THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 TAG: 9607300261
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: WELFARE REFORM
AN OCCASIONAL SERIES
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CULPEPER LENGTH: 259 lines
For Michelle Wallner, Denise Fletcher and Deborah Taliaferro, the way off welfare is a mountain road with hairpin turns, soaring vistas and the never-distant danger of free falling into a void.
At midpoint on the journey, a year away from the day their welfare checks end, the status of the women is mixed.
Denise Fletcher, who is raising five daughters with minimal support from an ex-husband, has just passed a milestone on the way to citizenship in America's working class: a one-week vacation.
During a year spent part time behind a counter at Burger King, Denise has managed to juggle children's fevers, stalled car engines, migraine headaches and a job. But she is only slightly less perplexed by the key question - how do you support six people on $4.80 an hour when Aid to Families with Dependent Children ends? - than when she entered the welfare-to-work program a year ago.
Michelle Wallner's life is in a tailspin. After a relatively stable year that included some work and a period off AFDC, her fragile support system appears to be unraveling.
The mother of a 5-year-old girl, Michelle has broken up with the boyfriend whose truck was her most dependable source of transportation. Someone else got the job she had hoped for at her daughter's Head Start center. And her rent-free living arrangement with a girlfriend on a farm outside town may be ending. Their arguments are partly due to the fact that she can't meet the demands of welfare reform and babysit for the friend's son.
A homeless shelter in town might be her only immediate housing alternative. Michelle's voice chokes on the words.
Meanwhile, her driving status is a mess. For months, she has been escorting herself when no one else was available, despite a suspended license. In May she was ticketed again. Her court appearance Thursday resulted in $400 in fines and fees, and an additional 60-day suspension.
Deborah Taliaferro, a 40-year-old convicted heroin user and mother of two, is in better shape as the year ends than when it began. In the past 12 months, she has filed dozens of job applications, lost AFDC benefits (and her electricity) for failing to file enough, worked two weeks in phone solicitations, spent two months cleaning welfare offices, and since May 30, worked 13 to 18 hours a week at Little Caesars Pizza.
Her 8-year-old son, Mario, is staying alone most days in a neighborhood that Deborah acknowledges is rife with drugs and alcohol. Her first pizza-house paycheck, minus taxes, was just over $40 - ``enough to keep me in cigarettes and Mario in sodas,'' she quipped with earthy laughter.
But despite enormous uncertainty about her prospects in a welfare-free world, Taliaferro seems happier.
``I'm keeping change in my pocket, and I'm gaining my self-esteem,'' she said.
Earlier this month, Gov. George Allen and a contingent of state officials traveled to Culpeper to proclaim the first year of welfare reform in Virginia a nearly unqualified success. Last week, the U.S. Congress caught up to Virginia, voting to dismantle a guarantee of cash benefits for the poor that has evolved over six decades.
The experiences of the women in Culpeper's welfare case load will help guide the state and the nation as reform evolves. The semirural county in the Washington exurbs is among a handful of localities that launched Virginia's plan last July.
Hampton Roads cities will be among the last in the state to join, coming on line in the spring of 1998. The plan requires recipients to work for their AFDC checks and limits such payments to two years in any five-year period.
The stunning success Allen proclaimed in Culpeper looks more precarious from the bottom up. In an area where unemployment is low, many in the county's AFDC caseload of 80 or so have found work. A few of the jobs are good.
But it is hard to convey in statistics the complexity of lives that lurch from one major or minor crisis to another, often without the safety net of family and always without the resources that the middle class expects.
As with Michelle, who quit work this spring because of an unplanned pregnancy, a job one day may not mean a job the next.
As with Deborah, who says it is a daily challenge to resist the drugs outside her door, a single misstep can overshadow a brief work history on a resume.
And as with Denise, who for months has failed to follow up on applying for the cosmetology courses of which she dreams, planning beyond the day or the week may never happen.
In many ways the futures of women such as these seem beyond the scope of policy planners, determined by fate, by whim, by the absence or presence of an inner spark or a roving angel.
Some experts say the attempt of government to be that benevolent force has undercut individual fortitude. Others say that without the guarantee of a helping hand, an inner spark may be extinguished long before it ever flames.
All that is certain is this: If there is a right or wrong way to do welfare reform, women such as Denise Fletcher, Michelle Wallner and Deborah Taliaferro will be among the first to know.
The first year of their unfolding experiences poses an unsettling prospect. A policy that works for one may not work for another. Worse, an approach that works for one person one month may not the next.
Denise Fletcher
``That's the first thing I can sit back and say I did besides being a mother. I worked hard enough for a year to have a vacation,'' says Denise Fletcher, her often-serious face relaxing in a smile.
Barefoot and festive in a bright pink sundress and gold locket, Denise is sitting at the kitchen table in the small, rented bungalow that has been home for three months.
As her daughters swirl around her, hamming for a photographer, rollicking on bunkbeds, carefully balancing punch cups on glass plates that their mother has brought out for a special occasion, Denise alternately dishes out reprimands and praise.
``I'm not paying you no mind, Mandy,'' she tells her 8-year-old, who is threatening to topple off a mattress. ``If you get hurt, you're the one that's got to put up with the pain.''
She scolds 9-year-old Tiffany, who has requested Pepsi instead of punch, about her ``soda habit,'' and praises 12-year-old Heather for collecting the dishes. ``She never gets tired of helping,'' says Denise, eliciting a proud smile from the girl.
In this setting, at this moment, Fletcher appears very much in control. Little shows of the insecure woman who a year ago could scarcely fathom leaving her daughters for a job, and who still calls social services at times in tears or a rage over the difficulty of coping.
``When I say I've got to quit, they say, `Denise, you can't,' '' she says. Indignation is edging into her voice. She is under the care of a therapist, and it is not entirely idle when she asks, ``What are they going to do if I have a nervous breakdown?''
Still, for now, her progress in the last year seems worth celebrating. With the $403 a month she collects from AFDC, $50 from her ex-husband, and up to $100 or so a week from working, she has been able to fulfill one dream: moving out of her uncle's house and into her own.
She has bought clothes for her children and items like a VCR that were once out of reach. And she has resisted a boyfriend's overtures of marriage.
``He told me I could quit that job and he'd take care of me,'' says Denise, whose primary relationships with men have included abuse. ``But then I'd lose all that independence I built up.''
Less appealing is her continuing uncertainty about the future. Last spring she had a conversation with a staff member at a local technical center about entering a cosmetology program this fall. Fixing hair is her dream, but she has not followed through with an application.
Nor has the social services department urged her to do so. Her first priority, workers there feel, should be finishing her high school equivalency degree. Doing so would require either longer hours away from the girls or reduced salary from Burger King.
Neither seems desirable to Denise. That means she could complete her two-year grace period on AFDC with a work record in fast food, but no advance in formal skills or education.
At this time next year, ``I'd like to have a better career, something that's going to stabilize me more,'' she says. That ``something'' remains illusive and ill-defined.
Michelle Wallner
What Michelle Wallner most wants just now is to find low-income housing within walking distance of a job.
The happy-go-lucky bravado with which the auburn-haired 24-year-old faces the world dissolves frequently into tears these days.
Since she left her drug-using boyfriend five years ago and moved with daughter Devon to Virginia, Michelle has coped with lost jobs, soured relationships and her daughter's sometimes precarious health problems. This spring she made the difficult decision to place her infant son with a stable couple in a private adoption.
Despite the ongoing ups and downs, seldom have so many negatives converged in her life as in the past month.
``I just can't take my little girl to a homeless shelter,'' she said last week, her voice breaking with a sob. With no car and no license, Michelle had just spent hours near the phone, futilely waiting for the Fredericksburg Social Services Department to return her call about low-income housing.
She hesitated to call again. Long-distance charges are another source of friction with her girlfriend.
``We had some issues before,'' acknowledged Michelle, describing the deteriorating relationship. A final straw was Michelle's recent inability to care for the roommate's son, part of the deal that gives Michelle and Devon free rent, she said.
For the last two weeks, as required by law, Michelle has been attending a job-readiness class for welfare recipients who have not found jobs. The roommate has had to make other arrangements for her son.
The nemesis of Wallner's life is transportation. To get her $202 monthly AFDC check, she must be working or searching for work. To work, she needs a ride from the farm, which is 10 miles from Culpeper and 23 from Fredericksburg.
A van is picking her up for classes. A social worker has volunteered to help her file job applications, but that almost certainly does not mean scouring Fredericksburg for days on end.
Until recently, Michelle's solution has been to drive herself. Now the car is gone with her ex-boyfriend, and another suspended license violation would almost certainly land her in jail.
And so the need has arisen to move to town. The housing list that Fredericksburg Social Services supplies to a caller after five tries has not been updated since 1994. A worker says she can offer no advice about waiting periods or vacancies.
At this point Michelle can hardly contemplate what the next month will hold, much less the next year. She brightens at the adage that there's light at the end of the tunnel, but then falters.
``Every time I get there,'' she says, ``it looks like they close the door.''
Deborah Taliaferro
Sweating in the afternoon heat as she waits for a ride outside Little Caesars, Deborah Taliaferro describes how she copes without a driver's license or car.
Sometimes she walks the mile to work. Sometimes she lines up a friend in exchange for the gas vouchers offered by Social Services. Sometimes she stands on the corner and waits for an acquaintance to drive by.
So far, in a small town, this has worked.
Deborah's only complaint about her new job is that she is not clocking enough hours. Welfare reform demands a 30-hour work week, so this week she will go back to filing job applications.
Otherwise, she views Little Caesars as an answer to prayer. ``I was just thrilled,'' she said when the manager looked past her drug convictions to offer a job. ``I was at the point of despair. I'd given up, and then that came along.''
A year ago Deborah, who has a high school degree and believes she should do better, winced at the thought of working in fast food. Of necessity, her attitude has changed. She is still paying back money borrowed during a two-month stretch where she lost her $207 in benefits for non-compliance with welfare reform.
One opinion has not altered, however. ``I still say crime's going to go up when the benefits are cut off,'' she said.
Arriving home, Deborah envelops Mario in a hug and then sinks onto a metal folding chair in the dirt yard outside her tiny home. A couple of men who have been sitting there wander away. Her teenage daughter is rarely at home.
After years on AFDC, it is hard for Deborah to imagine how she will make ends meet without it in 12 months. In her tough world, she has more often been propelled by despair and fear than hope.
Even so, Deborah acknowledges that the push to work has broadened her outlook and brought her to a marginally better place.
``I'm good. I'm very good,'' she says, drawing on a cigarette. ``I refuse to say any more negative things.'' MEMO: NEGOTIATORS AGREE ON NATIONAL WELFARE BILL/A6 ILLUSTRATION: MAKING WELFARE WORK IN VIRGINIA
[Color Photos]
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
DENISE FLETCHER
AGE: 31
CHILDREN: Five daughters, including Daisy, 3, (pictured left)
UPDATE: During a year spent part time behind a counter at Burger
King, she has managed to juggle kids' fevers, stalled car engines,
migraine headaches and a job.
MICHELLE WALLNER
AGE: 24
CHILDREN: Daughter, Devon, 5
UPDATE: Living arrangments and transportation seem tenuous, and
she's having trouble finding a job. A homeless shelter may be her
only alternative.
DEBORAH TALIAFERRO
AGE: 40
CHILDREN: Son, Mario, 8, (pictured left); daughter, Monique, 16
UPDATE: She has been working at Little Caesars since May, but Mario
is alone most days in a neighborhood rife with drugs and alcohol.
WHAT IS AFDC?
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which dates to
the 1930s, is the nation's major cash welfare program for poor
children and their parents, most of whom are single women.
The program, which serves about 74,000 Virginia families,
provides monthly checks based on family size. A family of three gets
a maximum of $354 a month from AFDC and $254 a month in food stamps,
for a total of $608 per month.
Although food stamps may be withheld from individuals who fail to
participate in the work program, food stamp and federal housing
benefits are not cut off when AFDC ends in two years.
KEYWORDS: WELFARE REFORM AFDC by CNB