ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603110003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Ran on A-1 in New River Valley edition.
STEP BY STEP, Bedford is working out the kinks in a new aid plan that requires clients to go to work.
The past five months have been a lesson in patience for Leighton Langford, director of the Bedford County Department of Social Services.
The state's new welfare plan has turned the department on its head: How do you get a group of people, many of whom haven't worked in years - or ever - to start thinking work instead of welfare?
With fingers crossed, Langford says.
The state has left much of the welfare planning up to the localities. They've had to map their own strategies, find their own way - learn from their own mistakes.
There have been successes. Recipients are easing into a work mode, realizing that welfare is not a forever promise anymore.
But at the same time, there have been frustrations. Langford's department has had to sanction recipients who refuse to comply with the plan's requirements, reprimand recipients whose children are not in school, and has pinned down job opportunities for recipients only to have them fail employer drug tests.
"It's been disappointing to me that some people have not taken this seriously," Langford said. "Some of them get mad. I don't think people realize their personal habits need to change.
"This is a different game. Go with the flow, and you'll be all right."
Last July 1, the state's new welfare plan became law. It cuts off Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits after two years, and requires recipients to adhere to a range of conditions - from denying extra benefits to recipients who get pregnant to ensuring that their children attend school.
The plan has a tough mandatory work component - VIEW (Virginia Initiative for Employment Not Welfare) - that requires recipients to work for their benefits. VIEW is being phased in, region by region. The cities of Bedford and Lynchburg and Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties were phased in on Oct. 1.
Northern Virginia is next, scheduled for April. The Roanoke region and the New River Valley is set to be phased in during the spring of 1999.
A steering committee of representatives from social service agencies, colleges, corporations and economic development entities in the Bedford/Lynchburg area had three months to develop a strategy for implementing the new welfare plan. By Oct. 1, the committee had a plan in place. Recipients who were required to work had to find jobs by Jan. 1.
Today, 120 of the Bedford area's 180 AFDC recipients have enrolled in VIEW. About half of the 120 - 56 - have found paying employment, Langford said. Some have found full-time jobs with a career future. Others are working part-time jobs, enough to satisfy terms of the work requirement.
Recipients are allowed to keep the money they earn without losing their AFDC benefits.
"That helps bridge the gap, helps them toward self-sufficiency," said Dennis Gragg, executive director of the Central Virginia Planning District Commission. "The incentive is there to go to work."
Those who cannot find paying work will be placed in nonpaying community service jobs designed to give them work experience. State agencies such as the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Bedford County school system have agreed to provide those kinds of jobs.
In the private sector, several Bedford-area businesses and organizations have stepped in to help.
The Bedford-based Sam Moore Furniture Industries is training a group of recipients in upholstery. Classes started in January and will continue through April, said Doug Brockman, executive vice president.
Of the 10 people in training, "some seem to have potential and might be hired," Brockman said.
"We just feel we have an obligation to help get people off welfare and provide employment. We need good employees."
The Bedford Community Health Foundation is providing 10 scholarships for recipients who are interested in becoming certified nursing assistants. The scholarships, $280 each, will cover tuition and books.
"We're targeting some of the people on the rolls to try to get them enrolled in those classes," said Roger Henderson, the foundation's executive director. "Hopefully, the end result will be we'll have more certified nursing assistants, which are desperately needed in the local medical community. And we'll simultaneously find some employment and provide a career path for folks previously on welfare."
Clarence Carter, acting commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services, said he has found "a surprisingly intense effort on the part of the private sector to participate in this program."
"What they've made clear to us is that they simply need people who have basic life skills and the work ethic," he said. "If we provide those people, [the employers] will take care of the rest."
They have been candid in letting the department know what kinds of things they won't deal with - red tape and regulation, Carter said.
"They don't choose to be involved in social experimentation," he said.
Some recipients are concerned that education is not a priority of the state's welfare plan. Rather, the priority is moving people off the rolls as quickly as possible, whether a recipient is equipped to work without public assistance long-term or not, said one recipient, who asked that her name not be used.
"I consider education very important," the woman said. "I'm ready to get into some type of career. But the system doesn't seem to care about you going to school. It's not as important as you going out and getting a job."
Education may have taken a back seat because past education programs for welfare recipients have not fully lived up to their intent, Langford said.
The state "spent buckets of money on education, and some people seemed to do nothing but go to school and not go to work," he said. "They didn't want this program to be that way. We'll provide resources, but you've still got to work somewhere."
Leona Puckett, an AFDC recipient who is a full-time student at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, said she went to college to get to a point where she could afford to work without public assistance.
"I don't like being on the system," the 28-year-old Bedford resident said. "I want to do it on my own. Once you get in, it's almost impossible to get out of it without some kind of degree."
Puckett said she will continue pursuing an associate's degree in office technology.
A downside to the work requirement has been its impact on recipients who live in subsidized housing. Puckett said the money she earns doing clerical work at Bedford municipal offices would raise the rent payments on her subsidized apartment.
She is not sure yet how much her rent will go up. But she knows it will. She's tried working before, felt the impact of the higher rent, and wound up quitting.
That possibly is the worst thing about the welfare plan, Langford said.
"They didn't coordinate with housing," he said. "I've had people who've gone to work and their public housing went up. I had a couple people quit working, saying 'I'm making too much money ...'"
The trial and error will continue for at least two more years for the 31 localities that will be the first to test the new welfare waters by the close of the 1995-96 fiscal year. Only after those two years will anyone know how the AFDC-dependent can manage without their monthly checks, Langford said.
"It's almost impossible to predict where this policy is going to fall short," said Rick Verilla, director of the Campbell County Department of Social Services.
"When you make a change as significant as this, oftentimes after the first phase, you have to go in and fine-tune the policy. You have to see it play out. You have to see who you're serving. You have to see who the policy fails to serve.
"That will be the impetus for 'welfare reform, phase two.'"
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Langford. color. Graphic: Charts. 1. Welfareby CNBbills in General Assembly. 2. Workfare.