As the state agency charged with implementing Washington’s Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML), the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) must ensure the benefit’s implementation is done equitably to reach the full target population. EPIC is hosting a human-centered design process to improve equitable access to the Paid Family & Medical Leave benefit for the employee beneficiaries who need to care for their family members or have time to recover from medical procedures. With ESD, EPIC is laying the foundation of targeted and community-centric outreach, learning from the past and equipping ESD for the future.
Evans School of Public Policy & Governance
In March 2023, nearly 50 state implementers, researchers, and advocates from across the country gathered over two days to discuss the impact and implementation of state-level paid leave policies. Convened by the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC), state leaders came from diverse settings, each at distinct stages in implementation. The convening was an opportunity for cross-state dialogue, to see points of synergy for ongoing paid leave implementation improvement and creative problem solving.
The following report provides a summary of the rich lessons that emerged from the convening, insights that have grown out of years of organizational and front-line implementation, paid leave research, and policy and community advocacy.
EPIC is hosting an 18-month human-centered design process to improve equitable access to the Paid Family & Medical Leave benefit for the employee beneficiaries who need to care for their family members or have time to recover from medical procedures. We are working in partnership with ESD to lay the foundation of targeted and community-centric outreach, learning from the past and equipping you for the future. Our operational principles are to:
- Build upon what was learned since 2020 about policy implementation from Consulting Lab analysis, research, and the Perigee pilot program;
- Engage nonprofit service providers so they act as ambassadors for the program for families with whom they already have trusting relationships;
- Create the ingredients for a durable engagement infrastructure that assures long-term implementation capability;
- Develop an evaluation strategy that assure continuous quality assessment and improvement of this process to assure equitable access over time.
and support to ultimately improve public policy in the social services.
General inquiries about this project may be addressed to: evansepic@uw.edu.