ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 8, 1996 TAG: 9601080027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The state cut welfare benefits in November for 48 Virginia families in which parents refused to cooperate with social workers and school officials and return their truant children to school.
In the first year of the new ``learnfare'' program, the state in October suspended welfare benefits to 28 families, said Connie Hall, head of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children unit in the Virginia Department of Social Services.
The number of sanctions for December is expected to exceed the November total, officials said.
Learnfare is a provision of the state's welfare overhaul intended to keep children from poor families in school.
``The purpose is to get the child back in school and preparing to be a self-sufficient individual. Only when all else has failed is the sanction imposed, when the parent just won't cooperate,'' Hall said.
In localities across the state, social services departments and public school systems are working together to carry out the new law that took effect July 1 as part of the Virginia Independence Program.
The new law requires AFDC recipients to comply with compulsory school attendance laws. Regulations require that the parent cooperate with social workers and the school system.
In cases of habitual truancy, the AFDC benefit for the truant child is deducted from the family's monthly check. All other benefits, such as Medicaid, are not affected. In most cases, that comes to about $60 a month.
Sanctions generally come after a parent fails to show up for a meeting with school officials or social workers, fails to follow the plan set out for them at such a meeting or otherwise does not cooperate.
Records of school-age children on AFDC are compared with school attendance records.
In Richmond, such a comparison resulted in a list of about 400 names of children receiving benefits who were not enrolled in public school. The total number of children in the city's AFDC program is about 8,000.
Notices are going out to the parents of those children that benefits will be cut unless they get their kids into school, said Michael Evans, the city's director of social services. He said it appears that parents of most of those 400 children are either ignoring school attendance laws or defrauding the system by taking benefits for children no longer with them.
In Richmond, the maximum AFDC benefit for a family of three is $291 per month, plus food stamps and Medicaid coverage.
In Norfolk, officials have a list of about 220 truant welfare children, said Suzanne Puryear, that city's human services director.
``We have well over 200 cases to investigate to see if they are legitimate truancy cases that would require us to proceed further,'' Puryear said.
Roanoke's Social Services Department was already working on school absence problems among its clients, said Corinne B. Gott, director of social services.
``We have workers who go [to schools with low-income students] when they have truancy problems,'' she said. ``We feel that that's where the bulk of the problem exists as far as continuing poverty, generational poverty. Lack of education contributes to low income.''
And social workers assigned to AFDC cases routinely work with teachers and parents when a child has too many absences from school, she said.
``If all the family needs is a jolt to make them say, `Oh, wow, I might get in trouble if I don't get Johnny back in school,' if that works, then fine,'' said Gott, a social worker for 45 years.
But in learnfare, ``the only intervention that I see is reducing the income by taking the child off the grant, which isn't going to get him back in school,'' she said. ``It's a punitive action.''
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