SOCIAL SERVICES SEEING MORE NEED, LESS FUNDING

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

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201280462
SECTION: ECONOMY                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
SOCIAL SERVICES SEEING MORE NEED, LESS FUNDING
The workers at Roanoke's Department of Social Services who deal daily with crisis see a constant stream of people facing evictions, lost jobs, utility cutoffs, major illnesses.
When someone comes for help, the four social workers in the crisis-intervention office try to be upbeat, Karen Kimbrough said.
"Then when they leave, we say, `Arrrgh. What are these people gonna do?'"
As the economic recession has deepened, Kimbrough and the department's other crisis workers have come under increasing pressure.
They must grapple, day by day, with the dilemma that is confronting social workers in agencies all over the Roanoke Valley: The demand for help is skyrocketing at the same time that resources for helping dwindle.
"I feel like this is the worst it's ever been," said crisis worker Diane Wagner, who has been with the department for 18 years. "We don't have the resources to do anything other than put a Band-Aid on it."
On top of government budget cuts, the number of offers for private donations has dropped.
"I didn't get half the calls this year," another crisis worker, Caroline Highfill, said of offers that generally come around the year-end holidays. "Big companies that call in every year - we didn't hear from them. . . . I think people are scared to spend their money. They might be the next one whose hours are cut back."
Across the Roanoke Valley, public recognition of the increasing level of economic despair apparently helped increase donations to some Christmas fund drives, such as the Good Neighbors Fund. However, human services agencies generally say they are worse off financially because their budgets have not kept pace with inflation or the growing demand for help.
Two days before Christmas, Wagner said, "You do anything to try to get the Christmas spirit and it just doesn't get there."
It's not that Wagner, Kimbrough and Highfill don't like their jobs. They like helping people. And they can laugh at how frazzled they get on a bad day, or how it feels to be cursed by a client whose frustrations have boiled over.
But it's getting tougher to laugh.
A year ago, the office - which provides small amounts of food and emergency cash - might get four or five new cases a day. Now it averages 10 to 12 new clients a day, with a high of 22 on a Friday in December.
More and more, the social workers see people who suddenly have been laid off from jobs they had worked for years. And they see a growing number of college-educated people coming to the welfare department for help.
One mother who came for help held a college degree and once ran her own business. The business died and her husband left her. She was paid child support sporadically.
When she turned to the welfare agency for help, she faced eviction from her home and cutoffs by utilities. She needed a little money and some food to tide her over.
"You look at a lot of these cases and say: `There but for the grace of God go I,' " Wagner said.
"It's hitting home more," said Highfill.
Another typical example: a factory worker and waitress with four children. Both had seen their work hours cut. "Fifteen, 20 years ago they probably could have made it," Highfill said.
But not now.
Kimbrough remembers a construction worker with five children who applied for emergency aid.
A few weeks later, Kimbrough ran into him in the hallway at the welfare department. He seemed happier.
"You look good," she said.
"I got a job," he said. But a non-union job was all he could find. He hated to go against his union, he said, but "my family had to eat - I had to support them."
The social workers' struggle with growing demands and dwindling resources in the face of continued public hostility for the poor and programs designed to help them.
"I tell people I work for the city," Wagner said. "I don't tell them what I do. I get tired of trying to defend myself."
After a day of hearing the hard-luck stories of so many families, "sometimes you just have to cry," Wagner said. "You might be at home watching a commercial on television, or reading an article in a magazine. You try not to do it here."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB