Here is what we know: Children from low-income families with access to nutrition programs are more likely to graduate from high school. Parents from low-wage households that increase their educational attainment positively affect their child’s emotional health and performance in school. Families with stable housing and child care subsidies move up the income ladder faster and more sustainably. Human services and policing agencies working together to help people with mental health challenges make communities safer.

Today’s human services environment is a turbulent one, comprised as ever of numerous and complex challenges. It also remains an environment ripe for path-breaking innovation and transformation.

Yet as leaders embrace the potential of emerging human services innovations, they come face-to-face with established institutions, business models, systems, and ways of measuring value that raise formidable barriers to adopting new methods.