The Providers’ Council is turning 50 in 2025! In celebration of this milestone, the Council will be running a series of Throwback Thursday posts throughout the year commemorating some of the Council’s most important milestones in its first 50 years. This week, the Council wants to highlight the Council’s research and report efforts.
The Providers’ Council often publishes reports on the human services sector and its workforce to examine various issues within the sector. In 2002, the Council made its first foray into research when it commissioned the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation report, “Reforming the Commonwealth’s $2 Billion Purchase of Service System,” which examined the Commonwealth’s vast system for purchasing human services, identified specific areas of improvement and outlined the major reforms it would need to undergo to better support persons served.
Several major research endeavors followed this first report, including:
- “Help Wanted & Help Wanted 2” — From 2006 to 2007, the Council published two reports that sought to define and provide solutions to several problems facing the human services workforce. “Help Wanted” examined the issues themselves, while “Help Wanted 2” looked at recruiting and retention strategies for human services organizations.
- “Profiles of Caring: The Human Services & Nonprofit Sector in Massachusetts” — In 2009, the Council published a report, whose primary focus was exploring how nonprofits in Massachusetts benefit everyone by building the workforce, transforming lives, strengthening families, and fostering innovative solutions to social problems.
- “Trends in the Human Service Landscape” — Published in 2012, the Council collaborated with Public Consulting Group to examine national trends in the purchase and provision of services across the human service sector. This report looked to provide an overview of the major growth areas for human services and review strategies and trends elsewhere in the country to address emerging issues in this area.
- “Leading the Way: Social Innovation in Massachusetts” — In 2013, the Council, with the support of Center for Social Innovation at Boston College, released a report that reviews the insights of nearly two dozen leaders recognized as Massachusetts social innovation trailblazers and provides recommendations for strengthening Massachusetts’ position as the social innovation capital of America.
- “Beyond Social Value: The Economic Impact of the Human Services Sector” — Published in 2015, the Council, the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute and UMass Dartmouth released a report that looked to quantify the sector’s significant economic impact on the Commonwealth.
- “Who Will Care? The Workforce Crisis in Human Services” — In 2017, the Council, University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute and UMass Dartmouth published a report regarding the impending economic storm of increasing demand, a shrinking workforce and low wages that threatened the care of one in 10 Massachusetts.
- “Health through Human Services” — The Council worked with the UMass Donahue Institute and UMass Dartmouth to publish a report in 2019 that examined the major threats to the sustainability of the human services sector. The report quantified the essential work of the human services sector and detailed the advent of value-based reform in Massachusetts, Accountable Care Organizations, the MassHealth Community Partners program and the critical role of human services in addressing social determinants of health.
- “Essential or Not? The Critical Need for Human Services Workers” — This report, published in 2023 analyzed the composition of, and changes to, the Massachusetts human services workforce between 2016 and 2020, most notably that employment declined during that period after more than a decade of steady growth.
Today, the Council continues to work with research institutions to track changes in the human services sector and examine critical issues organizations do or will face in the future. By leveraging data from ongoing research, the Council strengthens its advocacy efforts with concrete evidence that highlights the vital impact of the human services sector across the Commonwealth.
For more information on the Council’s research and reports, please click here.
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