AUGUSTA — The Department of Human Services, responding to a rash of real or threatened violence against its employees in recent years, is planning to beef up security at DHS offices around the state and provide training in such subjects as basic self-defense to help make the work safer.

The violence that prompted the new policy dates back to November 1988, when a DHS licensing official was seriously wounded in a shooting rampage that also claimed the lives of a Mental Retardation Bureau official and the gunman, a disgruntled ex-employee of a group home for the retarded.

In recent weeks, two DHS workers escaped injury when they went to visit a man in the Waterboro area about delinquent child-support payments and he allegedly fired a gun at them. The employees escaped and alerted police after the man went inside, saying he intended to reload the weapon, DHS Assistant Deputy Commissioner Jamie Morrill said Monday.

In the past year, DHS workers received 70 threats that were deemed serious enough to warrant formal reports to the department — the lion’s share involving employees of the bureaus that handle child-support payments or child abuse.

The threats “range all the way from phone calls — sometimes we get letters — to actual physical assaults,” said Morrill, who is in charge of implementing the policy.

“Security is an issue we can never afford to ignore,” Commissioner Rollin Ives said in a prepared statement announcing the new policy.

The new policy, which Morrill said is expected to be fully in place by July 1, calls for:

All new and current DHS employees to undergo a series of courses that will include instruction on how to anticipate and avoid violent situations, as well as simple techniques workers could use to free themselves from the grasp of a hostile client. Optional courses still being developed would focus on such things as basic first aid and self-defense.

Morrill stressed that any self-defense techniques taught by the department would be non-violent: “We don’t want people out there thinking (DHS staffers) are Rambos and doing judo.”

Probably 3,000 people will receive the training within the next two to three years, he said.

The receptionists at all DHS offices, the people most likely to have the first contact with visiting clients, to be placed in a location where they are visible to their fellow workers. All interview rooms must be equipped with emergency buzzers connected to the reception area, all back and side doors must have locks that cannot be opened from the outside without a key or combination and all parking areas must be adequately lighted.

Physical modifications at each of the 26 DHS offices will be made as part of the renewal of leases on the office space, Morrill said.

“All of them will require some physical adjustment,” he added.

DHS employees to observe more elaborate security precautions. For example, workers who believe violence may occur during a visit to a client’s home must notify their supervisor, who in turn would assign a second DHS worker or a police officer to go along on the visit, Morrill said.