DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707180650

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   51 lines

MIXED VIEWS ON WELFARE HIRING SOCIAL SERVICES AGENCIES APPEAL TO EMPLOYERS IN WESTERN TIDEWATER.

In the months preceding state welfare reform in Western Tidewater, the social service agencies appeal to the business community is clear:

Please hire our clients.

Although some of the 150 members of the business community who gathered for Thursday's welfare-reform forum at Suffolk's Holiday Inn were impressed with the state's work proposals, others expressed some show-me skepticism about hiring off the welfare rolls.

State social services workers tried to convince the Suffolk, Isle of Wight, Franklin and Southampton business communities that welfare reform needs them if it is to work.

Clarence Carter, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services, said welfare reform is a community effort, depending largely on cooperation from the business leaders to hire welfare recipients.

``The job is too big for our social services departments,'' he said.

The welfare caseload has dropped 30 percent in other areas of the state where welfare reform has been initiated, he said.

The state's welfare reform program takes affect Oct. 1 in Hampton Roads and the Peninsula. Several communities across the state began implementing the program two years ago.

The main tenet of the program is a two-year time limit for welfare benefits.

Carter said the new program would provide more stable workers re-entering the work force, because the state will provide child care and health care support during a client's first three years of employment.

Scott C. Oostdyk, deputy secretary of the Virginia Office of Health and Human Resources, said businesses benefit from the arrangement. ``Businesses understand . . . that a stable work force is a business asset,'' he said.

Marvin Everett, owner of Everett Farms in Capron, said he would not mind hiring welfare recipients to replace migrant workers.

``We're headed in the right direction, and I'll help you any way I can,'' he said.

Others would wait to be convinced.

Sharon E. Sharpe listened carefully to the presentations. Sharpe owns Sparkling Clean Janitorial Services in Suffolk, and has hired workers off the welfare rolls with little success.

In addition to hiring some unreliable workers, Sharpe said the bureaucracy was overwhelming for her 10-employee cleaning company.

``I ran from the forms they threw at me,'' she said.

Oostdyk said he understood Sharpe's frustration. The difference with the new program, he said, is the two-year time limit.

``They know they have to work,'' he said.

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