Policy & Practice | Fall 2023

president’s memo By Tracy Wareing Evans

Aspirations for the Future of Human Services Part Four: The Human Services Workforce

This is the last of a four-part series exploring what leaders in human services aspire for the sector, drawn from the insights that emerged in multiple visioning sessions that APHSA sponsored last year. Those sessions led to our updated Strategic Playbook (see https://bit.ly/Playbook23) and, in particular, to this graphic depicting the critical gears and core components of getting to our desired future state. I n building a space for leaders to openly discuss their hopes for the future of human services, one thing rang true across the nation—the chal lenges in recruiting, training, and retaining a workforce in ways that attend to their sense of safety, well being, and belonging, remains one of the toughest challenges we face. Agency leaders are the first to acknowledge that it is the workforce that bears the direct weight of admin istering services through an outdated and misaligned system. And, too often, it is the workforce that carries the blame when the system does not meet expectations. This reality stands in stark contrast to the invaluable role we know people who work in human services play every day. And, as vital as our workforce is, many human services agencies are reporting vacancy rates of 30–50 percent or even higher, with no recruiting pipeline in sight. This shortage of personnel is particularly evident in positions like child welfare and eli gibility staff and has been further exacerbated by the ongoing “Great Resignation” phenomenon with which we are all too familiar.

Across the nation, we are hearing from agency leaders who are actively seeking to flip this current reality on its head. Leaders are starting by listening deeply to the experiences and recom mendations of the workforce to better understand where changes need to be made. They are advocating for long overdue pay increases, and investing in the modern tools that workers need. They are supporting ongoing learning in next-generation approaches such as human-centered design and commu nity power-building. Agency leaders are also working to make the critical role the workforce plays much more visible to policymakers and the public. Leaders recognize, however, that our aspirations to be community-led and to truly align our systems are heavily reliant on our sector’s ability to face, head-on, both long-standing and emerging obstacles to fully supporting the workforce. Put another way, if the

middle gear depicted in our graphic does not run smoothly, we’ll have a hard time advancing what we aspire for the future state of the sector, espe cially in ways that are led by people and communities. People who work on the front lines of human services are the heart and soul of the sector. They are often the first point of contact for people seeking assistance, and their expertise and empathy are essential in building trust and establishing meaningful relationships. Beyond the front line, agency staff at all levels plays a role in creating an infrastructure that supports the front-line work; provides for data collection and analysis; and continually assesses progress at individual, community, and popu lation levels. Senior leaders build relationships within and across the

See President’s Memo on page 42

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Fall 2023 Policy & Practice