kids’ basic developmental needs.

The system carries more of the load.

It’s a multiplier.

And that’s the spirit behind Connected for Kids.

If you’d like to learn more or engage: - Read and sign our letter of support - Read the Connected for Kids 2-pager - Watch the launch event recording

In the months ahead, we’ll share more about what a shared vision for flourishing can look like in practice, and how it can help communities and policymakers align around what kids need most.

Thank you for reading, and for your commitment to kids, families, and communities.

Philip Steigman is a child policy and youth development expert specializing in middle childhood and community-based strategies for child flourishing. He has worked for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, the Boston Public Schools, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, and his new project is Connected for Kids. This piece was originally posted January 12, 2026, reposted here with permission. You can connect with Philip via email.