Agency’s job is to fix societal ills

It should surprise no one that a government agency charged with serving troubled people should routinely be associated with trouble.

At the Georgia Department of Human Resources (DHR), trouble has been our business for 36 years. It will continue to be our business moving forward.

We’re the “emergency room” of human services in Georgia. We patch up people who come to us wounded by society’s most severe problems. When you are in this kind of work, you not only have to deal with the troubles —- you have to shoulder the image that comes with the territory.

The flip side of that are all the successes that may not make headlines, but instead become individual and personal life stories.

We’ve helped thousands escape welfare and gain employment. In 2004, 27,192 adults were on welfare. Today only 2,297 adults are on welfare across our state. And over 68 percent of those are in work activities for 30 hours or more per week. Georgia’s recurrence of child maltreatment is 2.54 percent, well below the national average of 5.4 percent and drastically reduced from the 9.2 percent we were experiencing back in 2004. We’ve also reduced child welfare caseloads per worker. And since 2004, there’s been a 21 percent decrease of the number of children in foster care.

We’ve added nearly 5,000 waivers amounting to over $100 million in services for the disabled. Five years ago, Georgia was last in the nation for transitioning developmentally disabled people from institutions to community-based programs.

Today, we’re among the top five most successful states.

We have the most improved food stamp program in the United States. We have one of the best child support services in the Southeast, collecting $651 million in 2007 alone for needy families —- including $12 million collected through an innovative program that helps parents find work and pay child support. In one year, Georgia moved from 47th to 38th in the nation for collecting payments.

Now the time has come to shape human services for perhaps the next 36 years. It’s time to look at how this job is done. Georgia has changed. The needs of its citizens have changed. An agency like ours welcomes the opportunity to be better at what we do.

We take our work very seriously. We’re not afraid of taking on problems that many wish would go away. As long as we have a troubled society, those troubles will find their way to our door. And we’ll be ready.

After all, it’s our job.

> B.J. Walker is commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Resources.

This column is solicited to provide another viewpoint to an AJC editorial published today.