We were founded in 2023 by members of the Human Services Council (HSC) who recognized the need for a C4 organization that could fight more aggressively to finally mend the broken system that has mired the human services sector and the communities it serves in inefficiency, inequity, and poverty-wages for essential workers.

HSA is supported by human services leaders, workers, and advocates who believe systemic change is needed to support providers and communities.

Human Services Action (HSA) envisions a world in which New Yorkers have all their basic needs met and human services providers can focus on building connection and community. 

To work towards that vision, we must first address the systemic issues that undermine our efforts to transform the human services sector. Today, low wages and City and State contracts that dictate how services should be delivered (without consulting clients and workers) create obstacles that interfere with providers' ability to offer high quality, equitable services to New Yorkers. 

We know that the current, broken system is working as designed. The way that government contracts with providers is deliberately overly prescriptive and complex, while simultaneously not providing enough funding for the program to be successful.

This harmful dynamic is rooted in racism, misogyny and paternalism, enshrining into our contracts the attitude that people that need services don’t know best their own needs and the people that provide them don’t know best how to support them. 

We seek to turn the sector on its head. The human services sector has immutable power through our hundreds of thousands of workers and the millions of clients we support everyday.  But through decades of divestment, crises, and lack of funding, government has negatively impacted and limited how we provide services. 

It’s time for that to change. We can no longer engage in government partnerships mired in inequity and inefficiency. We can no longer let government dictate how services should be provided and funded. And we can no longer accept poverty wages for our essential workers. This is a moment for transformative change – and we must seize it.

HSA will harness and build the political power of the human services sector in order to hold elected officials accountable for these failures. Through organizing and movement building efforts we will leverage the power of the human services sector to put pressure on elected officials to prioritize equity and justice for New Yorkers by fully funding services, committing to on-time contract payments, and providing a living wage commensurate with the experience and talent of our workforce.

We will ground our work in the realities and experiences of the diverse human services workforce. Through intentional collaboration, we will ensure the experts in the field (aka human services workers and community leaders) guide our policy and organizing agendas from formation to execution.

Human Services Action is building on the work of the Human Services Council of New York and the New York human services community to harness the immutable power of the nonprofit sector and advance true equity for our communities.