Core Components and Core Values

We offer systems mapping and training services. Systems mapping is a collaborative process that produces data-driven systems change using a public health model. Trainings prepare individuals and groups to transform their work and communities by incorporating and spreading evidence-based and promising practices. Our core values and the core components of our approach ensure that our work is equitable and transformational. They ground us in how we approach our work, the work that we take on, and how we interact with each other. 

The three core components of the Systems Mapping and Training Center’s approach help to produce transformative systems change across each of its service offerings.

• Collaboration: Mappings and trainings are completed with multiple agencies and participants, including people who have lived experience in the systems. Participants work together to identify gaps and resources and strategize the next steps. Trainings prepare participants to make cross-system connections and recognize a wide range of expertise among community members.
• Data-driven approach: The Systems Mapping and Training Center uses local, state, and national statistics to inform the development of a local, data-driven report and action plan or training. We work with your community to develop benchmarks for success to demonstrate progress and outcomes and help training participants connect national trends with local needs.
• Systems change: The Systems Mapping and Training Center develops products, such as maps, reports, strategic action plans, and training curriculum materials that assist with creating meaningful systems change. All Systems Mapping and Training Center products are designed to be living documents. This allows jurisdictions to continuously update their maps and strategic action plans as community needs change. When priorities are achieved or revised, products can be reshaped around the new landscape. When new evidence emerges from the field, our trainings are updated to reflect the best available knowledge.

The Systems Mapping and Training Center’s services are grounded in our core values to ensure equitable systems change:

• Trauma-informed approach: Communities and training participants are encouraged to adopt a trauma-informed lens to promote a person-centered, recovery-oriented system of care. Systems must go beyond “doing no harm” to deliver services in a manner that offers information, respect, safety, and choice to the people being served.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Systems Mapping and Training Center facilitators work with communities and training participants to identify inequities and disparities and come up with or share ways to address them. The goal is to ensure that resource provision and system practices flow to the communities most impacted.
• Person-first language: At the Systems Mapping and Training Center, we strongly believe in the individuality, dignity, and equality of all people. Systems Mapping and Training Center facilitators use person-first language to convey respect and affirm that an individual’s personhood is not defined by any disability, diagnosis, or life experience.
• Recovery is possible: Systems Mapping and Training Center staff members believe that recovery is possible for all. We also recognize that recovery looks different for each person, and everyone has their own definition of success. Recovery is a journey with many ups and downs along the way. We encourage communities and individuals to help the people they serve along this road to recovery, to foster the understanding that recovery is possible, and to embrace how each person defines it.
• Stigma abolishment: There is often a stigma associated with certain experiences. These include having behavioral health disorders, experiencing homelessness, receiving support from entitlements, living with a disability, and others. Communities are encouraged to work collectively to abolish this stigma, to work with others with respect and empathy, and to provide assistance free of judgment to people on their road to recovery.