                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996                TAG: 9601060002
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: GLENN SCOTT
                                             LENGTH: Long  :  187 lines

GLIMMER OF HOPE FOUND IN CULPEPER

Just about everyone agrees that ``welfare as we know it'' must be reformed, and reforms are being tested. ``Welfare as we know it'' encourages a minority of recipients to depend upon welfare checks from generation to generation and discourages them from seeking gainful employment. ``Welfare as we know it'' also discourages formation of two-parent families.

For some time, Washington has been granting states the right to experiment with ways to shift welfare families from the dole to payrolls. President Clinton authorized Virginia to experiment. Gov. George F. Allen and the General Assembly agreed last year to phase in reforms designed to move a substantial percentage of adults receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children (``welfare'') into jobs.

Governor Allen boasts that Virginia's reforms are the ``toughest'' of the states'. But effectiveness, not toughness, should be the test of any public policy. Are significant numbers of welfare recipients shifting into jobs that make them self-sufficient? Are most of their jobs in the private sector, which truly ends dependence upon the taxpayers?

The first six months' experience with the Virginia welfare plan in and around Culpeper, a semi-rural region in the Valley of Virginia, is gratifying but hardly conclusive. Within the first six months following reform, reports The Washington Post, two-thirds of Culpeper-area welfare recipients required to look for work found jobs; three-dozen who did not find work were dropped from the welfare rolls.

We're not talking big numbers here. The five-county Culpeper region contained 821 recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children as December began; 242 had signed agreements requiring them to find private or public jobs within 90 days to continue receiving welfare benefits; 41 others were waiting to sign up; 144 of the 242 had found full-time or part-time jobs, with 6 in community-service jobs.

These positive early returns probably don't tell us much about how welfare reform in Virginia will work on a large scale. True, Virginia's welfare caseload shrank over the past year, from about 72,000 to a little over 65,000. But the national caseload, about 5 million, also shrank. The improved economy explains the shrinkage within Virginia and the nation more than welfare-rule changes.

Virginia's reforms include cutting off benefits after two years to force recipients able to work to focus on getting jobs. Recipients who fail to get private-sector jobs become eligible for community service paid for by taxpayers.

The roughly 65,000 Virginians who get AFDC checks take care of 120,000 children (among a total state population exceeding 6 million). More than 60 percent of Virginians getting AFDC checks are unaffected by the state's work requirement because their children are too young or they themselves are disabled or elderly.

That leaves about 40 percent of heads of welfare households as potential candidates for jobs. But many - perhaps most - of these will require public assistance to become job ready, to acquire basic education or vocational skills, to get to and from schools, training centers or workplaces, or for child care. Within limits, Virginia is providing such assistance. A further inducement to work: Those who land jobs do not immediately lose their benefits.

To help welfare recipients become self-supporting, social workers must jettison entrenched attitudes and roles. With new welfare rules, social-service agencies are pushed to also provide employment services. Without cooperation from local employers and public funds for community-service jobs, dramatic reduction of the welfare population and welfare costs is unlikely. And another downturn of the economy would cause welfare rolls, now shortening, to again lengthen.

Most adult Americans would agree that working is superior to not working. Being useful, assuming responsibility for oneself and others, making one's way - these are essential attributes of maturity and essential prerequisites to enhancing self-esteem.

Existing and projected welfare reforms along with other public policies aimed at discouraging pregnancies and births among women ill-prepared - mentally, emotionally and economically - for the challenges of parenthood are wanted by a majority of the public. Disproportionately large numbers of pregnant teens, youths without essential job skills, street criminals and prison inmates come from poor, single-parent familes where the sole reliable source of income is a welfare check. The societal - the individual - price in blood, tears and treasure has been too high for too long.

But it's far from certain that welfare reforms as we will come to know them will bring that price down or even keep the public costs imposed by poverty from soaring again. For the hard reality is that getting women off welfare and into jobs - private-sector jobs, much less public ones - costs more than most states, Virginia included, are disposed to ask taxpayers to bear. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that putting a welfare mother to work costs $6,000 in addition to the cost of benefits, program supervisors and child care.

Congress is proposing less money for welfare, which it intends to distribute to states as block grants to be used more or less as the states see fit. Congress does not propose more money for job training, day care or community-service jobs to end welfare as we know it. States likely will sit on their hands rather than pony up the money needed to put the mass of able-bodied welfare recipients to work.

However promising, what's happening in Culpeper involves but a fraction of Virginia's welfare caseload. The real test will come in the urban centers of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News, Richmond. . . . We can hope for the best, but we shouldn't count on it.Just about everyone agrees that ``welfare as we know it'' must be reformed, and reforms are being tested. ``Welfare as we know it'' encourages a minority of recipients to depend upon welfare checks from generation to generation and discourages them from seeking gainful employment. ``Welfare as we know it'' also discourages formation of two-parent families.

We're not talking big numbers here. The five-county Culpeper region contained 821 recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children as December began; 242 had signed agreements requiring them to find private or public jobs within 90 days to continue getting welfare benefits; 41 others were waiting to sign up; 144 of the 242 already signed up had found full-time or part-time jobs, with 6 in community-service jobs.

These positive early returns probably don't tell us much about how welfare reform in Virginia will work on a large scale. True, Virginia's welfare caseload shrank over the past year, from about 72,000 to a little over 65,000. But the national welfare caseload, about 5 million, also shrank. The improved economy explains the shrinkage within Virginia and the nation more than welfare-rule changes.

To help welfare recipients become self-supporting, social workers are changing their attitudes and roles. With new welfare rules, social-service agencies are pushed to also provide employment services. Without cooperation from local employers and public funds for community-service jobs, dramatic reduction of the welfare population and welfare costs is unlikely. And another downturn of the economy would cause welfare rolls, now shortening, to again lengthen.

Existing and projected welfare reforms along with other public policies aimed at discouraging pregnancies and births among women ill-prepared - mentally, emotionally and economically - for the challenges of parenthood are wanted by a majority of the public. Disproportionately large numbers of pregnant teens, youths without job skills, street criminals and prison inmates come from poor, single-parent familes where the sole reliable source of income is a welfare check. The societal - the individual - price in blood, tears and treasure has been too high for too long.

But it's far from certain that welfare reform as we will come to know it will bring that price down or even keep the public costs imposed by poverty from soaring again. For the hard reality is that getting women off welfare and into jobs - private-sector jobs, much less public ones - costs more than most states, Virginia included, are disposed to ask taxpayers to bear. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that putting a welfare mother to work costs $6,000 in addition to the cost of benefits, program supervisors and child care.

Congress is proposing less money for welfare, which it intends to distribute to states in block grants to be used somewhat as the states see fit. Congress does not propose more money for job training, day care or community-service jobs to end welfare as we know it. States likely will sit on their hands rather than pony up the money needed to put the mass of able-bodied welfare recipients to work.