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

DATE: FRIDAY, June 30, 1995                   TAG: 9506300060
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG                                  LENGTH: Medium

PREPARING WELFARE RECIPIENTS FOR WORK IS GROUP'S TASK

Welfare reform can be like a water balloon - step on one side, and its contents explode out of the other.

Forcing people to work for their benefits and cutting those benefits off after two years may solve one problem but has the potential to create new ones.

A group met here Thursday to map a strategy to keep that from happening. The participants represented social service agencies, colleges, corporations and economic development entities from the region that is second in line to implement the job component of Virginia's sweeping welfare reform plan.

The six-locality region includes the cities of Bedford and Lynchburg and the counties of Bedford, Campbell, Appomattox and Amherst. On Oct. 1, it is scheduled to phase in the component of the plan that requires recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children to begin working 90 days after their locality enters the program.

As the group haggled over what kinds of jobs existed, whether there were enough of them and how to help recipients who need training, their greatest concern was how to develop a plan that keeps recipients from falling through the cracks.

Rick Verilla, director of the Campbell County Department of Social Services, said that in most localities, about one-third of AFDC recipients are off the system in two years anyway. Another third are skilled or have the ability to become skilled workers, he said.

"It's the people at the lower end of the population - the bottom third - that I'm concerned about: the generation of welfare people identified as underachievers," Verilla said.

"What can we give these people to reach the level where they can handle a job? If they can't find a job or become trained for one, what happens when after two years they are out on the street? We need a comprehensive program that not only works on education and skills training, but works on esteem issues."

The phase-in region has an average monthly caseload of 2,285. A little more than half of those recipients will be exempt from the work requirement because they are physically or mentally handicapped, caring for a child younger than 18 months old or living in an extremely rural area.

About 1,000 will be required to work.

But Jeff Taylor said that despite the best intentions, there will be people who simply can't fulfill the reform plan's work requirement.

"This can't be the end-all, do-all, know-all," said Taylor, program manager for Region 2000, a central Virginia economic development organization. "There will always be people who are not going to work. That's part of the fear. What's going to happen? What's going to come out of all this?"

Members of the group - brought to the table by the Central Piedmont Private Industry Council - divided themselves into four committees. One will work on organization and structure; another on services, such as training and education; a third on support services, such as dependent care and transportation; and a fourth on gathering information, such as the type of people who must work and the skills required.

The committees will begin meeting next week. The full group will meet again Aug. 2.

"We've got to get some sense of what we can do as a group to help prepare people to join the work force," said Ted Simpkins, executive director of the Central Piedmont Industry Council. The council is one of several organizations working to pull together welfare reform for the Bedford/Lynchburg area.