Forward Change uses a unique socio-ecological model, the Life Course Systems Framework to guide strategic advising, research and analysis. This model examines ecological factors, human development dimensions, and institutional milestones that contribute to life outcomes. It serves as a framework for better understanding social problems as well as developing interventions and solutions that will result in improved life outcomes for people of color and low income communities. The foundation for long-term social change remains grounded in policy and systems change, power-building, and grassroots movements.
Forward Change works with government, philanthropy and nonprofit organizations to apply the Life Course Systems Framework as a strategy planning framework. The LCSF Strategy Planning Process helps organizations identify strategic goals, make data-driven decisions, leverage and incorporate research insights on both the drivers of key outcomes as well as effective interventions, and lastly, guide the implementation of strategy planning decisions. Forward Change has used the LCSF strategy process with foundation networks, county governments, and individual nonprofits.
The School-to-Prison pipeline presentation developed by Forward Change applies the concepts and principles of the Life Course Systems Framework to the pattern of destructive feedback loops that comprise the pipeline from preschool to prison. In particular, the presentation situates the current predominance of zero-tolerance school discipline in its historical context and identifies how the excessive use of exclusionary punishment in recent decades has triggered a cascade of system-driven negative feedback loops that channel young males into the prison system. Moreover, the presentation shows how the school-to-prison pipeline anchors an intergenerational negative feedback loop that disproportionately channels the sons of incarcerated men into the prison pipeline as well. The presentation concludes by identifying intervention points and approaches to disrupting the negative feedback loops that comprise the school-to-prison pipeline.