SHSC - About Us

+SEATTLE HUMAN SERVICES COALITION
+SEATTLE HUMAN SERVICES COALITION
--+Seattle Human Services Coalition
	“An Assertive and Unified Voice helping People Shape Public Policy to Meet Basic Human Needs in Seattle and King County, Washington.”

About Us

Advocacy Works!

Our history together began back in 1983 when the Coalition for Survival Services formed and convinced the City of Seattle to tap general fund dollars for the first time, resulting in $500,000 for shelter, food and community clinics.

In the difficult years of recession and federal cutbacks following, several more coalitions formed around a variety of issues. Ultimately we all decided to consolidate and bring our voices together for optimal impact, creating the Seattle Human Services Coalition in the summer of 1987.

SHSC has broadened and deepened our impact over the past twenty years, but we all have stayed focused on our shared goals.

In 1999-2001 we created the 2020 Vision together, asking and answering the question, "What would it take to meet basic human needs in King County, including eliminating institutional racism, by the year 2020?"

All of the SHSC members and allies who participated in this multi-year process created that vision together and linked their work to reaching the shared vision. SHSC's piece of that work going into the future was identified as building support for dedicated, adequate, stable funding needed to meet basic human needs, raising political will, and creating tools for hu-man service organizations to eliminate institutional racism within their own organizations.

2020 Vision

IDIR Folio

Current work

Our shared vision and goals, continued momentum, and collaborations have led to significant progress, some recent examples include:

Advocacy work from 2002 - 2006 with human service coalitions and alliances across the county has resulted in over $59 million in funding for regional community health and human services. In 2007 we are poised to work on the implementation of another fund source dedicated to mental health and substance abuse services.

The creation of the Identifying Institutional Racism Folio; a collection of tools created by human service providers specifically tailored to help human service organizations examine their own organization, identify roots of racism embedded in their structure and how to take steps to eliminate

Our efforts in the summer and fall of 2006 educating City of Seattle policy makers resulted in a net increase of $7,875,000 for 2007 over 2006 funding.

Each year coalition members join together to create annual priorities which outline shared goals throughout the human services community. Click here to see our current work.

Seattle Human Services Coalition • 4759 15th Ave NE • Seattle, WA 98105

shsc@shscoalition.org • (206) 325-7105