In Jacksonville, Fla., a broad network of organizations is working to make sure that all children, no matter where they live, have access to what they need to develop, learn, and thrive. A critical part of this important work is building public understanding of child development, particularly child mental health. For the city to keep making progress on these issues, ordinary Jacksonville residents need to understand why child development matters as a public issue, how it works, what gets in the way, and what kinds of policies are needed to make a difference.
To make public engagement efforts as powerful as possible, the Jacksonville Partnership for Child Health turned to the FrameWorks Institute to craft tools and techniques for talking about child development and child mental health. This toolkit offers the resulting set of communications research and recommendations, along with examples and models of how to apply them.
This toolkit includes resources that can be useful in framing many different types of communications about children’s issues. Whenever and wherever advocates talk about kids, they can count on these framing strategies to:
The recommendations outlined here are based on research sponsored by the Northeast Florida Children’s Mental Health Coalition and its grantees and partners, including the Jacksonville Children’s Commission and the Partnership for Child Health. Together, these and other organizations have partnered to support Jacksonville’s System of Care Initiative, which is working to integrate home and community-based services and support for youth.
Why Jacksonville needs a framing strategy, and what framing offers the community.
Review the key messages and major themes for reframing.
It can be hard to get your messages through. With preparation, you can head off challenges.
See tested frame elements applied to communications opportunities such as editorials, social media updates, and program descriptions.
Media assets to use in your presentations.
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The communications strategies in this toolkit were developed through extensive research using Strategic Frame Analysis®, an evidence-based approach to communications. This method uses social scientific methodologies to “reframe” messages about complex social and scientific issues such as childhood development using values, metaphors, and explanatory chains. The FrameWorks Institute has helped advocates in the childhood development field successfully transform their approach to communications and build public support for their solutions over the past 15 years. This section points you to the studies we conducted specifically in Jacksonville.
