Policy & Practice | Spring 2026

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By Tracy Evans

The Future We Build Together: What Writing a Book Taught Me About Human Services Leadership

W hen I stepped down from leading the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) at the end of 2023, I expected a shift in pace. I did not expect such a profound shift in perspective. For 13 years, I worked shoulder to shoulder with state, local, and com munity-based human services leaders nationwide. Together, we navigated economic upheaval, public health emergencies, natural disasters, federal shutdowns, and deep political division. We weren’t simply responding; we were advancing modernization, strengthening cross-sector alignment, elevating the workforce, and pushing for more integrated, responsive, and human-centered systems. At the time, much of that progress felt incremental—one policy shift, program redesign, and new partnership at a time. Writing American Welfare: Reclaiming the Dream for All of U.S. gave me the distance to see it differently. What felt like routine leadership was, in fact, the steady construction of a more resilient foundation. That progress continues today. The future of human services depends on leaders who understand both its tech nical complexity and its civic purpose. I am grateful and encouraged to see that work carried forward at APHSA and beyond, with clarity and resolve. When I began writing American Welfare , I thought I was examining history, especially how the word “welfare” became distorted, how stories of blame and scarcity hardened into policy, and how those policies shaped public perception. But as the manuscript took shape, I realized

something unexpected: This book is as much about the future we are building together as it is about the past. Writing helped me connect threads I had witnessed firsthand: local inno vations, quiet redesigns, the push to make front doors more welcoming and eligibility more seamless, and the insistence—often in rooms where it wasn’t fashionable—that public systems must reflect fairness, reli ability, and belonging. Human services are not peripheral to democracy. They are infrastructure— the quiet architecture that determines whether families can withstand dis ruption, whether children have a stable footing, whether older adults age with support, and whether trust in govern ment grows or erodes. And infrastructure does not build itself. What I Learned About Narrative One of the deepest lessons of the writing process was about story. Over the years, we have focused on modern ization, alignment, integration, and performance. Writing a book forced me to confront a harder question: What stories are shaping these systems? Many of our structures were built in eras defined by suspicion with assumptions about worthiness and scarcity. Those narratives shaped forms, verification rules, funding silos, public messaging, and, ultimately, how people experience human services. Yet what I routinely witnessed in your leadership was a quiet but persis tent reframing.

n You spoke of customers as neighbors. n You elevated the human services workforce as builders of possibility. n You understood that policy design is also narrative design. When you redesign systems, you rewrite the story beneath them. I saw it in counties that shifted language, in states that brought families to the table, and in agencies that embraced cross-sector collaboration because families do not live in silos. The future of human services will not be built on technical upgrades alone. It will require narrative courage—the willingness to replace outdated assumptions with a more expansive story of shared well-being. Belonging is sometimes dismissed as aspirational. In practice, it is concrete: Is the benefits application understand able? Does the eligibility determination account for context and complexity? Are community partners trusted co designers? Does the first interaction feel welcoming or scrutinizing? Belonging is built—or denied— through design. Across the country, I have seen leaders who know that if we are not intentional, belonging defaults to exclusion. They are rethinking procure ment, data sharing, and performance measures not as neutral decisions but as signals about who counts. What I Learned About Belonging Another thread in the book is belonging.

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Policy & Practice Spring 2026