After once again having to go into PETSc and manually edit the function to return the Pyomo block that it uses for solving the initial condition problem, I think it's time to streamline the process so that people that don't know how to edit core IDAES functions can also debug their initial condition problems.
I know that @Robbybp had a similar request a few months ago. If you have anything in particular you want out of such a helper function, please add it to this issue so that I can keep track of it.