MONTGOMERY WELFARE DIRECTOR LEAVES WITH MIXED FEELINGS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 28, 1992                   TAG: 9202280242
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: KIM SUNDERLAND
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
MONTGOMERY WELFARE DIRECTOR LEAVES WITH MIXED FEELINGS
As Mary Ellen Verdu leaves as director of the Montgomery County Department of Social Services, she looks back with both pleasure and regret.
"I will miss this - it's important work," Verdu said. "It's really where the rubber hits the road."
The hands-on work Verdu has accomplished with the department over the past four years ends today. This month, Gov. Douglas Wilder appointed her director of the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs.
"I'm going to see what it's like to be a state bureaucrat," said Verdu, 38, who has been affiliated with the council since it started in 1989. She takes over her position March 16.
One of the aspects of the Montgmery County job Verdu is most proud of is her 50-member staff, many of whom are emergency personnel recently assigned to the department when a flood of food-stamp applications drowned regular employees.
But she said there are "glaring weaknesses" she is leaving behind.
"I'm disappointed with what I didn't get done," she said. "We still are understaffed and current staff are still underpaid. Unfortunately, I don't see that changing within the next biennium."
The department's staff did not receive raises last year and may receive only a 2 to 3 percent raise next year, Verdu said.
"We can't get people to take the jobs at the current pay rate; and when we do, then we just can't keep them around," Verdu said. "It really hurts client services."
Verdu said her department is feeling the effects of the recession. Montgomery County caseloads are "the highest in the history of the department."
To make matters worse, once an individual or family goes on welfare, it has become increasingly difficult to get off.
"We're on our knees hoping and praying for relief, but we're losing resources to help," Verdu said, referring to funding, inadequate space and staffing shortages.
"One budget crunch after another has made this county a hard-hit area."
Another regret for the Pittsburgh native is that she goes to Richmond leaving the department in a deteriorating building on Roanoke Street in downtown Christiansburg.
A 1990 county bond referendum that would have put social services and the Health Department in a new building failed.
"The building is now more decrepit than it was then," Verdu said. "It's grossly inadequate."
State and local budget woes, a lack of leadership and public misunderstanding have, in Verdu's eyes, made it difficult to get a new building.
But, she said, the public's perception can change.
Because so many more middle-income people are relying on welfare, they come to the county department seeking help and "are appalled at the state of this building," Verdu said.
If people realized they might someday have to use public assistance, they might think twice about better funding for the program, she said.
On the upside, Verdu is proud of a program that the county's social services, court services, schools and mental health agencies have been working on for nine months to help children at risk of being placed in foster care or residential homes.
A plan they developed has become a blueprint for other communities, all of whom must submit their own plans to the General Assembly next summer.
"I'm real pleased with what we have in place," Verdu said.
In Richmond, Verdu - who has a masters degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University - will coordinate many efforts to help children.
These include disbursing Federal Child Care Block Grant money - which totaled $15 million for the state this year - and increasing the availability of Head Start programs and licensed child care providers.
"The flurry of interest in child care came in the '70s and then it died," Verdu said. "It's exciting to think the interest has been revived."
All in all, Verdu said she would tell the department's next director - who is to be hired by April - that Montgomery County is a wonderful place to live, but that work for the needy must continue.
Social services does not have a clientele that will ever be able to be its own advocate for better services, she said.
"They need people who can stand up for them."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB