Pushing Single Parents Past Poverty Line : Social services: Intervention by a network of public and private organizations have helped single-adult families, but services remain inadequate.

Paula Michaud, a 37-year-old single mother, works part time and takes a full load of college courses in addition to raising two sons in a one-bedroom Huntington Beach apartment.

Covering the rent, she says, consumes 90% of her monthly income, a meager combination of a welfare check and some take-home pay from a clerical job. She cannot afford to own a car, and paying for such basic necessities as food and child care is a month-to-month struggle.

But to Michaud, her present living situation is “a dream come true.” Though her apartment is modest and her budget remains tight, it certainly beats life in a homeless shelter. That’s where Michaud and her boys spent last summer.

Like hundreds of other single parents throughout Orange County, Michaud has scratched her way from rock bottom to a slightly higher perch, nudged upward by undaunting determination and a dose of luck.

But she and hundreds of others throughout Orange County have had help along the way. A network of public and private organizations throughout the county aid single parents toeing the economic edge, providing everything from job training to housing assistance to loans for bus fares. And many single parents say they are climbing above the poverty line and into the mainstream as a result.

Even as opportunities have improved for the county’s welfare mothers--and a smattering of welfare fathers--to wriggle loose from the grip of poverty, many experts say the available services remain woefully inadequate.

And that shortfall of services may only get worse as the number of single-parent families continues to rise. More than half of U.S. children born today will live in single-parent homes before their 18th birthday, according to a May 1989 Ford Foundation study.

With single parents finding it increasingly difficult to juggle work, child care and, in some cases, educational endeavors, many of those children will be raised in a landscape of poverty. Already, 25% of America’s children under age 6 live in households below the poverty line, the Ford Foundation study said.

A separate study commissioned by the state last year concluded that families make up the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, and most of those are headed by a lone parent.

“From all indications,” says Carol Runzel, coordinator of Huntington Beach Project Self-Sufficiency, a city-staffed, federally funded program that aids single-parent families, “the new poor in this country will be the nation’s women and children. I find that appalling.”

But efforts such as Project Self-Sufficiency are helping to ease the problems of single parents burdened by poverty and welfare dependency, at least in the northeast corner of the county.

Founded in 1985, Project Self-Sufficiency provides housing aid for single parents who live in or around Huntington Beach. The agency originally offered rental assistance for just 25 individuals, but today it provides housing help to 121 single-parent families.

Perhaps the most vital component of the project is its link with an intricate network of public agencies, local churches and other private organizations that provide a kaleidoscope of services, including free or low-cost child care, donations of food, clothes and furniture, job training and loans to cover the month’s utilities or pay for car repairs.

A key element of that network is Golden West College’s single-parent assistance program, formed last fall through its financial aid office. Through an intensive recruiting effort, the office, which a year ago served just a handful of students who are single parents, now provides aid for 90 of them, says Karen Hinton, coordinator of the new program.

She says 176 single parents now receive educational, financial and emotional counseling from the program.

Michaud credits Hinton’s program for paving the way for her to realize a lifelong ambition in September, when she enrolled in her first college courses at Golden West, which she hopes will eventually lead to a teaching career.

“When I met Karen,” Michaud says, “and she said to me, ‘Let’s go downstairs and sign you up for classes,’ I couldn’t believe it. It’s hard to put into words what you feel when a dream comes true.”

Sabrina Scotch, 30--a high school dropout and mother of a 9-year-old girl--is in her second semester at Golden West, maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average. After years of shuffling from one living arrangement to another, Scotch moved into a comfortable, two-bedroom apartment in August with aid from Project Self-Sufficiency.

Alerted by the agency, local churches have donated furniture to furnish her new place and have brought Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to her door. The program has also given her emotional support, helping to reverse her sinking self-esteem, Scotch says.

“Without Project Self-Sufficiency and the Golden West (financial-aid) office, there’s no way I’d be where I am now,” she says.

Several “graduates” of the program have moved on to full-time careers or four-year colleges.

But the Huntington Beach program is the only city-sponsored effort of its kind in the county. Garden Grove also participated in the original Project Self-Sufficiency pilot program, funded initially through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, but it collapsed in 1987 because the city lacked the type of services network that has sustained Huntington Beach’s program.

The only comparable aid available for single parents in the rest of the county is on community college campuses, all of which offer a limited number of grants through their financial aid offices. Several also have programs targeting single parents.

Fullerton and Rancho Santiago colleges last year adopted a state-funded program that provides about 50 single-parent students on each campus with grants to defray the costs of child care, tuition, tutoring, books and other school supplies. Rancho Santiago this month also just formed an on-campus support club for single parents.

Orange Coast College features a similar club, as well as the only campus child-care center in the county that accepts infants younger than 2. During the past year, the college has also expanded its women’s re-entry center, holding information and support workshops that often address issues of particular concern to single mothers.

Cypress College offers 15 child-care grants each semester and recently set up a federally funded career-guidance and support program exclusively for single parents.

Coastline Community College’s financial-aid office is linked with Project Self-Sufficiency and an array of service organizations throughout Southern California.

UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton each provide child care and programs to help women re-enter the work force. Fullerton has a single child-care center, while Irvine tends to nearly 600 children of students and staff members at its six centers and newly opened on-campus preschool.

Unfortunately, the college services help just a slice of the county’s single-parent population, county social workers say.

About 90% of the single parents on welfare do not attend school, says Dee Lacey, a case worker for Greater Avenues for Independence, a government program that offers help to welfare parents.

Several welfare recipients called Greater Avenues for Independence just another tangled web of bureaucracy. But Lacey, a 10-year veteran of social work, calls it the first government program that genuinely aims to help parents shed the straitjacket of welfare dependency.

Supported by state and federal funds, it provides welfare parents of children older than age 3 with job training and financial aid for child care, transportation and other necessities.

But gaping holes remain in the safety net for needy single parents, many current and former welfare dependents say.

“I don’t see things as moving in a positive direction at all,” says a 40-year-old Los Alamitos single mother who was once dependent on welfare.

“I see people helping, like Project Self-Sufficiency. . . . But things are just not that different for single parents. There are a lot of women out there who are still struggling.”