Policy & Practice | April 2021

Service Delivery: Why the Human Services Sector Must Shift to Measuring True Outcomes

By Michelle Hinton and R. Bryan Grove

S

ince the birth of America’s settlement house movement 1

including community-based orga- nizations (CBOs), public agencies, and philanthropy, must go beyond measuring program outputs and commit themselves to measuring and achieving outcomes that align directly to the social determinants of health (SDOH), 2 which are the conditions in which people live, play, and work. Committing to outcomes is essential for both demonstrating the value of the human services sector—impacting future revenue models and the sustainability of the human services ecosystem—and overcoming the unacceptable health inequities that have been highlighted and exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic.

human services organizations have played a critical role in partnering with those with lived experiences to build assets in neighborhoods that strengthen communities. Since those early years, the measurement of success for settlement houses was often how many beds were filled and how many families were served. Increasingly, however, we are coming to understand that a truer measurement of success is not to be found solely in the quantity of services provided, but rather in the quality of outcomes achieved. Given this awareness, human services ecosystem stakeholders,

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