ABSTRACT
Although the San Mateo County Human Services Agency has a history of hiring clients for temporary assignments, the agency’s most recent effort to hire clients into full-time, permanent positions occurred with the implementation of welfare reform. The primary goal was to address the agency’s staffing needs by providing meaningful employment for former welfare recipients as well as set an example for the larger community. In 1997, the San Mateo County Human Services Agency developed a new service delivery model called SUCCESS (Shared Undertaking to Change the Community to Enable Self-Sufficiency) which included restructuring the benefit analysts positions into new case-management roles. The transfer of employees from one unit to another left many vacant positions, especially in the Medi-Cal benefits unit which has the largest caseload. In their effort to fill these positions, the human services agency began hiring their own clients and this case study describes that process.
