THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 22, 1995 TAG: 9505220029
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
It's a squiggly line of tired, belt-high, pre-kindergarten students this late afternoon at Young Park Elementary School, but it's still a line. A would-be Laurence Olivier brings up the rear.
The slight boy dramatically presses the back of a hand to his forehead and wails at the ceiling.
``I hate my sister!'' he yells.
Letricia Cunningham, a school volunteer, moves in close to the child. She leans over until her head almost touches his as they walk. Her voice is friendly, but firm.
``That's not nice to say,'' she tells the boy. She drops back out of his earshot and laughs, ``He's my favorite.''
This school - its office, its computer class, its halls - is where you'll find Cunningham most weekday afternoons. She types letters to parents, helps students print out their computer work, keeps order and dispenses hugs.
The little boy in the line probably doesn't know that Cunningham isn't a paid employee. She works 20 hours a week for free at the school in the Young Terrace public housing project as part of a city job-readiness program that combines training and work experience for welfare recipients. The goal is to get her into a paying job and off public assistance.
So far, though, the program hasn't worked for her. And Cunningham's story may be a cautionary tale for Gov. George F. Allen's administration, which is enacting a plan that will cut off welfare benefits to force recipients to get jobs.
At 42, Cunningham has been on and off welfare ``like a yo-yo'' for some 21 years. Where the plan hits a snag is finding a job.
Cunningham loves working at the school: It's near her home. The two youngest of her five children go there, so she can be close to them. She has discovered that she likes working with children. The principal likes her. She gets respect and praise all around.
But there's no open position that pays, there or anywhere else in the school system, for a teacher's aide or secretary.
``There's nothing I won't do, nothing I can't do'' at the school, says Cunningham. ``It's frustrating to me that they know I can handle the job. But on payday they're all getting paid, but I'm not.''
Cunningham feels she has the necessary skills by now: High school. Business school. Two years of college toward an accounting degree. A number of jobs over the years.
Young Park Elementary Principal Ruby R. Greer says she wishes she could hire her. ``The children respect her as a mother and also as a worker in the school,'' Greer says. ``She takes charge. . . . She's strict, and she loves the children.''
But it's been more than seven years since Cunningham last worked regularly, quitting a cook's job when she was pregnant with her youngest son. And her latest job search in February struck zero - 20 applications, 20 no-thank-yous.
`` `Not hiring' or `Someone else has been hired' or they'll get back to me, but didn't,'' Cunningham says wearily. ``The typical things you hear.''
All this puts Cunningham and thousands like her in the unwanted middle of the welfare-reform revolution.
The state sent them notices last month that their Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments - the main component of welfare - would soon be limited to two years, with a third year of Medicaid and child-care benefits available. Then they'll be on their own for at least two years, when they can reapply for public assistance.
Dubbed the Virginia Independence Program, it's scheduled to begin July 1 in some areas of the state, if it receives expected federal approval. It won't start in Hampton Roads for at least another year beyond that.
The idea behind the program is to use the two years to prepare welfare recipients for work, then cut them loose. The theory is that welfare recipients will get jobs if forced to.
But Cunningham says she's been preparing far longer than that already - she has taken classes in self-esteem, job-interview skills, even how to dress for work. When she still can't land a job, she gets sent back into another training program or volunteer work.
She has a welfare-reform suggestion of her own: Take some of the money being spent on training money and apply it toward job-search or job-creation programs, such as grants for companies hiring welfare recipients.
``I feel like I've outgrown the system, but they keep wanting to send me back to Square A,'' Cunningham says. ``At this point, I feel I am job-ready. Why should they send me back?''
She says she'll take just about any job, but she's hoping to find something that will lead to a career as a computer programmer or office manager, a job that will sustain her and her family until retirement.
There are practical considerations, too. The job must pay enough or provide benefits, particularly medical insurance, that she would lose by leaving the welfare system. One of her sons takes several medications for attention-deficit and other disorders. She also has to worry about after-school child care and, since she has no car, transportation.
But give her a decent job, she says, and she'll find a way to get there.
``I'm all for welfare reform, 'cause Lord knows I want my own paycheck,'' she says, pounding the arm of her chair in her neat, comfortably furnished but crowded apartment.
But her family also requires a job with sufficient pay and enough benefits to make it self-sufficient, which eliminates many part-time, fast-food-type jobs.
``I could sling a burger, if I have to do that. I could (be a) file clerk. What's the problem? I can't find a job! It's depressing.
``I'm trying. You can't give up. But sometimes you just get so tired.''
She's not alone, of course. In Norfolk, about 7,000 families receive AFDC, and about 3,000 individual welfare recipients like Cunningham are required to be in the Employment Services Program-Jobs Opportunity Basic Skills plan, which provides education, training and work experience.
But the program can handle only 1,300 of those 3,000 at any one time, says Patricia C. Bryant, a benefits program manager. And there's no guarantee of the perfect - or even a good - job.
``We believe that all work is valid . . . because sometimes a part-time job leads to a full-time job,'' Bryant says. ``Again, we keep stressing that you don't give up. You don't sit here and take the check.''
One of the few studies of what happens to welfare recipients when public assistance is cut off was completed in February in Michigan, which ended its General Assistance program in 1991. The study found that, contrary to expectations, only 38 percent found any formal employment, and only 20 percent had jobs after two years. Two-thirds continued receiving food stamps.
It wasn't supposed to be that way for Cunningham. She grew up in public housing in Norfolk, but married and moved to New Jersey. Two children later, she was divorced and back in Hampton Roads and on public assistance. ``I had no other choice and no other recourse,'' she says. ``I had to support my family.''
Her oldest son is 21 and in the Navy, and her 19-year-old son is going into the Army in July. She says she receives no child support for the three children at home, ages 11, 9 and 7, who have a different father.
Having children caused her to stop attending Norfolk State University in the early 1980s before completing her degree, and now, she says, she can't return because she defaulted on a student loan and can't pay it off. She has worked in restaurants and at a uniform company that received tax credits for hiring welfare recipients.
Next month, after school lets out for the summer, Cunningham will again start knocking on doors, looking for some kind of office work to use her typing and filing and computer skills. She's working on a resume to use this time, hoping it will better reflect to potential employers what she has to offer them.
The difference now is she has a deadline.
``We hear: `Two years! Two years!' '' she says. ``Yes, it's got a lot of people scared.
``Yes, it's a boost. I've seen people trying to do something now. . . . But they're getting trapped in programs that give false hope.''
But for a few more weeks, she'll be at Young Park Elementary School every afternoon.
``I love it,'' she says, ``but that doesn't put money into my pocket.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff
Letricia Cunningham
KEYWORDS: PROFILE WELFARE WORK by CNB