Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 14, 1995 TAG: 9506140049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Frances Foxx can't remember the last time she worked.
"1986? 1987?" the 30-year-old Bedford resident asked. "I don't even want to talk about it, it was so far back."
Foxx and her 9- and 11-year-old daughters have lived for nearly a decade on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a primary form of welfare. The idea of shaking a habit that has kept her family intact for so long makes her a little queasy.
But in four months, Foxx will begin easing her way off government dependency. Work will no longer be a fuzzy memory. She will have to work if she wants to continue receiving AFDC.
Virginia's welfare-to-work plan - one of the toughest welfare overhauls in the country - will become law July 1. A two-year limit on AFDC benefits. No extra benefits to recipients who get pregnant after July 1. No benefits to unmarried mothers under 18 who refuse to stay in school and live with a parent or other adult relative. Reduction in benefits if children are not properly immunized.
The plan's most ambitious component - called "Workfare" - will require able-bodied recipients to begin working for AFDC within 90 days of receiving aid.
Workfare will be phased in statewide over a four-year period. Bedford and Bedford County - part of a phase-in area that also includes Lynchburg and Campbell County - will implement the work requirement Oct. 1.
"I have worked," Foxx said. "I have had jobs. But the best way for me to actually make it was welfare. What do I do after two years? "
Less than five minutes' drive from Foxx's apartment, Leighton Lankford, director of the Bedford County Department of Social Services, is wringing his hands over welfare reform. He is supportive of much of the welfare-to-work plan, but "challenged" to pull its work component together - finding jobs to fulfill AFDC clients' work requirement, finding transportation to get those without it to and from work and finding day care for recipients' children.
And he must do it by Oct. 1.
"We are actively trying to locate the job sites, trying to get a transportation system in line," Lankford said. "But child care stares us in the face as being a problem."
The Bedford County Department of Social Services - which handles clients in the county and the city of Bedford - has an average monthly AFDC caseload of 360 clients. Of those, approximately half will be exempt from the work requirement because they are physically or mentally handicapped, caring for a child under 18 months old or living in extremely rural areas.
The other half must work, meaning about 200 children will need day care, Lankford said.
Child-care centers in the Bedford area cannot handle the flood of children, he said. Most of them have waiting lists.
Lankford is searching for creative solutions - ideally, a church or organization to donate space for child care, or possibly mass day care at a public housing development. One proposal is to have welfare recipients who have an interest in day care - or who can't find work elsewhere - fulfill their work requirement by caring for the children of other recipients who are working.
But the latter has raised concerns, primarily among recipients.
"Would you want just anyone watching your kids?" Foxx asked.
Lankford understands the concern.
"Most women tell me they don't mind working, but they want to know 'Who takes care of my children?,'" he said. "Most of the recipients don't want to leave their children with anybody. I can identify with that.
"Finding day care for everybody so they can do their public work is going to be the real problem. That is the largest hurdle."
If child care is Lankford's biggest hurdle, jobs rank a close second.
Ted Simpkins, executive director of the Central Piedmont Private Industry Council, said it's not so much creating jobs as it is preparing people for existing opportunities.
"There are jobs out there," he said. "It's just that in many instances, people don't have skills. I don't think we would have success if we went out and asked people to create jobs because it was the social or civic thing to do."
The council is one of several players working to pull together welfare reform for the Bedford/Lynchburg area. The council generally works with job placement - assessing clients' interests and aptitudes and arranging training, ultimately getting them jobs and ensuring that they keep those jobs.
The welfare-to-work plan will provide education and skills training, if needed, for a recipient to meet the work requirement. A misconception is that recipients will be thrown out on the street to hunt for a job, Simpkins said.
"We will work real hard, pre-employment, on skills assessment and motivation," Simpkins said. "And we won't just force the client into training, but try to find out what they can best do."
Leona Puckett is a year and a half away from earning an associate degree in office systems technology from Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg. A two-year welfare recipient, Puckett, of Bedford, fears that the plan's work requirement could hamper her education.
"If I have to be forced into the work force, it means I can't go full-time to school," said Puckett, 27. "It's either/or - stuck in a minimum wage job for the remainder of my life or being able to finish my education and go from there."
Foxx wonders about people like herself, a single mother who dropped out of high school two years before graduating and who has difficulty reading. She had trouble reading a letter from the Virginia Department of Social Services that explained welfare reform provisions.
"I had to get on the phone and ask Mama what the words were," Foxx said. "I know that's not what I need to be doing. I need to try to figure out the words myself."
Foxx has shied away from classes offered through the Social Services Department, trying instead to earn a general equivalency diploma on her own.
"I don't want to have a whole lot of them in there that can read and knowing my problem and low-rating me," she said. "I'm already being low-rated enough by family members who work because I'm the only one in the family that's sitting on AFDC.
"The governor ain't looking at that. They need to find out what people's real problems are before they can talk about reform."
Lankford has held meetings with recipients to explain the welfare-to-work plan. Reaction, he said, has been split 50-50.
"Some look at it as opportunity," he said. "The other group feels like it's infringement. Either you don't see much problem and [are] looking at it as incentive, or you see the whole thing as bad.
"It's a very ambitious undertaking. It cannot happen overnight. We're going to have to give it time to get it to work."
by CNB