Caseworker Faces Misfortune, Fraud on a Daily Basis

Each day, Susan Oldham leaves the comfort of her Laguna Hills home, her husband and eight cats to ponder the most intimate details of lives shattered by unemployment, medical catastrophe, physical abuse and other social ills.

In her two years as a county welfare caseworker, Oldham has encountered frightening people who are angry at a system they see as unfair. She has seen children she suspected of being abused but was unable to do anything to help except report her suspicions.

She has found herself comforting middle-class professionals who have stock, boats and trust funds yet still find themselves victims of an unstable economy, bad luck or incompetence.

It is her job to decide--on behalf of county taxpayers--if and how soon these people will receive help.

“It’s not like any other job I’ve ever had before, not at all what you’d expect,” Oldham said on a recent bright morning as she prepared to plunge into the day’s caseload at the county’s Laguna Hills welfare office.

Oldham’s pay is not great--the typical caseworker earns about $1,900 a month. Yet in a given year, one caseworker will dispense more than $1 million through various aid programs.

Oldham is on the front lines of a vast, troubled system that in Orange County has assumed increased significance as this once-suburban stepchild enters adulthood as a fully urban community.

Welfare caseloads are at record highs. At the end of April, more than 176,000 county residents were receiving some form of assistance. Caseload growth in Orange County is increasing faster than anywhere else in the state, according to social service officials, yet most people have only a vague notion of how the system works.

Welfare mothers with eight children and a Cadillac are high on the list of stereotypes. Many people seem to believe that welfare clients choose their lifestyle because it’s easier than working, but Oldham and others who work in the system dispute that idea.

The system is not without fraud. In 1990, there were 1,383 cases of suspected fraud referred to Orange County prosecutors, resulting in 206 convictions. The other cases were either cleared or referred for civil action.

Oldham is known to her colleagues as a bulldog, eager to sniff out potential abuse of the system.

“As you work with clients, you get a sixth sense,” she said. “There are some concrete indicators, but mostly it’s a gut feeling. I would say I’m right about 95% of the time.”

Oldham likes to tell her friends that she is protecting their tax money.

“Some people have drug problems and come in trying to obtain money for them; some people just feel the world owes them a living,” she said. “It’s the one thing that really (upsets) me . . . clients that lie. We usually find out.”

However, only about 7.5% of all welfare applicants were investigated for fraud last year, and studies have shown that welfare clients are no more likely to lie, cheat or steal than the general population.

And most of the general public seems unaware that the income and resources claimed by applicants can be quickly cross-checked by a sophisticated computer system, Oldham noted.

“Most people think (clients) just come in and we give them money,” she said. “When I explain what the requirements are and what little these people actually get, they are astounded.”

The average family on welfare--a mother and two children--receives $694 a month in cash assistance and $277 in food stamps.

Many people are also unaware of the intimacy of the process. It can be intrusive and dehumanizing, Oldham said.

Welfare officials have long worried that applying for aid leads to a lack of self-esteem, that clients come to view themselves as failures, making it that much harder to get back on their feet.

And there is definitely still a stigma. Oldham said people have shown up at the Laguna Hills office not realizing that what they were applying for was welfare. They just need a little help, they explain, not welfare.

“Obviously, a lot of people are here because they have made poor judgments in their lives, and sometimes that is hard to face,” Oldham said. “It’s not our place to judge but to help them get back on their feet, to get them over the rough spots.”

Lives of tragedy, desperation and bad luck are played out every day in the small, sterile interview cubicles that line the halls of the Laguna Hills office.

One of Oldham’s first clients of the day is a young mother of three, newly married to a German immigrant. They are unemployed, have no car and were evicted from their Irvine apartment.

The interview is revealing: There is a former boyfriend, accusations of physical abuse and a restraining order against him. But Oldham guides her client through the paperwork with little emotion.

It is like being a doctor or nurse, she said. If she became too emotionally involved with her clients, she would never be able to get through the day.

Still, some cases are hard for her to ignore, especially those involving elderly clients who may genuinely need assistance but are ineligible because they have too many assets.

On other occasions, Oldham is moved to relate her own experiences of being a young mother deserted by her husband and turning to welfare.

“Many clients can’t believe that I’ve been on the other side,” she said. “It’s not something I share with all clients, but for some women who have been abandoned or in abusive situations, it’s important to tell them that they can get out of it and get on with their lives.”

Oldham sees a lot of atypical clients while working in the Laguna Hills office. One man filled out an application for assistance listing two expensive cars and a boat as assets. He had been earning $5,000 a month but was laid off and could not meet his $1,700 monthly rent payments.

“What I wanted to tell him is that he should have been saving some of that money, but as a caseworker that’s what I couldn’t say,” said Oldham, smiling.

Some people, she said, snicker upon learning that she is a welfare caseworker. They think of her as a glorified clerk or, worse, a bleeding-heart softie. But Oldham said she is unfazed.

She has had a varied job history, working as a secretary, a lab technician at a sewage treatment plant and a traveling saleswoman. Nothing prepared her for this role, but it is one she says she will not give up.

“I have really enjoyed it,” Oldham said. “It’s nice to be able to steer people in the direction of getting their life back together.”