ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
WELFARE ROLLS are shrinking in Virginia. A reduction of 14 percent in one year's time isn't trivial. The state's welfare-reform law, though not yet fully implemented statewide, likely has been a catalyst for part of that result.
But don't start the celebrations quite yet.
To be sure, strict new conditions for welfare recipients probably have prevented some from applying for benefits to which, before reform was enacted, few strings were attached. If those people made a greater effort to find work and make it on their own, that's a victory for the public policy.
It's a victory, too, that an estimated 1,600 welfare recipients now have jobs. There's broad consensus that the able-bodied should work in exchange for public benefits, and many of these recipients doubtless are on their way to full independence.
Let's keep in mind, though, that a majority of welfare recipients have gotten off it on their own before, without a work requirement. Moreover, Virginia's economy is humming along nicely. The test of reform will come when recession hits and jobs aren't so readily available.
Let's keep in mind, too, that the work requirement - implemented in 31 of Virginia's 135 localities - is being phased in first in areas where it has the best chances of producing positive results. It has yet to be tested in central cities where hard-core welfare caseloads are more prevalent.
These caseloads will pose the greatest challenges. They're more likely to include larger numbers of recipients who - while nominally able-bodied - have partial disabilities, drug-abuse or alcohol problems, are functionally illiterate, have been dependent and out of the job market for more than a generation, or are in other ways not readily employable.
What's to happen to them, when the work requirement kicks in statewide, if they can't find or keep jobs, however diligent the efforts by social workers to help them? What's to happen to them - and, more important, to their children - when welfare benefits are sharply curtailed under the law's two-year limit?
Community-service jobs may be the only answer. In some extreme cases, it may even be necessary to take children from families and place them in foster homes. Neither of these is what welfare-reform proponents hoped for.
Meanwhile, both state and national welfare reform efforts have glaringly underestimated the investment necessary to shore up child-care infrastructure to assure that safe, reliable and high-quality early-childhood education is available for kids of welfare recipients required to work.
This is not to take away from the good news of Virginia's declining welfare rolls. As reform progresses and more get off the dole and into jobs, many of the former welfare recipients will be able to impart to their children a newfound pride in work and self-sufficiency, breaking thereby the yoke of intergenerational dependency. Every instance is worth celebrating.
This is simply to warn there is pain yet to come, and challenges yet to take on, before we can call welfare reform a success.
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