The tradition of setting New Year's resolutions began some 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians. However, research reveals that only 1% of those who set resolutions make it to 12 months. 80% of New Year's resolutions are forgotten by mid-winter, while many adults (23%) quit the first week of the year. We even commemorate this lack of commitment with Quitter's Day that is held on the second Friday in January. This year it falls on January 12.
In the field of human services, however, long term commitment is required to sustain some encouraging trends that modernize human services and complete a transition to the 21st. century. The following trends began to take shape as the pandemic subsided, and we hope to see them develop to maturity in 2024.
Partnerships: It is not uncommon for service delivery functions within a single agency to be isolated from one another. Government agencies and nonprofit community-based organizations often work in parallel, but rarely with common goals and practices. In 2024 we look forward to human service organizations breaking through longstanding barriers and exploring nontraditional partnerships with both nonprofits and the private sector. The hope for 2024 is a new human services ecosystem where organizations forge interactive and interdependent relationships that are mutually beneficial and directed toward a common goal. Working together will encourage every contributing organization to consider core competencies and determine how the collective can best function for greater, system-wide impact at less cost. It will create stronger social services through collaboration.
New Financing Models: Pay for success financing is gaining traction as an alternative funding mechanism for human services programs. It only pays providers of goods or services when outcomes are met. In social financing, foundations or other non-government entities infuse capital for a specific intervention and, if a predefined social outcome is achieved, funders recoup their investment plus a reasonable rate of return. Prison recidivism programs in New York City, for example, have been funded via social financing. Pay-for-success models are rooted in strong outcomes focus and align incentives across sectors thereby promoting the wise use of precious taxpayer dollars.
Looking to the Outside: While public human services delivery is unlike anything in the private sector, this does not mean that agencies have nothing to learn from commercial practices. The opportunity here is for human services leaders to fearlessly challenge “insider” mindsets that see only differences and inconsistencies between private sector and public sector services—and consider the potential of “outsider” innovations. In 2024, social service agencies should consider the example of customer-centered organizations that use multichannel touch points, customer and product segmentation, targeted promotions and self-service options. As other human services agencies begin to explore such “outsider” practices, what’s business-as-usual in other industries may increasingly define the new face of human services delivery.
Health and Human Services Integration: In recent years, there has been increasing momentum around the connection between health and human services, some of it spurred by the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Opportunities for coordinated service delivery and holistic planning and economies of scale for infrastructure investments will flourish in 2024 creating positive value for patients where planned vision exists at the start. As states integrate health and human services, the future vision for 2024 is one where the distinction between health and human services fades, both in theory and in operation, and wellness is defined holistically as a function of a person’s social, economic, physical and mental state.
Summary
2024 will be a year of continued and maturing innovation in the field of social services. A positive, ambitious outlook is the best way to start this new year. Here we go.