Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507310112
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
She knew him in school, and for a while they got together - long enough, at least, to have a baby. But these days, Nydia Gelabert keeps her distance from the father of her 16-month-old son. Often, she doesn't even know where to find him.
``At this point, I really don't want nothing to do with him,'' she said. ``I'm not really pursuing the issue of getting his [child] support, because I can do it on my own.''
Under Virginia's new welfare program, though, she no longer has a choice. To keep her monthly $327 check in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the 19-year-old Fairfax County mother will be asked to provide not only the father's name and address but also the schools he attended, the bank he uses, the jobs he's had, the date he was born, his Social Security number and even his mother's maiden name.
The interrogation is part of a crackdown on absentee fathers who leave their children to grow up in poverty. To get to them, the state this month began threatening to cut off benefits to mothers who don't cooperate with authorities in tracking down their former husbands or boyfriends.
For those unsure about who fathered their children, the state will require a list of possible suspects and then search them out, take blood samples and conduct DNA tests to determine the real dads.
The new regulations, part of a welfare overhaul that Gov. George Allen launched July 1 to put recipients to work and limit their benefits, highlight a troubling phenomenon in the search for ways to break the cycle of dependency: Out of about 74,000 families receiving AFDC in Virginia last year, 33,000 families included at least one child for whom no father had been legally determined.
``It's certainly helping us identify the fathers and get after them,'' Allen said. ``What I'm trying to do as governor is help out the mothers and the children and get after the responsible fathers. That's what our policy is all about.''
How that works in application won't be clear until early next year as social workers begin to test their discretion in deciding whether women are truly cooperating. Those recipients who try to provide all the information requested but fail shouldn't lose their benefits.
Still, some in the trenches see the new effort as misguided and potentially punitive.
``I don't think it's based in reality,'' said Jenny Kaufmann, a staff attorney for Legal Services of Northern Virginia who often represents welfare recipients. ``I get confused over my own mother-in-law's maiden name. ... It's really burdensome, and it could deny benefits for not knowing things the rest of us might not even know.''
The lack of paternal support is a significant factor in pushing mothers onto welfare throughout the country, welfare specialists said. According to 1992 federal statistics, 40 percent of families receiving AFDC in Virginia went onto the rolls without paternity established. In Maryland, that figure was 24 percent of AFDC families, and in the District, 64 percent.
The challenge of how to involve fathers and hold them accountable has perplexed policy-makers for years. The federal government just began requiring hospitals to try to determine a father's identity at the time of birth, a rule Virginia already had adopted, because even in out-of-wedlock cases fathers often show up in the delivery room. Other states are trying to streamline the process of proving paternity, making it an administrative procedure rather than one involving long court hearings.
Few states, however, have gone as far as Virginia's plan in denying all benefits to recalcitrant mothers.
Under federal rules, states long have sanctioned welfare recipients who stonewall, but the penalty was just a portion of their AFDC payment and rarely was applied. In Virginia, for instance, 670 women have forfeited the adult share of their benefits, about $60 out of an average family's monthly grant of $291.
The new Virginia rules, though, will take away the rest of the grant after six months if the woman still is not cooperating by providing a laundry list of information about the father, showing up for court hearings and giving blood. The woman must provide evidence if she wants an exemption because of rape or fear of physical or emotional harm.
``The whole goal is to make it her problem in addition to government's problem,'' said Michael R. Henry, director of the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement. ``Until three weeks ago, it was entirely government's problem. She could come in and say, `I don't know.' She didn't have a strong incentive to do a little detective work herself and get us that information that we need. Ask yourself - who's more able to find out who he was?''
The effort dovetails with other Virginia initiatives to force absent parents to pay child support once they are identified, such as taking away their driver's licenses or occupational permits. The goal is not only to improve the lives of their children but also to partly relieve taxpayers of the financial burden of welfare.
But critics say many women have precious little information on the fathers, especially those with children born more than a decade ago. Moreover, they note, even with all the information in the world, the state's overloaded caseworkers can only establish so many paternity cases at a time.
Paula Roberts, senior attorney for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington-based public interest law firm, said the new program could help by shaking up the system, which typically takes more than a year to establish paternity even when a father's location is known. However, she added, Virginia is pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
``There's a kind of unspoken assumption in here that the mother is not cooperating,'' she said, ``where primarily the problem is that the system is just too slow.''
That kind of thinking got Allen into a political flap last week when he suggested that his new program was improving the memories of many mothers. During a speech to a country-club audience, he mocked critics of the new rules: ``The other side of the aisle said, `Oh gosh, how's she ever going to figure that out? That's too tough. Heck, how are we supposed to know?'''
His tone drew a sharp rebuke from one of the state's leading black newspapers, which thought he was playing on racial stereotypes. ``Allen Cracks Sick Welfare Joke,'' blared the front-page headline in the Richmond Free Press.
Why some women aren't more helpful in tracking down fathers remains the subject of much debate.
A study by Rutgers University's Center for Urban Policy Research last year shed some light on the issue. Interviews with welfare recipients in four cities revealed that many deliberately stymied authorities because they had clandestine arrangements with the fathers.
Of the subjects, 57 percent admitted lying about the identity of the father or withholding crucial information. Some did so because they received under-the-table cash from the father, while others feared alienating him or preferred to keep him involved with the child even if he was providing no money. Under welfare rules, the state keeps all but $50 a month paid in child support, so in many cases mothers can get more help through back-channel payments than by complying with the system.
Nydia Gelabert, though, said she simply wants no connections, formal or otherwise, with her former lover. Although she recently learned the whereabouts of her son's father and plans to report that, Gelabert said she doesn't think the new rules are fair to women who genuinely do not know.
``They don't look at this whether it's good for your children,'' she said. ``They look at everybody like you're abusing it. There are some people out here who do abuse it, and they make it bad for the rest of us. I'm on [welfare] because I need help, and I want to get off.''
by CNB