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Policy&Practice
June 2016
34
association
news
A
s APHSA continues the progres-
sion along the Human Services
Value Curve, we are focusing our
efforts on better ways to collaborate
and integrate our members’ and
partners’ expertise to support stronger,
healthier families and communities,
sustain the well-being of our youth,
and ensure all Americans have oppor-
tunities for gainful employment.
To this end, we are framing our
Pathways
work through “collabora-
tive centers” where leaders across the
human service family—including from
each of our affiliates and councils—
can contribute insights, participate
in collective discovery, and generate
solutions. Through the center plat-
forms and a more intentional focus on
“knowledge management,” members
and partners organize to:
Develop and advance influence cam-
paigns for policy change
Elevate innovations and solutions
Develop tools and guidance for the
field
Leverage our own proven organi-
zational practice to strengthen the
drivers of organizational readi-
ness, continuous improvement, and
performance
Shape and spread key message using
framing science, and
Test and refine emerging applica-
tions and promising practices.
The Centers allow us to “upload”
insights of members and partners
across disciplines and help translate
why it matters for all of us. The Centers
allow us to target and adapt policy and
technical assistance efforts—being
smarter about where our energy is
expended—based on a robust under-
standing of the current landscape. The
Centers keep the focus on thinking
about systems and measuring child
and family outcomes and help avoid
only thinking about programs in silos
and simply tracking outputs.
To introduce you more fully to
each of our Centers, as well as our
efforts for knowledge management,
we’re highlighting them in a five-part
series, beginning with the Center for
Employment and Economic Well-Being.
Watch for upcoming articles on the
National Collaborative for Integration
of Health and Human Services,
the APHSA Innovation Center, our
Knowledge Management approaches,
and a (yet to be launched and named)
center on Child and Family Well-Being.
Focus on the Center
for Employment and
Economic Well-Being
Gainful Employment and
Independence is one of four key outcome
areas APHSA seeks to impact through
a transformed human service system.
For working-age individuals and their
families, having a job and staying in
the workforce are critical to achieving
greater independence. Gainful employ-
ment is one of the surest and most
long-lasting means to equip people
with the lifetime tools they need for
economic success and to avoid poverty.
The APHSA Center for Employment
and Economic Well-Being (CEEWB)
has been established to identify and
promote policies, funding structures,
and practice models that promote a
system of human services, workforce
development, economic development,
and education and training that effec-
tively supports greater capacity and
independence, employment, self-suffi-
ciency, and well-being for low-income
individuals and families.
Human service agencies, along with
their partners inworkforce development,
economic development, and educa-
tion and training, play a critical role in
supporting employment and economic
well-being for low-income individuals
and families. Multiple human service
programs address workforce engage-
ment in various ways and degrees;
these include Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families, the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program, and
child-care assistance, among others. All
of these programs contribute to work
engagement but because of program
differences, they frequently operate in
isolation from each other or, at best,
cannot be coordinated and leveraged to
maximumadvantage. Multiple programs
end up serving the same populations
through fragmented and inflexible
Presenting APHSA’s Collaborative Centers
See Collaborative Centers on page 40
Illustration via Shutterstock