Workfare Program Modeled on ‘Best’ of Other States’ Plans

During the last school year, Velda Jenkins spent two days a week quietly mopping floors at a state lab in South Charleston, W.Va., in exchange for her welfare check.

A mother of three teen-aged children, she had been promised training as a lab aide. But she never received an hour of instruction.

“I can’t get off welfare with what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m not working myself any farther than up and down these halls.”

In West Virginia, officials conceded that Jenkins had fallen between the cracks of the state’s workfare system. But in California, she has helped shape public policy.

Her case became known as the “Velda Factor” among a handful of California lawmakers and officials who discovered her plight last spring while on a tour of states that had enacted some form of work program for welfare recipients. To Assemblyman Art Agnos (D-San Francisco), state Health and Welfare Secretary David Swoap and others, her situation was an example of what to avoid in creating a California workfare system.

That trip turned into a crucial first step in the evolution of California’s workfare program, which was signed into law last Thursday by Gov. George Deukmejian.

California’s Plan

Under the California plan, as many as 175,000 welfare recipients, primarily women with children over the age of 6, will be required to work, go to school or receive job training in exchange for public assistance.

But in part because of Velda Jenkins, each of these welfare recipients will receive a written contract from their county welfare department spelling out precisely what training they will receive--a method unique to the California program.

And in part because of the lack of child-care assistance available in West Virginia for workfare mothers like Jenkins, California’s program includes an expensive child-care feature that will enable welfare recipients to spend many more hours at work or in training.

California’s adoption of a workfare program comes at a time when 25 states are experimenting with mandatory work programs and another 12 have established voluntary programs. But lawmakers in Sacramento have created a workfare and training program far more comprehensive and complex than any of the programs attempted elsewhere.

The California delegation’s trip to the East provided a first-hand look at work programs in West Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Perhaps more significant politically, it also opened a line of communication between the conservative Swoap and the liberal Agnos.

“The trip had precisely the result we were looking for,” Swoap said in an interview. Swoap, who announced Friday that he will resign Nov. 1, said: “It enabled us to see all these various elements in detail, decide which ones we liked and which ones we didn’t. We developed little buzzwords and common understandings, like ‘the Velda Factor.’ ”

In Massachusetts, the California delegation saw a highly touted work program that stresses the voluntary participation of welfare recipients.

The Massachusetts program, known as Employment & Training, or ET, is not considered workfare because it has no mandatory work provision. Its only requirement is that welfare recipients register for the program. They then can choose from a variety of training programs or choose not to participate at all.

Massachusetts officials said their program is designed to motivate welfare recipients to work--not coerce them to get off welfare. And so far, there has been no shortage of volunteers for the limited number of ET slots available.

“We approached it very differently--in a positive way,” Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis said in an interview. “The people on AFDC have responded so well to this that our only problem is we can’t respond fast enough to accommodate all the people who want to come in.”

ET was so attractive to Boston resident Cheryl Liberatore that she quit her job last year to go on welfare so she would be eligible for one of the training programs. As a result, the 22-year-old mother said, she landed a job at Massachusetts General Hospital that paid nearly twice as much as her old one.

When the California delegation came through Boston, Massachusetts state officials displayed Liberatore as one of their success stories.

Recipients Given Choices

California officials were so impressed with the Massachusetts program that they incorporated into their proposal a component that gives welfare recipients some choice in the kind of work, training or education they will receive.

“Massachusetts provided a tremendous model for us,” Agnos said.

Massachusetts officials report that their program has saved $50 million in welfare costs since it began in 1983. Between October, 1983, and June, 1985, according to these reports, 10,579 Massachusetts welfare recipients have been placed in jobs with an average entry level wage of $5.10 an hour.

In Pennsylvania, much like West Virginia, the visitors from the West Coast saw a workfare program geared more toward giving employers free labor than providing welfare recipients with training.

One of the largest employers of workfare labor has been the Pennsylvania National Guard, which used welfare recipients as custodians at many of its 98 armories.

In many cases, the workfare participants replaced workers laid off by the state--a practice that will be prohibited in the California program.

“From my point of view, with the number of budget cutbacks, I don’t know how we would have gotten the job done without them,” said Pennsylvania Adjutant Gen. Richard Scott, who oversees the National Guard.

Program Praised

But even at one air base at Ft. Indiantown Gap, where workfare offers little in the way of job training, one participant praised the program.

“It gives you a chance to get out and do something,” said 36-year-old George F. Keener Jr., the father of two small children. “I was just sitting around the house doing nothing. At least I’m working for the money now.”

Keener’s attitude is shared by many workfare participants, according to field studies conducted by the New York-based Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.

“One of the surprises was the positive response of people to the work program,” MDRC vice president Judith Gueron said in an interview.

Added Agnos, “All the studies done around the country indicate that the overwhelming majority of people who participate in even the most Draconian forms of workfare indicate they feel better about themselves as a result.”

One element of the California plan was drawn from a county-run pilot program in San Diego.

In that program, welfare recipients must look for work and those that are unsuccessful are required to take a workfare assignment. A similar provision has been included in the statewide program.

Reagan’s Workfare Program

The proliferation of different programs around the country was fostered by President Reagan, who as governor of California championed a version of workfare in 1971 that now is widely regarded to have been unsuccessful. At the time, Swoap was a Reagan appointee very much involved in the governor’s workfare efforts.

Ten years later, in 1981, the Reagan Administration in Washington sponsored a change in the federal law to make it easier for states to require welfare recipients to work. Swoap then was Reagan’s undersecretary of health and human services and played a key role in changing the law.

In 1983, Swoap returned to Sacramento as a member of Deukmejian’s cabinet, where he is now in a position to implement workfare at the state level.

“It was particularly good to come back and design a package that takes advantage of what we did on the federal level,” Swoap said.