A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

“NORTH STAR” INITIATIVES

Realizing the full transformative potential of America’s human services ecosystem, including human services CBOs as a critical partner within the ecosystem, will not be easy. It will require concerted leadership and action by all parties involved across the human services ecosystem, including the CBOs themselves, the public sector, philanthropic funders, policy makers at all levels of government, industry associations, and the academic and research community. We outline five major “North Star” initiatives to guide the actions needed to bring about change and unleash the full potential of human services CBOs as critical partners in the larger human services ecosystem. These initiatives aim to support the effective delivery of integrated services, in order to improve the health, well-being, productivity, and vitality of communities and society. The initiatives will also look to lower social costs over time by addressing stubborn downstream issues mentioned previously, such as rising healthcare costs, persistent chronic health issues, enduring unemployment and underemployment for specific population groups, and the high costs of people involved in the criminal justice system. Delivering demonstrable results and outcomes is an important part of the business case in favor of any organization, including CBOs. Government agencies and funders, recognizing this, are increasingly demanding that CBOs demonstrate impact and “ROI” from programs as a prerequisite for funding. As discussed in the prior section, though, defining and measuring positive outcomes remains a challenge. Our first “North Star”, therefore, is a call for all constituencies in the human services ecosystem to fully commit to the achievement and measurement of outcomes in all practices, policies, and regulatory and budget mechanisms. Many stakeholders are already taking steps in this direction. TheWashington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), for example, is an institute created by theWashington State Legislature, jointly overseen by members of the state legislature and the academic community. WISSP conducts extensive research pertaining to evidence and outcomes related to state programs, and calculates cost-benefit estimates for 11 different categories of programs, including juvenile justice, child welfare, adult mental health, workforce development, and others. 26  NORTH STAR #1: COMMITMENT TO OUTCOMES

What steps can each group of ecosystem stakeholders consider to promote a true shift to evidence and outcome-based strategies?

Human services CBOs must commit to “owning” outcomes and accept accountability for demonstrating that their services are in fact producing positive long‑term outcomes in a cost-efficient manner. In order to do so, CBOs will also need to prioritize investment in systems and capabilities necessary to measure outcomes. For many CBOs, this will translate to substantial requirements for long-term data collection and storage, as well as the capacity and commitment to developing measurement methodologies and analytics. Meeting these commitments will require investment, which may include the need for CBOs to make the

52 |   A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE