Within the Department there are about twenty divisions. The department employs about six hundred social workers; their service subdivisions include:

Child Support Enforcement Child Care Services Adoption Foster Care Food Assistance Division Family Financial Assistance Program Consolidated Child and Family Services Plan/Title IV-B Adult Protective Services Equal Employment and Civil Rights

Administrative Divisions include: Field Administration Quality Control Program Integrity Personnel Center for Communication Legal Management and Fiscal Analysis Administrative Hearings Contracts and Grants

The state’s biggest social support service is the food assistance program, which had almost 250,000 recipients at the end of 2005. The number of recipients for some sort of child support was nearly as high. Presumably this figure includes a number of the child support services within the Department of Human Resources, which include subsidized day care, the federal consolidated program under Title IV, the family financial assistance program and other services provided through contracting non-profits.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources was hit hard by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Nearly sixty thousand households applied for disaster-related food stamp support. The state allocated funds for cash payments to families who had evacuated to Alabama from Louisiana and Mississippi and could not return home. Applications for funding support approached ten thousand.

Alabama itself had ten counties declared disaster areas.

Alabama has incorporated a job development program into its Family Assistance Program. All parents that are enrolled are required to participate in the JOBS program. Participation is defined as working in either a subsidized or unsubsidized job; enrollment in an on-the-job training program; job search; job readiness classes; and vocational training.

This welfare-to-work concept helps ease chronically unemployed people back into the job market. It provides assistance with the barriers to employment, such as child care; job training; job application classes; and other methods helping the family move into the mainstream. The Department takes an active role in dealing with Alabama’s underclass.

In February of 2006, they announced a grant program for their enrolled families in the Family Assistance Program that will subsidize heating bills. The state subsidizes child care for 27,000 children through contracted agencies and in November of 2005 found the funding to add an additional 2,000 children to the program.

Alabama’s welfare-to-work program has been so sufficiently successful in placing job trainees that the federal Health and Human Services Department has awarded them with additional grants for the program in 200, 2003, 2004 and 2005. The state operates twelve Family Service Centers around Alabama that provide walk-in counseling and support, in order to pull needy families into the services that the state has developed to help them.

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Human resource departments were, at one time, simply the funnel for hiring and firing. Job requests from department heads were turned into job postings internally and through public media. Terminations were handled with exit interviews and the presentation of severance packages. Today, human resource departments cover a good deal more territory than simply hiring and firing.

Regulatory compliance is a matter of substantial import in the hiring and firing practices of any modern business. Equal opportunity statutes require firms to ensure that discrimination of any sort is minimized in the hiring process. Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act deals not only with physical access issues, but with hiring practices. Laws regarding immigration change with regularity and impact hiring regulations.

Some human resource departments oversee employee benefits. In the age of managed health care, dealing with health insurance companies can be a burdensome process – usually for the health care provider, but sometimes for the employer as well. Negotiation and renegotiation of contracts with benefit providers fall to the human resources department; today those benefits are a critical line item in the company’s expense column.

Companies experiencing growth and particularly companies that need technical or business students as potential new hires will develop a recruiting team that travels from campus to campus in search of engineering, information technology and finance majors who will be graduating soon. Other forms of outreach such as advertising in local media and through media outlets (such as websites) where talented job seekers might be looking falls within the purview of the human resources department.

Because of the web and Monster.com and the convenience of email, human resources departments will often find themselves deluged with resumes for a handful of open positions. Vetting those resumes has itself become an automated process for some larger firms. Those resumes that are submitted electronically – which some firms insist upon – will be scanned for keywords and sorted accordingly. It would be interesting to explore just how keywords are chosen that which keywords trigger acceptance for review or rejection out of hand.

The human resources field has been made more interesting by the rise of executive recruiting firms. Professionals who match jobs with individuals provide a professional link that can be of great value to a human resources department because so many of the resume databases are shared. However, the value of human contact remains the most important factor in hiring today, as it always has. The vast majority of job placements occur through personal acquaintance or a personal recommendation.

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Within the business consulting industry, the term ‘human resources development’ has been expanded to include a number of other functions. Human resource development firms will contract with a business to do an analysis of the company’s personnel allocations and uses. They will look at how each department functions, how job responsibilities are allocated and how the various departments interact.

From the data gathered, the consulting firm will develop a plan that recommends changes so that the contracting business can maximize use of its employees. Such changes may include realigning departmental functions, or moving one set of tasks from one department to another. This hypothetical move may result in the reduction of required headcount in the workforce. The consultant will probably also develop a standardized set of job descriptions for the business workforce and a wage scale that is equitable for all classes of job and types of work.

In a situation where layoffs are required, a human resources development consultant will often be called on to help reorganize job functions in order to keep the business running with fewer employees. Less tangible functions in situations like this include ‘change management’, a process that helps a company’s human resources (employees) deal with substantial alterations in the business structure. This function is often an important one because it helps to minimize employee fears and maintain morale which, in turn, keeps productivity up.

In larger corporations, acquisitions often mean substantial corporate realignment as one business is folded into the other. This often means layoffs and it always means absorbing one ‘corporate culture’ into another. In situations like this, large businesses will turn to experts to help with their “human resource capital” management. This term supposedly has positive overtones as it qualifies employees as company assets with serious value, equal to inventory and equity and quarterly profits. From another perspective, when employees become a ‘capital resource’ managing their oversight, improvement, productivity and removal seems to eliminate the human element to a great degree.

In the public sector, many state departments of employment services have renamed themselves as departments of human resources in recent years. Within this framework, human resource development includes providing job training, assistance in job placement, job listings and the distribution of unemployment checks. If you are undergoing a job search, you may be surprised at the little things you can find at the state Department of Human Resources. Services such as resume consulting and interview coaching are available in many instances. It is the purpose of this government bureau to help people find jobs or learn how to do jobs. Many of their little known services can contribute to your personal search by preparing you for the process.

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In 1965 the Department of Public Welfare was authorized to cooperate with the federal government in administering the anti-poverty program. The federal government provided approximately 75% of the assistance funds and the state, by appropriate from the legislature, provided the remainder. This department also administered the Texas Medical Assistant Program (Medicaid).

In 1977 the legislature changed the name of the department to the Texas Department of Human Resources. In 1980 it was restructured with the program’s categories to reflect two clients groups: families and children, and aged and disabled persons.

Many Texans are helped by the state’s programs. The Social Security Administration determines ongoing Medicaid eligibility, while the Texas Department of Human Services determines eligibility for everyone else. Through Medicaid for Families and Children, it facilities access to Medicaid programs for needy families.

Since September 2004, there are two branches of the Texas Department of Human Services. The first is the Department of Aging and Disability Service, which serves mental retardation service and state school program, community care, nursing facility and long-term regulatory services, plus aging service and programs. This department provides information about services for older Texans, provides forms and handbooks, and includes documents in Spanish.

The other arm is the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which provides disaster assistance, family service, family violence program, immigration and refugee affairs, nutrition programs, and technology programs. It provides Medicaid prescription drug coverage for low income Texans who are denied medications under the new Medicare drug plans.

The department has a new subscription e-mail service making it easier for the public to keep up with the latest news and information about health and human services. Under this system it is possible to apply for services by phone, in person or over the Internet, fax and mail. There is a menu of options for consumers Applying for state services, including Medicaid, food stamps, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and long-term care.

The Texas Department of Health and Human Services has a long history of serving the people of the State of Texas. With the new systems in place and the dynamic changes, the department is client- centered, efficient in its use of public resources and focused on results and accountability.

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