10-Mile Wide River For two weeks of intermittent rain the waters of the Mississippi River kept rising. On Good Friday the river crested and broke through the levees. In North Shore, Mo., Stanley Chapman tried to save his furniture and valuables by building platforms four feet above the floor of his house, but the water kept rising, and he was forced to leave by boat with his wife and two-year-old son. He came to the Disaster Assistance Center at St. Charles, Mo., almost 12 miles away, for assistance. They were helped by Marilyn Organ from the Newark, N.J., HUD Area Office, who was appointed HUD Area Coordinator in St. Charles because of her previous disaster experience. Her team of housing counselors went to work to locate temporary housing. After years of working to buy their home in North Shore, Stanley and Katherine Chapman almost wept when they went back by boat to see their house as the water slowly receded. This family is planning to move to higher ground. They will rehabilitate their house, sell it, and apply the money to another house HUD located for them. Ann Nestor of the St. Charles Disaster Center negotiated with Jim Rosenthal, a St. Charles realtor, for rental of a new house for the Chapmans; HUD will pay the rent for up to one year. The Chapmans like the house and intend to buy it. Stanley Chapman said in retrospect, "We could hardly believe the wonderful treatment we got from the Field Disaster Center when we were at our wits end. I never thought my tax dollars would help us this much when we could not help ourselves" Current trends in public administration have heightened management's awareness that to accomplish the Department's mission, its human resources must be better developed. Training is a function of management and should be used to provide employees with the knowledge and skills they need to perform their jobs. The impact of training systems on organization and management determines whether or not employees maintain set levels of performance after completing training. For example, the supervisor who attends a basic supervisory training course, and returns to his office to find that his superiors either do not know or practice the good management techniques he learned, will tend to disregard such training. The environment is not conducive to practicing what he had learned, or the consequences of practicing what he had learned are negative. To avoid this we have to continuously identify and systematically cope with the changing training needs at all levels: executive, middle management, supervisory, professional, and clerical. Secretary Lynn and Dorothy Nelms, Director of Training, address graduates of the HUDEast Training Center. Under Secretary Hyde (left) and Assistant Secretary for Housing Management H. R. Crawford are seated at the table. oped a departmental training plan divided into six functions: identification of training needs, training plans, training budget, training materials, conduct of training, and evaluation of training. Assistant Secretaries, Regional Administrators, and the Personnel Training Division all have specified responsibilities. Assistant Secretaries establish national goals and priorities, set standards, determine course content, select and assign headquarters training staff, and train regional office staff. Regional Administrators must train area and insuring office staff, and select and assign regional office staff for training, and select instructors. Headquarters Training Division is responsible for developing a system of coordinating training activities; identifying and securing training resources outside of HUD; supplying training methodology, technology, and design; coordinating preparation of training materials; training instructors, and developing a system of evaluation. Manpower resources within the Training Division have been significantly increased, especially with the HUD's Training Division has devel- opening of two HUD Field Training Centers. This increase in staff and training facilities means Personnel can, in cooperation with the program staffs, plan, develop and conduct training programs which realistically meet the needs of HUD employees. The primary vehicle for identifying training needs is the Annual Training Needs Survey that will be conducted in April of each year. The Regional Training staff and the Headquarters Personnel Operations staff will be responsible for gathering survey data; the Training Division staff will coordinate, compile, and analyze both the headquarters and regional data. Priority needs will be determined by the Assistant Secretaries. Once this is done the Training Division will issue a departmental plan for training each fiscal year. Some programs now being conducted and in the planning stage have been developed to meet some of these needs. They are described below: The Community Development Specialist Seminar Series is designed to provide Federal, State, and local agency officials with knowledge and understanding of Community Devel וי |