On-line Readings in Public Relations by Michael Turney
	Public relations planning: Planning starts with mission statements
	© 1998 Michael Turney	Table of contents	Practicing Public Relations	About the author

Mission statement of
The Iowa Department of Human Services

The Iowa Department of Human Services exists to provide a continuum of integrated human services to Iowans who experience personal, economic and social problems in order to relieve their constraining conditions and develop and enhance their individual productivity and family life.

• The department is dedicated to improving the well-being of Iowa's poor, neglected, abused, ill, and incarcerated.
• The primary responsibility of the department is to help individuals or families become self-sustaining.
• The department's staff provides a continuum of services so that services are available to help clients at all levels and stages of their problems.

The Office of Communication coordinates the organization and delivery of information regarding the Department of Human Services' operations and policies and their impact on the department's employees, its clients, and the general public.

Its primary responsibilities are:

• providing public information to the department's constituents,
• maintaining media relations,
• coordinating intra-agency and employee communication, and
• providing communication support and production services to all units and managers within the department.

Perspective on this public relations' mission statement:

The role and mission of the DHS Office of Communication as described here is reflective of a public relations unit operating in the second or explanatory phase of public relations' development, which is a fairly accurate assessment of the unit's status in the mid-1980s when this version of its mission statement was written.

The Department of Human Services was then under the leadership of Dr. Michael V. Reagen, a very strong and dynamic commissioner who chose to personally manage the department's most important and most political relationships. And, because of his commitment to direct service delivery and matrix management, Commissioner Reagen insisted that his deputy commissioners and designated direct service program specialists be the primary managers of the department's other constituent relationships.

Consequently, even though Dr. Michael Turney, the director of communication, served as a member of the commissioner's cabinet and one of his personal advisers, the Office of Communication did not really manage many of the department's relationships other than those with the news media. Instead, the Office of Communication functioned as an in-house communication agency that offered consulting services and advice to key managers and provided communication support services for the department's myriad programs, institutions, and offices all across the state.