ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
Welfare recipients and workers in Western Virginia have more than three years to get ready for the state's tough, new mandatory work requirements, according to budget documents released Tuesday by the Allen administration.
The district that includes Roanoke, Franklin, Alleghany, Botetourt, Craig, Floyd, Giles, Montgomery and Pulaski counties and the cities of Roanoke, Clifton Forge, Covington, and Radford will be the last in the state to enter the work program.
Those localities will be phased in during the spring of 1999, according to the breakdown.
The statewide timetable had remained a mystery, even though the welfare-to-work program was launched with fanfare last July. All that was known were the 31 localities that are to enter the program gradually during its first year.
Five localities in the Culpeper region were the first in the program in July. Bedford and Bedford County entered in October, the first localities in Western Virginia to do so.
Under the reform, once a locality is phased in, eligible recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children must work for their benefits. They will be allowed to collect payments for no more than two years out of every five.
Staff in social service agencies around the state are planning for the transition. "One of the advantages of coming in later is that we have a window of opportunity" to assess organizational and staffing needs and program ideas that might work, said Keith Chadwell, director of the eastern regional social service office that oversees Tidewater.
Most of the localities with the largest AFDC caseloads are being brought into the work program in the second half of the four-year phase-in.
The exceptions are in Northern Virginia, where seven localities will enter the program this spring, and Richmond, which will be brought on line in the spring of 1997.
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