Explore each goal, find related resources, and prepare a three-goal work plan.
One DSD People, Access and Culture
Putting equity into practice
The six goals can help you see where to focus and what to try next in your work.
Using the DHS Equity Policy and its Equity Analysis Toolkit is part of every staff member’s responsibility. Equity professionals can help you work through it.
About these goals and the toolkit
These six goals come from the Aging and Disability Services Administration (ADSA) Equity and Inclusion Implementation Plan. All six guide every unit in the Disability Services Division. They are not department-wide DHS goals.
This companion learning does not replace required agency training. Staff apply the current policy and toolkit to their work; the equity consultant and appropriate partners provide guidance, facilitation and analysis support. That support does not transfer staff responsibility or grant approval authority.
The goals describe what to improve. The official toolkit guides how to examine a decision. The plan below helps record action and follow-through. Use the current official decision guidance to determine the appropriate review; a short timeline alone does not establish that a scan is sufficient.
In DSD, the One DSD Team is the division equity team. DHS and ADSA committees retain their own names and responsibilities.
Goal 1
Eliminate Disparities
Use evidence and affected perspectives to identify differences in access or outcomes, understand their causes, and change the responsible practice.
Explore this goal
In practice: Review a service application that requires repeated documentation. Compare the time, cost and accessibility of each step across the people expected to complete it.
Who experiences the barrier, and whose experience is missing from the data?
Which rule, resource decision or institutional practice helps produce the difference?
What alternative could reduce the burden, and how will you check its effects?
Anti-racism in practice: A rule can use the same wording for everyone and still produce unequal racial effects. Examine how past exclusions, access to resources, disability and language intersect with the rule. Treat missing data as a question to resolve, not evidence that no disparity exists.
A useful working output: Evidence-informed analysis, alternatives, responsible role, and review plan.
Goal 2
Community Engagement
Partner with people affected by the decision while options remain open. Plan for accessible participation, shared influence and a response to what people contribute.
Explore this goal
In practice: Before revising service guidance, ask people who use it which choices they should influence, how they want to participate, and what support makes participation possible.
Who can influence the decision now, and who has been left out?
What time, language, accessibility or payment barriers affect participation?
How will contributors learn what changed and what could not change?
Anti-racism in practice: Representation becomes tokenism when people are visible but have little influence. Invite more than one perspective, explain actual decision authority, resource participation and avoid asking one colleague or community member to speak for an entire racial group. Tribal consultation has its own responsibilities; work with the offices responsible for Tribal matters.
A useful working output: Engagement plan and account of what changed in response to input.
Goal 3
Hiring and Retention
Examine the full staff experience: recruitment, selection, onboarding, everyday culture, access to opportunity and reasons people stay or leave.
Explore this goal
In practice: With HR and the responsible manager, review whether a job requirement measures an essential skill or unnecessarily excludes relevant direct-service or lived experience.
Which requirements are essential, and what evidence supports them?
Who receives useful onboarding, feedback, mentorship and advancement opportunities?
What authorized aggregate evidence and staff feedback could show whether a change helps?
Anti-racism in practice: Recruitment alone does not change the routines that affect belonging or advancement. Examine how informal networks, assumptions about professionalism, and unequal access to sponsorship shape opportunity. Protect people from being treated as representatives or unpaid educators for their racial identity.
A useful working output: A revised workforce practice developed with the appropriate manager and HR partners.
Goal 4
Learning and Development
Develop intercultural competence and equitable access to skills and leadership development. Pair learning with an opportunity to practice, feedback and reflection.
Explore this goal
In practice: After learning to examine process barriers, give a team protected time to rehearse an analysis on an upcoming decision and consult the people affected before choosing an action.
What change in practice should this learning support?
Who can access the opportunity, time, technology and support it requires?
How will people try it, receive feedback and revisit what they learned?
Anti-racism in practice: Learning about racism is ongoing work; it should not depend on racialized colleagues repeatedly explaining harm. Connect personal reflection to institutional changes within your authority. Attendance can document participation, but it does not by itself show changed behavior or outcomes. The organizational continuum and IDI are different tools.
A useful working output: A learning and application plan with a realistic opportunity to practice and reflect.
Goal 5
Contracts and Procurement
Apply equity analysis across planning, outreach, requirements, selection, delivery and follow-up with the people who hold procurement and contract authority.
Explore this goal
In practice: Review whether a short response period or complex submission requirement creates unnecessary barriers for smaller or culturally specific providers, then consider authorized alternatives.
Who learns about the opportunity and has a realistic chance to respond?
Which requirements protect a necessary outcome, and which may create avoidable exclusion?
How will accessibility, language access and other commitments be checked during delivery?
Anti-racism in practice: Repeated use of familiar vendors can reproduce unequal access even when staff intend to be fair. Examine outreach networks, administrative burden and available assistance alongside the requirements. Work within current authorized procurement rules and benchmarks; this companion does not establish scoring preferences.
A useful working output: A contract-cycle barrier review, authorized next action, and follow-up evidence.
Goal 6
Communication and Accessibility
Use inclusive language and accessible, understandable formats so people can find information, make decisions and participate. Review both internal and public communications.
Explore this goal
In practice: Test a revised notice with the people expected to use it: can they find the next step, understand it and act using their preferred accessible format or language?
Who needs this information, and what task should they be able to complete?
Which language, format, technology or cultural assumptions create barriers?
Who owns corrections, and how will you learn whether the revised communication works?
Anti-racism in practice: A single default language or communication style can shift the burden onto people already excluded from institutions. Ask about preferences rather than assuming that racial or cultural identity predicts them. Inclusive images or observance messages should accompany usable services and responsive practices.
A useful working output: A revised communication or participation process and a check of the intended task.
Find resources for a goal
Choose a goal to find related learning and tools.
Read, reflect and examine the organization
Anti-racism asks how racial inequities are produced and sustained through decisions, authority, resources and everyday practices. These readings connect the Anti-Racism Resource Guide to the six goals. They are companion learning, not an assessment or a score of staff.
Institutional structures: look beyond an individual interaction
An interaction may reveal a barrier, but the cause can also lie in a requirement, a deadline, access to information or the way decisions are authorized. A uniform rule can have different effects when people have unequal access to time, money, language support or established networks. Examine both the immediate experience and the routine that shapes it.
For example, training staff to explain a complex application may improve an interaction while leaving its burden intact. Reviewing which steps are necessary, who can change them and how alternatives affect people addresses the institutional process. Useful action can combine learning, an authorized change and feedback from people who use the process.
Try it: Choose one requirement in your selected goal. Describe its intended purpose, who carries its burden, the evidence you need and the role with authority to change it.
Tokenism: connect representation to influence and support
Representation matters, but an invitation does not establish meaningful participation. People may be visible in a meeting, a campaign or an entry-level workforce while having little influence over priorities, resources or advancement. Tokenism can also place a disproportionate burden on someone expected to explain or represent an entire community.
Ask what participants can change, whether different perspectives can disagree safely, what support makes participation possible and how decisions will be reported back. In hiring and retention, consider opportunity and everyday treatment after recruitment. In communication, connect inclusive messages to usable information and responsive practice.
Try it: Before inviting input, state one decision that remains open and how contributors can affect it. Afterward, show what changed, what did not and why.
Organizational culture: sustain change through everyday practice
Stated values become credible through recurring choices: who gets time to learn, whose evidence is considered, who can pause a decision, and what happens when someone names a barrier. A training or policy statement is a starting point. Sustained change also needs resources, accountable roles, changed routines and opportunities to learn from effects.
The guide presents an organizational action continuum for examining patterns of exclusion, symbolic inclusion, structural change and sustained anti-racist practice. Different practices can show different patterns. Use it to ask better questions about a specific practice and its evidence; do not assign staff a label or infer their intercultural orientation.
The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the organizational continuum serve different purposes. This companion neither administers those instruments nor substitutes its reflection for qualified interpretation.
Try it: Compare a stated commitment with a recurring decision. Identify what support, authority and review would make the commitment more consistent in practice.
Source attribution: Adapted for this work context from the Anti-Racism Resource Guide, sections on institutional and structural action, organizational culture, tokenism and the organizational action continuum. The guide cites Ed Schein (2004) on culture and attributes the continuum to Crossroads Ministry, adapted from Bailey Jackson and Rita Hardiman, developed further by Andrea Avazian and Ronice Branding, and adapted by Melia LaCour, PSESD. This is a program synthesis of the source guide, not a new DHS policy or a validated organizational finding.
Manager and supervisor three-goal planner
Select exactly three focus goals and prepare a practical next step for each. Three priorities help organize agreed work; they do not waive responsibilities under the other goals or applicable policies. Use this working draft to prepare for review; it is not an approved agency work plan.
Your draft is not saved. Notes stay only in this open page and disappear when you leave, reload or close it. Export a Markdown copy to keep your work. Nothing is submitted to DHS or saved by the program. Use role descriptions and appropriate aggregate evidence; do not enter private personnel or case details.
0 of 3 focus goals selected. Choose 3 more to enable export.
Goal source: ADSA Equity and Inclusion Implementation Plan (goals 1–6). Program companion examples and resource connections; these are not additional DHS policy requirements. Official source titles retain their original wording. The six goals are distinct from the toolkit’s official process and this program’s companion learning stages.
