Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503060013
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Parvin Hosseini is one of the targeted - one of the single mothers whose dependency on welfare has been hit from all political sides.
Yet she applauded, with some reservation, the welfare reform plan that passed the General Assembly on Feb. 25. The plan will cut off her Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits after two years and force her to get a job.
``This will push some people into doing something about their situation," said Hosseini, who has been on welfare for five years. ``A big percentage would go off welfare, and that would be good. Even though it might be rough on us, eventually it would be a solution."
The welfare-to-work plan, which must be approved by the federal government, will begin requiring work in exchange for AFDC benefits in October. The program will be phased in statewide over four years, with about 10,000 individuals expected to be enrolled in the first year.
Most benefits for people in the work plan will be cut off after two years and cannot be reinstated for two to three years, depending on the specific case.
Hosseini, despite having an associate's degree in computer information systems, couldn't find a job. But a week ago, she started working at the Roanoke County Police Department in a 30-hour-a-week volunteer job designed to give her the work experience she needs to move into a good paid position.
Hosseini appears to be doing precisely what legislators who crafted reform measures intended: easing into a job or job training before benefits are lopped off.
The plan includes a provision for recipients to start working after 90 days on the AFDC rolls. For six months, eight hours of a 32-hour workweek could be devoted to training.
Hosseini says the plan looks promising for people like her, who have at least a high school diploma or job skills. But she worries about those who have fewer qualifications. It took her nearly one year after earning her associate's degree to find the volunteer job, she said.
``For those people who don't have skills, two years is not long enough to get a skill,'' Hosseini said. ``It's not enough time to make advancement in any job.
``And what about people with no high school diploma? What are they going to do? Work in fast food? In a hospital mopping floors? That's not a job where you can have any advancement.''
Ted Edlich, executive director of Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty, agrees that the plan's pluses are in its potential for helping people gain work experience. With that comes dignity and the will to get out from under dependency, he says.
But there, his words of support stop.
``The issue is, we are trying to break the cycle of poverty,'' Edlich said. ``But there's a danger that if people are not equipped with sound educational skills that they need in the workplace, that we will further trap them into, this time, working poverty.''
Edlich is concerned primarily with what happens to AFDC recipients after the transitional year, after the two-year benefit cutoff.
The plan allows benefits to continue for a third year when an individual is involved in a training or educational program that will be completed in that year. The plan also guarantees that child care and other support services will be available during the third transitional year if needed for work.
But ``in years four and five, they're going to be out there, suddenly with no benefits, having to just scrape by as in past years,'' Edlich said. ``Does that mean more kids left alone without supervision? What are going to be the consequences?
``I think it's unfortunate that we did not put in place the real building blocks for encouraging people to work and make it in the free-enterprise economy - access to health care, access to day care, and assurances that jobs are available.''
Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, said ensuring that those kinds of benefits remained intact was at the center of to-the-wire legislative negotiations on reform measures.
``The struggles toward the end were to guarantee the education benefits, the medical benefits and transportation and day-care benefits,'' Cranwell said, ``because without those things, it would be difficult for people to find meaningful employment.''
Had Gov. George Allen not given in on some of those benefits, ``I don't think we'd have had a bill," Cranwell said. ``I think the governor was aware that he had to compromise in order to get something. He had seen the fact that the legislature had some backbone and was not going along with everything as wholesale action.''
Still, a coalition of 16 organizations - including the Virginia AFL-CIO, the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP and the Virginia National Organization for Women - have denounced the welfare reform bill as ``harsh, reckless and anti-family.''
``It's extremely punitive,'' said David Rubinstein, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, one of the organizations that criticized the plan. ``It's ... taking a slash-and-burn approach to public assistance.''
Rubinstein said the hardship provision, for example, part of welfare reform legislation passed by the 1994 General Assembly, was ``severely watered down.''
There had been disagreement in the legislature this year over hardship exemptions to the two-year cutoff. The plan now reads that the state Board of Social Services ``shall address'' such factors as inability to find a job despite trying.
Interpretations of those two words have differed. Key Democrats interpreted them to mean people who fail to get a job despite an earnest effort will not have their benefits eliminated. Kay Coles James, state secretary of health and human resources, has said the wording means the board ``will address it.''
Says Rubinstein: ``There are no absolute exceptions for people who are trying. I realize what the secretary is saying. It's why this administration would not agree to more protective language.
``The legislation in general gives this administration a great deal of discretion - what they will provide, what is a hardship, how someone is determined to have a hardship.''
Corinne Gott, director of the Roanoke Department of Social Services, said she was pleased that the plan recognized that some allowances should be made for hardship cases.
``It kind of reconfirmed my faith in the system when the legislature did come forth with some sense of protection pieces in the legislation, such as not being so arbitrary in cutoffs and arbitrarily dropping services,'' Gott said. That ``was the part I had so much trouble with.''
Yet what troubles Gott about the plan is its potential impact on children.
``Children are going to be hurt the most,'' she said. ``They are the ones targeted. The ones left without any help at all are the children of these parents if they cannot find employment or cannot find day-care resources.''
AFDC accounts for about 8 percent of Virginia's total welfare bill. Medicaid, by comparison, accounts for about three-fourths of the sum.
``Why not do away with food stamps or Medicaid paying for nursing homes for the elderly?'' Gott asked. ``Why not attack the elderly? Why attack a program for families and children?
``Because they are the easiest to hate.''
Said Gott, ``You can't hate the elderly. You can't get any one single classification of people for food stamps. But you can see the AFDC program. Here are these women, having these babies without any support system. That you can hate. Illegitimacy, dependency - everybody hates dependency. It's something that doesn't wash well with the American independent spirit.''
Paula Kirtley, an AFDC recipient with two children, said she feels very much a target of legislators ``whose main goal is to satisfy the voters, not lift us into a better place.''
``I don't think [welfare reform] is to get women to a better place,'' she said. ``It's to keep us in our place.''
Cranwell said he has heard the concerns and the argument that the plan does not provide enough protection for people moving from welfare to work.
``I understand people have concerns. We all have concerns,'' Cranwell said. ``But the purpose is not to be mean but to say to people that they have to have some personal responsibility in life.
``Tough is one thing. Mean is another. If this proves to be mean, we'll come back and fix it.''
by CNB