Social service network needs a state boost

Our state government allocates about $230 million each year to social-service providers, which lend support to health-care and group-home workers, aides, therapists and other specialists.

But with inflation, meager wages and more attractive job opportunities elsewhere, caregivers have increasingly opted out of the industry.

The upshot: a workforce crisis that some warn may destroy the human-services field entirely.

Chris Tuttle, CEO and president of health provider Bridgewell, said the severe lack of funding has threatened to shut down some of its services.

Bridgewell serves 6,500 people each year in group homes, habilitation programs and mental-health clinics in Lowell, Danvers and Lynn.

Tuttle said the state funding for these nonprofits, provided through Chapter 257, simply isn’t sufficient. Without an additional $351 million — more than double the current state allotment — they won’t survive, he said.

At the current pay they’re able to offer, Tuttle said human services work is no longer sustainable.

While Gov. Charlie Baker has increased Chapter 257 funding during his tenure, Tuttle said he is “dumbfounded” by how the state is always reacting to a crisis instead of being proactive and advocating for programs that need it.

Unfortunately, that seems to be a recurring theme.

Back in October 2016, the Baker administration reversed a decision regarding pay raises for the state’s nursing-home workers.

Initially, the administration planned to adhere to the strict interpretation of budget guidelines that only nursing staff directly involved in patient care were eligible for additional compensation.

However, that wasn’t the intent of the Legislature, which allocated $35 million to raise the wages of the lowly paid nursing-home aides and assistants.

These employees, most of whom made from $11 to $13 an hour, are the textbook definition of the working poor.

Almost six years later, we’re back in the same position.

Brenna Carney, the program director at NFI Family Resource Center of Greater Lowell, said the organization has five full-time staffers, but currently operates without a family support worker and a clinician.

Funding for her program comes through the state De

partment of Children and Families, but that doesn’t mean the organization isn’t struggling just like the rest of the industry.

Michael Weekes is the CEO and president of the Providers’ Council, the state’s largest or

ganization of predominantly nonprofit community-based

health and human-services programs.

With only that $230 million state contribution, Weekes said the average workers’ wage is just shy of $17 an hour.

But that’s just the average, which means many earn less, close to minimum wage. And that’s not “competitive.”

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-acton, acknowledging that the human services situation has become desperate, said preliminary language in the Senate budget would raise salaries of the industry’s lowestpaid workers by 75%.

Massachusetts likely will never be in a better financial position to help this group of low-paid workers attain a living wage, and in doing so prevent social-service agencies from imploding.

Massachusetts tax revenues continued to soar in April.

Tax collections totaled $6.9 billion, up more than $3 billion compared to the same month a year ago and more than $2 billion ahead of the state’s revenue forecast for the month.

Year to date, the state has taken in $34.5 billion in tax revenue, $8 billion, or 30%, more than last year, and $4 billion more than what was forecast.

Both the governor and Senate President Karen Spilka say they want to offer taxpayers some relief due to this embarrassment of revenue riches, and target some critical areas of need, like housing, child care and higher education.

Tuttle, the Bridgewell CEO, insists an additional $351 million in state aid is required to keep social-service agencies across the commonwealth afloat.

In a fiscal 2023 budget approaching $50 billion, that shouldn’t be too much to ask.