ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703070011
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Employment
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON
For "welfare reform" to succeed in Western Virginia, at least 500 people who will have to go to work must first learn to read.
The basis for my estimate is a new report from a Washington, D.C., think tank and December 1996 statistics on local welfare case loads.
The think tank, the Employment Policies Institute, recently asserted that "illiteracy is the biggest hurdle between welfare and work."
In other words, illiteracy threatens the national goal that all welfare recipients start work and support themselves. Of all the hurdles expected to make it hard for welfare recipients to support themselves with jobs - inadequate job skills, a lack of child care, no transportation, legal or drug problems, a poor work ethic - illiteracy is likeliest to doom the reform effort, the think tank said.
It is a greater threat to welfare reform's success than a lack of jobs, according to the business-supported think tank, which funds research by independent economists at major universities.
"That's the biggest hurdle, yeah," agreed Corinne Gott, superintendent of Roanoke's Department of Social Services.
The think tank said 38 percent of welfare recipients nationally are functionally illiterate. Given another estimate that 1,442 welfare recipients in the Roanoke and New River valleys will need jobs or approved volunteer work, the estimated size of the non-reading group is 548 people.
The think tank said this has profound implications for reforming welfare, a system whose clients primarily are women raising children with absent fathers.
In the job boom after World War II, "a private could return from military service and pick up a shovel or join an assembly line" with little or no reading skills and support a middle-class lifestyle, the think tank's report said.
Today, all but the least-paying jobs call for a person to be able to read, write, do math and analyze and react to situations. This is not to say a person must read to work. Literacy Volunteers of America-Roanoke Valley, which arranges for volunteers to teach people to read, said some of the program's students have worked in the textile industry and nursing homes.
But there is evidence that the better a person reads, the more money he or she makes. In one study, excellent readers reported earning a median hourly pay of $15.37 to $17.03. The poorest readers had a median pay of $5.75 to $6.10, the think tank said.
The concern is that some on welfare might lack what it takes even to fill out a job application and complete a bank slip to deposit their paycheck, the think tank said. And yet many of them soon will be expected to have jobs, either paid or volunteer.
In Roanoke, welfare recipients who were once illiterate have learned to read and become productive employees, but it took three to four years of training before they could begin work in some cases, Gott said. New welfare guidelines, the result of a change in Virginia law, won't allow a recipient that much time, however, she said.
All welfare recipients in this area, except those with special needs, must begin working at least 30 hours a week or doing a volunteer activity for up to 32 hours weekly between Jan. 1, 1998, and July 1, 1998, to continue to receive the welfare package of benefits, which includes money, health care and child care assistance. The program, formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was renamed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Exempt from the rule will be those who care for a child 18 months old or younger, care for a disabled person at home, are disabled themselves or aged, or are a teen-ager without a high school diploma.
As an incentive to work, welfare beneficiaries will be able to keep both their paychecks from a job and from the welfare system, if their combined income still falls below the poverty line.
After two years of working or volunteering, the recipient will receive his or her last monthly check but will continue to receive health and child care assistance and special transportation funding for working welfare recipients, for up to a year. After that, these recipients will be on their own. It would be possible to return to welfare after three years, but the program will limit everyone to a combined five years of benefits.
Although reading instruction, remedial education and job training are available to welfare recipients through the social-services safety net, no additional training programs are planned to prepare them for work, except for a short "job-readiness" seminar that localities will put together. Reading isn't expected to be part of job-readiness training.
Some bureaucrats hope businesses train the welfare recipients they hire. But the Employment Policy Institute's John Doyle said it's not feasible for industry job-training programs to teach reading or other basics such as math in addition to job-specific skills. He questions whether the welfare-to-work concept, as designed, is workable.
Betty McCrary, who directs Roanoke County's social services office, said it can work, if welfare recipients prepare themselves in time and members of the community give them a hand.
There are two ways people can help:
Literacy Volunteers of America-Roanoke Valley, which can be reached at (540) 345-5081, needs volunteers to teach a waiting list of 20 would-be readers. The group's New River Valley organization can be reached at (540) 382-7262.
Roanoke County wants to hear from people who would be interested in coaching a welfare recipient in his or her transition to work. Joyce Earl, at (540) 387-6267, is the contact. Assignments will go out later this year.
McCrary said welfare recipients who think illiteracy might prevent them from getting a job ought to be learning to read now, before they must get a job.
"All of our clients know this is coming, and they have from now until October [when phase-in starts] to get ready for this," she said. "This is a personal responsibility effort."
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