” New York, NY (New York Co.) Wall Street Journal (Western Edition) (Cir. SxW. 426,863) JUL 2 3 1986 Welfare Revised Mofec fates Now Ask Recipients of Aid To Train and Take Jobs l\\fassachusetts and California Also Provide Child Care, Freeing Mothers to Work Reagan’s Workfare Memories By JOE DAVIDSON Staff Reporter of THE w ALL STREET JOURNAL BOSTON-Donna Deshaies recently eel\u00b7 ebrated the first anniversary of her free\u00ad dom-freedom from the boredom that many mothers on welfare suffer. In April of 1985, she began work in the payroll de\u00ad partment of Massachusetts General Hospl\u00b7 tal, a job she g9t with the help of the state’s Employment and Trainmg pro\u00ad gram. Ms. Deshaies, who is 23 years old, trained for the job durtng a 16-week course that covered not just clerical skills but also such subjects as interviewing for a job_ and dressing properly for work. During her training, she continued to get her welfare check. Child care and transportation ex\u00ad penses were paid by the ET program. \”I wouidn ‘t have been able to pay for my own training,\” she says. And even had she found tuition money, child-care ex\u00ad penses for her two-year-old daughter, Ta\u00ad Jana would have been unaffordable. Tod\ufffdy she no longer is on welfare. Th\ufffd Massachusetts experiment is an ex\u00ad ample of new efforts by states to resolve welfare problems. California is just begin\u00ad ning a program called Greater A venues for Independence, or GAIN, that, like ET. uses training to get peopl\ufffd off public assi\ufffdtance and into jobs. And hke ET, the California program offers. chi\ufffdd-care aid, w\ufffdich is crucia! in a nation m which two-thirds of the 11 million people on the main federal\u00b7 state welfare program are children. Working for the Money Just about everybody agrees that the current welfare system needs repair, if not replacement In his State of the Union ad\u00b7 dress this year, President Reagan said he was instructing his Domestic Council to evaluate federal programs for the poor and to develop, by Dec. 1, \”a strategy for im\u00ad mediate action.\” Because Mr. Reagan of\u00ad ten makes clear his belief that. welfare re\u00ad cipients should work for their money. the White House strategy is expected to in\u00ad clude a so-called workfare program. Workfare is controversial, but the states mav take the lead here as well. In’a com\u00ad promise that led to California’s adoption of a plan, liberals agreed to a form of work\u00b7 fare so long as child care was part of the program. Some members of Congress h_ope that a similar federal compromise nught lead to refashioning Aid to Families With Dependent Children, a $15 billion-a-year program. . Job creation and chlld care are critical, though expensive, elements in changing welfare, says Barbara Blum, the president of the American Public Welfare Associa\u00b7 tion and of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp., which evaluates state wel\u00ad fare programs. \”It does get down to whether we’re willing to make the front\u00ad end investment for a long-term benefit,\” Ms. Blum says. Spending and Saving ET’s $50 million annual budget repre\u00ad sents a considerably higher investment than the $12 million Massachusetts spent on welfare in 1982, the year before ET be\u00b7 gan. But ET’s job-placement costs are about half those of the former program, says Charles Atkins, the state public-wel\u00b7 fare commissioner. \”For every dollar we invest in ET, we save two dollars in re\u00ad duced welfare benefits and increased tax revenue,\” he says. Half of ET’s budget is spent through child-care vouchers that pa\ufffd\u00ad ents, usually mothers, can use at any li\u00ad censed facility. The state continues to pay for day care for as Jong as one year after the welfare recipient gets a job. Connie Parks pays only $17.50 of the $60 weekly day-care bill for her three-year-old son, John. \”If I had to pay [$60 for] day care every week, there wouldn’t be any sense in working,\” she says. Until last Oc\u00ad tober, Ms. Parks, 34, had been on welfare since another son, now 15, was born. After so many years on public assistance, she finds it somewhat hard to believe that now she is employed in the data-processing unit of Boston’s Grove Hall welfare office. Like Ms. Parks, others have been \”rolled over\” from welfare through ET’s on-the-job training project known as sup\u00ad portive work and into regular, full-time employment in private industry. ‘A Different Person’ The supportive-work option is one of several available to ET clients. Janice Perryman chose instead to earn her high school equivalency diploma and enter ET’s 28-week Office Skills Training Program in Boston’s United South End Settlements. Beyond the typing and word-processing skills that Ms. Perryman is learning, she says she is more self-ass\ufffdred and th\ufffd has a better relationship with her children. \”Now they can ask me questions with con\u00ad fidence,\” she says. \”Before,. they would say, ‘She don’t know.’ I’m a different per- son, so they’re different, too.\”. . After Ms. Perryman\u00b7s trairung IS com\u00ad pleted and employment begins, she and her children will be eligible for one year of state-paid health services if health insur\u00ad ance Isn’t available from her job. ET is widely praised. Between October 1983, when ET began, and January 1986, the state’s AFDC caseload dropped 4.1 %, from 88,414 to 84,828. Without ET, Massa\u00ad chusetts authorities estimate tbe caseload Would be at least 93,200. But there are skeptics. The average an\u00ad nual Massachusetts welfare grant of $4,800 leaves recipients well below the poverty line, which is true of welfare recipients In all the states. Even the yearly income from the average ET full-time Job-$11,- 000-is well below \”breadwinner’s wages,\” complains Dorothy Stevens, a Boston wel\u00ad fare recipient and activist. As of July 1, state officials won’t pay contractors who train ET clients if the recipients aren’t placed in jobs paying at least $5 an hour. President Reagan’s 1987 federal budget proposal calls for the \”work Incentive\” (WIN) program that finances flexible state initiatives such as ET to be replaced by a cheaper \”work opportunities\” project. ET would lose about S8 m1JUon under the Rea\u00b7 gan proposal, according to Gov. Michael Dulcakis, who says he would try to find the money elsewhere rather than let the pro\u00ad gram die. The Reagan proposal would require that up to 75% of able-bodied welfare recipi\u00ad ents, excluding mothers of young children, enroll 1n a work-related activity. The Na\u00ad tional Council of State Legislatures bas told Congress It \”opposes the imposition of a national, mandatory work program be\u00b7 cause such a program fails to recognize special state and local conditions.\” CUtttng costs while increasing benefits to the \”truly needy\” long has been a cen\u00ad tral element of Mr. Reagan’s welfare phi\u00ad losophy. Budget cuts made In fiscal 1981 reduced the 3.5 m1Jllon AFDC cases by about 442,000, according to the General Ac\u00ad counting Office of Congress. Yet real in\u00ad come for recipients continued to drop, as it had been doing for years. From 1971 to 1985, the AFDC benefit fell by one-third In constant dollars. When food stamps are in\u00ad cluded In the computation, the drop still ls 20%. Mr. Reagan’s views on welfare have l’leen shaped to a large extent by bis expe\u00ad riences as governor of California between 1966 and 1974. He and the state legislature developed a weHare program that the president continues to cite as a \”tremen\u00ad dously successful\” model of welfare re\u00ad form that included workfare. Report for Work In a press conference earlier this year, he defined workfare 1n describing the pro\u00ad gram’s goal-\”We are going to order able\u00ad bodied welfare recipients to report for these useful jobs. . . . They’re doing It in return for their welfare grants.\” He stated that the program reduced the welfare caseload by 300,000 people and funneled 76, \u00b7 000 recipients into private-Industry Jobs. Others say the California program wasn’t as successful as the president re\u00ad members. A 1974 California auditor gen\u00ad . eral’s report on workfare said that \”at the maxtmwn\” 2,045 clients participated in the program during the first 21 of Its 36 months. Gerald Hawes. an author of the report, says that It is \”incon,.-:eivabie\” that more than 3,000 people were placed by over, please) Welfare Revised: More States Ask Aid Recipients to Do Some Work the contract, it may be resolved by arbi- I tration. The program has Its critics. Kevin As\u00ad lanian, of the Coalition of Welfare Rights Organizations in Sacramento, says GAIN will lead to dead-end jobs that won’t en- .,_ _____________ –1 courage independence from welfare. State workfare. Researchers say Mr. Reagan’s Sen. Diane Watson says she voted against program accounted for far less of the case- GAIN because it provides no funds for Job load decline than he claims. development, which she feels is crucial if Robert carleson, who was the state’s recipients are to move off the welfare social-welfare director under Mr. Reagan rolls. and who was a White House adviser during Sparing the Children the president’s first tenn, says workfare Mr. Agnos says he voted against work\u00adwas just an experimental project. But he fare previously because he believes it Is argues that the Reagan program was a generally punitive and smacks of make\u00adsignificant factor ln the caseload decline. work. GAiN, however, has Its own punitive President Reagu firmly opposes auto- element. If a recipient repeatedly falls to matte cost-of-living blcreases 1n AFDC keep an agreement with Ute welfare sys- grants, but that ts: one of his legacies in tern, checks can be sent to a third person, California’s prorram. In order to get his such as a friend or minister, who pays the revision package passed by the state legis- client’s bills. \”The emphasis here,\” Mr. lature, he agreed to index welfare grants Agnos says, \”is not to punish the children to the Inflation rate. Largely because of who are the real recipients in AFDC.\” that, California’s monthly grant of $587 for Major chlld-care provisions were an im\ufffd a farnJly of three is lligher than almost ev- portant element 1n attracting llberal sup- ery other state’s. port for GAIN and a concession conserva- N Pain N GAIN tlves reallzed they had to make, says earl 0 0 Williams, califomia’s deputy director for Today, califorrua again ls experiment- social services, who helped negotiate the lng with changing welfare. The program GAIN compromise for the \u00b7 conservative called Greater Avenues for Independence Republican administration of Gov. George was enacted last year, and county ad.minis- Deu.krnejian. trators now are drawing up plans to put it Llberals acknowledged that workfare \u00b7 into effect. GAIN is similar to ET but has needn’t be slave labor and agreed that a workfare component. money can be poured into the welfare sys- How California \u00b7s new workfare is con- tern without generating self-reliance, says structed was the \”key to compromise\” Mr. Wllllarns, who also worked on Gov. that allowed liberals and conservatives in Reagan’s workfare program. Conserva\u00ad the state legislature to pass the welfare tives recognized that workfare isn’t the en\u00ad package, says Assemblyman Art Agnos, a tire answer and that comparatively expen\u00ad San Francisco Democrat. Under GAIN, a sive programs for training and supportive recipient isn’t placed 1n workfare until var- services must be considered part of the so\u00ad ious training and employment programs lution. \”So we moved a long, long way tn have been exhausted. And then the place- our view,\” Mr. Wllllams says of conserva\u00ad ment must be in a job for which the client Uves. \”We weren’t willing to do that unW was trained. recently.\” A written contract between the client Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee, the and the system outlines the recipient’s chainnan of the House Ways and Means benefits, Including food stamps, Medicaid, subcommittee on public-assistance pro\u00ad child care and transportation services. It grams. believes ”the atmosphere ts there\” also stipulates the welfare recipient’s re- for conservatives and liberals in Washing\u00ad sponsibiliUes, Including a work activity. If ton simllarJy to develop a compromise on a dispute should develop o,\ufffdr carrying out \u00b7 welfare. \ufffd … ,,, \u2713 ”
