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What are human services, and how do state governments structure them?
What are human services, and how do state governments structure them?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Urban Institute research report
- Author(s):
- Hahn, Heather, author
Pratt, Eleanor, author
Lawrence, DaQuan, author
Aron, Laudan Y., author - Contributor(s):
- Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, December 2022
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Equity -- economics
Health Policy
Social Welfare
State Government
United States - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Human services—a sector critical to helping individuals, families, and communities thrive and optimizing health, well-being, and equity for the country as a whole—are often underappreciated and misunderstood. Recent reports have documented the urgent need to strengthen the human services sector in the United States, including the need to invest in leadership and develop talent; address infrastructure needs and increase the sector’s capacity; promote effective practice, advance collaborations, and weaken silos; and influence public opinion and policy though messaging, advocacy, and civic engagement. It is also increasingly clear that the health care system can benefit from far greater alignment with and support from human services and social care. States, along with cities and counties, play a central role in the organization, management, and delivery of human services. This project describes the range of approaches state governments take in structuring their human services systems and explores the implications (if any) of these structures for alignment and coordination among various human services and with the health care sector. The importance of how human services are organized and structured at the state level remains unclear. Not surprisingly, states have taken different approaches to how they structure their human services, and some periodically reorganize these structures. Agency structure alone is unlikely to account for how well human services are supported or delivered but may facilitate or complicate aspects of how such a comprehensive and complex set of services operates. The study examines state human services structures and examines ways these structures might affect how the system functions. This study drew on various data sources and methods to examine state approaches to structuring human services. We conducted interviews with national experts in human services and state governance; a scan of the research literature on this topic; a (quantitative) cluster analysis of state human services governance structures based on available data; and, finally, (qualitative) in-depth interviews with human services agency leaders in eight states: Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Key staff of the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) served an advisory role on the project, providing input and feedback to the research team. This work was conducted from January 2021 through September 2022, and because the study period coincided with the global COVID-19 pandemic, all interviews were conducted virtually.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (v, 51 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918591685306676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918591685306676