THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602190053
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: WELFARE REFORM
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CULPEPER LENGTH: Long : 235 lines
On this early February day, Deborah Taliaferro is getting an unwelcome, 18-month head start testing her survival skills without welfare.
For two months she has received neither her $221 in food stamps nor her $207 check from Aid to Families With Dependent Children. Just today, her electricity has been turned off.
All around is evidence of the enormity of her problems: in the near-empty cupboards; in the restlessness of 8-year-old Mario, who should be at school, but has overslept and missed the bus; in the knot of men who gather at the edge of her yard - ``Nothing but alcoholics and junkies in this neighborhood,'' says a scornful Taliaferro, a recovering heroin addict herself.
Luck, friends and the local loan shark have kept the 40-year-old mother of two afloat since the Social Services Department cut off her benefits in January, she says. Her undoing was failing to meet the job search requirements of Virginia's new welfare-to-work law.
Under that law, AFDC recipients such as Taliaferro, Denise Fletcher and Michelle Wallner will become ineligible for most public assistance in July 1997, two years after the reform took effect in Culpeper. Until then, they must be working, or show proof of trying to find work, in order to receive a monthly check.
As residents of one of the first U.S. localities to undergo the sort of welfare tightening that is sweeping the nation, the trio is in the vanguard of change. How they cope before and after the welfare checks end may help foretell the future for thousands of American women and their children.
Just now, says Taliaferro, the wariness in her dark eyes softening slightly, she is making it ``on a day-to-day basis . . . by the grace of God.''
Grace has taken two forms.
The first is a street-corner financier, whom Taliaferro does not identify but who has loaned her several hundred dollars for rent and other needs. That sum is about to grow by $198.96, the amount she owes for a two-month electricity bill, including a $63 reconnection fee.
The price for such assistance is 35 percent interest, according to Taliaferro. How and when she intends to repay that sum is unclear.
Less costly, and infinitely more hopeful, is the second form of help: an informal network of female friends.
When government bows out of the welfare game, women who are not self-sufficient will have to find support where they can. The worst options were outlined by Taliaferro last fall. ``Women are going to be begging, borrowing, stealing, hustling,'' she said.
The best options may be family or friends. That such a network exists for Taliaferro speaks both to the small-town nature of Culpeper and to the spark of vitality that still thrives in a woman whose adulthood has been a largely dispiriting saga of poverty and drugs.
Taliaferro has three drug-related convictions. She has had troubled relationships with men, and her 16-year-old daughter Monique is often rebellious. But a generosity and warmth - as well as a sense of humor - coexist with Taliaferro's insecurities and sometimes brittle air.
``She's honest, kind-hearted, very giving. Whatever she has, no matter how little, she wants to share,'' says her friend, Etta Lambert-Stone.
Lambert-Stone, who recently moved back to Culpeper after three years away, is sitting in the front room of Taliaferro's small rental home, and offering her childhood friend an almost-miraculous ray of hope.
A licensed insurance agent by day and, by night, the supervisor of a fund-raising phone bank in Falls Church, Lambert-Stone has arranged a tryout for Taliaferro as a phone interviewer. If she is hired, the pair would make the 55-mile commute to Falls Church together each day.
Such an arrangement would be a godsend for Taliaferro, who has neither a car nor a driver's license and whose job search has been a largely dead-end affair. Her only offer in the three months since she ended a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program was to work the night shift at a sewing factory about 15 miles away in a neighboring county.
She turned down the job because she had no way to get to and from work. Under welfare reform, Social Services can pay for gas and provide transportation during the daytime, but not during a 5 p.m.-to-midnight shift.
Taliaferro lost her AFDC benefits last month because she failed to supply proper evidence that she'd applied for at least five jobs a week. Since her children are older than 6, she lost food stamps as well.
``One of the unfortunate things about this area is that it doesn't offer public transportation,'' said Lambert-Stone, who ran into her old friend in November and resolved to help. ``If you're getting on your feet, you're not going to be able to afford a new car. So after six months of driving, your car breaks down, and you're right back on square one in that cycle again.''
The other problem, she adds, is that most of the jobs available to Taliaferro - who has not worked in 12 years - are low-paying, non-skilled positions. ``They're not positions that will help you break the cycle.''
Denise Fletcher and Michelle Wallner are a step ahead of Taliaferro in dealing with that reality:
Both are working; neither is self-sufficient.
A 30-year-old, divorced mother of five, Fletcher has a job - for the first time in years - at Burger King. But after seven months of part-time work, her wage remains $4.65 an hour. Her requests for a raise have gone unanswered.
``I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forwards,'' Fletcher said recently, her hushed voice barely audible above the lunchtime noise at a local restaurant. Then she remembered her youngest daughter, Daisy, and she quickly amended the comment because a judge had just ruled in her favor in a custody battle.
Still, Fletcher's weight, which was up to 100 pounds, is slipping. She is nettled because Social Services has been hinting that she may have to start looking for a second job if her hours dip below 30 a week.
And she remains mystified about how she will support herself when her benefits expire.
``Harry's already told me I'm not going to be out there making rent on my own without somebody helping me,'' sighed Fletcher, referring to the uncle with whom she lives.
An 11th-grade, high school dropout, Fletcher was enrolled in a GED program when welfare reform took hold in Culpeper last summer.
Although a Social Services adviser urged her to continue taking classes while she worked, Fletcher felt she was already spending too little time with her daughters. She has not been back to class.
Her passion is hairstyling, but case workers are not encouraging about the prospects for making that hobby a career. ``It's talents wrapped up in me I know I can do,'' said Fletcher, who regularly restyles her own frosted hair, as well as her daughters' hairdos.
Her current dilemma is whether to invest the tax refund she hopes to get this spring in paying off bills or in taking cosmetology courses. Whenever she fixes someone's hair, Fletcher said, she gets compliments.
``That's nice, but it's not a future.''
For Michelle Wallner, the future is temporarily on hold.
A high school graduate who has bounced on and off AFDC since splitting up with her daughter's father four years ago, Wallner has been working part time at a convenience store in her rural community outside Culpeper.
She is stopping that job temporarily, however, because she is pregnant. The baby is due in April.
As she hurries through the grocery store adding up prices on a hand calculator or sits in policy council meetings at the local Head Start office, the 24-year-old shows a growing assertiveness and grasp on life.
But her circumstances remain too tenuous to include another child, she believes. Wallner considered an abortion after a brief reunion with an old boyfriend last summer left her pregnant. For health reasons and because of anti-abortion television commercials, she changed her mind.
A Winchester couple plans to adopt the child. ``I have a hard enough time raising one,'' said Wallner, who shares a friend's home in exchange for providing child care. ``I figure it's best for everyone.''
What Wallner has discovered in her recent job experience is that working sometimes is hardly more profitable than collecting AFDC.
At $5 an hour, Wallner's 20- to 30-hour work week produces take-home pay of $500 or so a month. But because she has income, her food stamps have dropped from $218 to $45 a month, and she is paying $60 a week in child care for 4-year-old Devon. Her net gain from working, rather than collecting welfare: less than $100 a month.
``It's worth it as far as the self-satisfaction,'' Wallner said, ``but I can see why some girls have the attitude, why work?''
The answer is that under welfare reform, those who want a government check have no choice, says Fletcher, who at times wonders whether the small amount of money she earns is worth the hassle.
``We can't quit our jobs because Social Services said we won't get our ADC,'' she said.
Deborah Taliaferro already knows the state means business. The night she spent last week in a candle-lit house is partial proof.
Now she is about to discover what kinds of alternatives life has to offer in the world of work.
After a tryout 10 days ago, Taliaferro was offered a job at $5-an-hour, plus commissions, with Public Interest Communications in Falls Church. She is working four days a week, from 6 to 10:30 p.m., soliciting money for public interest groups. Her earnings, without taxes or commissions, will be $90 a week.
Because she is riding with Lambert-Stone, a supervisor with longer hours, Taliaferro will be away from home about 10 hours on the days she works. A friend has agreed to watch Mario.
On her first night Taliaferro raised about $550; on her second night, the total was zero.
``I started cussin', and then I said, `Oh hell,' and I started laughing. At least I'm away from home,'' said Taliaferro. ``I'm floating on a cloud.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Deborah Taliaferro
Age: 40
Children: A son, 8, and a daughter, 16.
The Story So Far: After failing to file proper paperwork on her
job applications, Deborah has lost AFDC and food stamp benefits for
two months. Her job quest has been complicated by a record that
includes three felony drug convictions and no work experience for
the last dozen or so years. The father of Deborah's children is in
prison.
Denise Fletcher:
Age: 30
Children: Five daughters, ranging in age from 3 to 11.
The Story So Far: Fletcher, who is divorced and lives with an
uncle to make ends meet, began working at a Burger King restaurant
last summer. It is her first sustained job. She receives a small
amount of child support from her former husband, who is the father
of her four oldest daughters, and is allowed to keep both AFDC
benefits and wages because of the size of her family.
Michelle Wallner
Age: 24
Children: A daughter, 4
The Story So Far: Wallner, a high school graduate, has alternated
between work and AFDC since her daughter was born. In November, she
began working parttime at a local grocery. She has collected no AFDC
benefits since then, and her food stamps have been reduced. She is
in touch with her daughter's father, but has been unsuccessful in
collecting child support.
WELFARE BILLS
A bill exempting women who are enrolled full time in certain job
training or educational programs has been carried over to the 1997
session. The state's new Commissioner of Social Services has agreed
to clarify the state policy on such women in the meantime.
A bill to increase, from six to nine, the number of children whom
day care providers could keep in their homes was killed in a Senate
committee. Proponents of the bill said it would help provide child
care from welfare women making the transition to work.
The House approved a bill to exempt women who are receiving AFDC
from identifying the father of their child if they have been raped.
Now, women can be denied benefits if they do not name the father.
The bill includes guidelines for a local social services department
to verify the rape. The bill is pending in the Senate.
The House passed a bill specifying that social services
departments must notify AFDC recipients before denying benefits
based on a child's failure to attend school. The bill is pending in
the Senate.
The House passed a bill clarifying that AFDC recipients who are
placed in private-sector jobs by social services departments cannot
displace regular workers or be used to fill previously established,
unfilled positions. The bill is pending in the Senate.
KEYWORDS: WELFARE REFORM by CNB