Beating the Odds on Getting Back to Work : Training: Regina Matthews helps welfare recipients develop job skills, and her own case demonstrates what these can lead to.

Regina Matthews has worked for more than a year helping welfare clients develop job skills that might eventually lift them from the quicksand of dependence.

Each day she must confront the knowledge that many of her charges, who are mostly young mothers, suffer tremendous handicaps including lack of self-esteem and low expectations.

But her presence is a constant reminder that seemingly hopeless cases can overcome long odds.

Before joining the staff at the North Orange County Regional Occupational Program, or ROP, the 31-year-old Matthews was herself a welfare mother who had been on and off public assistance for nearly 16 years.

“I do see myself in a lot of the students here,” she said recently, sitting in her tiny office cubicle, decorated with pictures of her four children. “I see how they get into a routine and are afraid to take the next step. But I also know that, like myself, a lot of these people just need that one push to make a difference.”

For all the controversy over the merits of the welfare system, almost forgotten are the stories of people who move from dependency to self-sufficiency.

Each year in Orange County, 3,000 to 4,000 cases are discontinued because recipients either find jobs and move off welfare voluntarily or because their earnings increase enough to make them ineligible for benefits, according to county officials.

The vexing question for critics and proponents of welfare alike is how best to achieve this transition, an issue brought to the fore by Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed overhaul of the state’s welfare system.

Proponents of the overhaul argue that welfare was designed to be temporary assistance but has become a way of life for too many, and that past policies have created programs that foster dependence on the government. To break the cycle of dependence, Wilson says, clients must be encouraged to get jobs.

However, critics contend that welfare reforms showing promise of breaking the dependence cycle have been underfunded and given no chance to work.

They point specifically to the GAIN (Greater Avenues to Independence) program, which was created in 1985 and became the model for the national jobs program.

GAIN was designed to provide recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children with education and job skills to become self-sufficient. Clients are provided with crucial transportation and child-care services.

“GAIN is now viewed as a failure and as something to be moved away from, but in fact it has never been tried,” said Leonard Schneiderman, dean of the School of Social Welfare at UCLA. “What failed is the public will to deliver on the promise.”

Although the program is currently being evaluated by an independent research group to determine its effectiveness, it would get no new funding under Wilson’s proposal. Instead, it will be revamped to emphasize job searching skills, but critics argue that education is the key to reducing welfare dependency.

In Orange County at least 60% of GAIN participants enter the program needing remedial education in English, writing or math, officials said.

Since the program began in Orange County in 1988, it has served about 12,500 AFDC clients, 1,637 of whom have become employed. The county each year receives funding to serve only about 3,200 of the 16,000 eligible clients.

“By the time we got started in Orange County, the idea of full funding had already gone by the wayside,” said adult and employment services director Dianne M. Edwards. “Our funding has declined each year except this one, where it remained stable. But the caseloads continue to go up.”

For those on welfare, the questions come down to something more basic than funding levels and caseload growth. In Matthews’ case, the humiliation of being on welfare was the obstacle.

“I was a teen-age mother, but I worked a lot of little jobs and used welfare mainly as a backup income,” she said. “I didn’t consider myself to be a welfare mother. That was something that other people did, not our family, so I blocked it out.”

Matthews had her first child at 15, was married at 19 and divorced by 21. After being laid off from a computer operator job she had held five years she was married again, to her high school sweetheart. That marriage also ended in divorce, after Matthews had another child and after the couple’s home burned to the ground. Matthews then started her own word-processing business--only to have all of her equipment and computer stolen.

Again, she turned to welfare. Her total grant was $940 a month plus food stamps. She spent $750 a month to rent a three-bedroom house owned by her parents.

With four children and no access to affordable day care, Matthews had neither the time nor money to look for work. She was not sure what it would take to get back on her feet.

But in December, 1989, she received notice that a spot had opened in the GAIN program. Matthews got a refresher course in basic job-search skills and also took a class designed to help her develop goals and prop up her severely depleted self-esteem.

It was the spark she needed. She spent long days at a phone bank making cold calls to prospective employers. Participants are supposed to collect 10 responses and two interviews per week.

During her job search, she spotted a flyer advertising a position as an instructional aide for the Regional Occupational Program, a federally funded private agency that provides employment and educational training free of charge.

Under the guidelines of GAIN, a principal wage earner with a family of five would need to make a minimum of $10.50 per hour to get off welfare. She does not earn quite that much, but her benefits package--including health and life insurance, a dental program and life insurance--makes up the difference, Matthews said.

Matthews said she has been buffeted by the emotional, psychological and financial strains that strike nearly all users of welfare.

But not having such assistance would have made it almost impossible to survive her darkest days.

“I do believe you can become too dependent and I don’t ever want my kids to think it was OK to be on welfare,” Matthews said. “But there were times when I had no where else to turn and, in the end, I think the system worked for me.”