Created in 1975, the Department of Human Resources serves families and individuals who, due to
financial hardship, disability, age, chronic disease, or any other cause, need help in obtaining basic necessities
of food and shelter. Children in particular are the concern of day care, foster care, adoption, and protective
services that also extend to vulnerable adults. Federally funded programs such as Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC), Food Stamps, and Medicaid are administered by the Department with State
programs for the homeless, refugees, migrant workers, victims of crime, and women who are displaced,
battered, or assaulted.

Many functions of the Department originally were administered by county government from the
colonial period to 1900. State government assumed certain responsibilities in 1900 when Maryland's first
State agency of public welfare, the Board of State Aid and Charities, was formed. In the 1930s, State
efforts were joined by the federal government.

County Poor Relief. Although colonial settlers were nearly all young and able-bodied, disabling accidents
and other disasters deprived some of their means of livelihood. Separated by the ocean from family and
kin, such unfortunates had nowhere to turn. As early as 1650, an order of the Assembly authorized a tax
levy to provide maintenance for the maimed, lame, and blind of St. Mary's County. Still, few people applied
for assistance. Creation of a bureaucracy such as existed in England under the poor laws was considered
unnecessary and wasteful, even though several governors recommended it. County governments tried to
limit their financial obligations. They required persons harboring a stranger to post bond that the stranger
would not become a charge on the county. Parents of bastards also had to post bond for their support.

Predating other child protective agencies by centuries, county courts in 1658 began to protect the
welfare and estates of orphan children in probate matters. An orphan was any minor who inherited an
estate and whose father had died. The court appointed guardians and oversaw administration of a child's
resources until the child came of age. When the estate was insufficient for the child's maintenance, the
court bound out the child to learn a trade.

In the seventeenth century, Maryland's need for labor was such that no able-bodied person lacked work.
Acquisition of land and upward mobility was possible for nearly everyone. As available land was taken up,
however, economic conditions changed and, prior to the Revolutionary War, fewer opportunities existed
for persons without capital and property.

Two methods of poor relief developed in Maryland. The first was to provide direct payment of money
for support, a method which began in the colonial period and continues to this day. The second was to
house the poor in a county almshouse, later known as the county home.

As early as 1650, direct support payments (later called out-pensions) developed from annuities granted
by the county courts to provide for persons too old, crippled, or young to work. Parish vestries also
administered poor relief in some counties, as in England. After the emergence of almshouses in the late
eighteenth century, persons receiving relief outside of the almshouse were known as out-pensioners and
received an annual pension from the county tax levy. By 1799, out-pensions were granted to the bedridden
and people "whose peculiar circumstances may render a situation in the poor-house particularly unsuitable
for them" (Chapter 65, Acts of 1799). Annually, the legislature passed laws authorizing persons to receive
a pension. These laws indicate that many out-pensions went to relatives caring for orphaned children or
a lunatic family member. The 1799 law limited to ten the number of out-pensioners in each county and
to thirty dollars the annual amount of each pension, but this law continually was amended.

County Almshouses. The county almshouse became the primary public institution for the destitute. The
legislature in 1768, recognizing that "the necessity, number and continual increase, of the poor within this
province is very great, and exceedingly burthensome," passed an act to relieve the poor by creating
almshouses, or workhouses, in five counties (Chapter 29, Acts of 1768). Later built in other counties as
well, almshouses did not function until after the Revolution. The concept behind almshouses was punitive:
the original act vested absolute power in each county's five Trustees of the Poor "for the better relieving,
regulating and setting the poor to work, and punishing vagrants, beggars, vagabonds and other offenders"
(Chapter 29, Acts of 1768). Initially, persons were sentenced to the almshouse, and required to wear a
badge on their sleeve with an emblazoned "P" for pauper. This punitive attitude towards the poor also
was reflected in the Constitution of 1776, which prohibited men without property from voting. They were
disenfranchised until 1801 (Chapter 90, Acts of 1801).

Because the intent was to make the inmates work for their upkeep, almshouses were situated on farms.
A workhouse was part of their structure when they first were built. Nonetheless, despite the efforts of
trustees and overseers, during most of their history almshouses were not self-supporting; they relied on