Social Contract Test Maps Exits From Welfare Rolls : Society: An Iowa experiment in responsibility sets goals for families. Idea is part of Clinton’s reform plan.

In one of several cubicles at the state job-service center in this industrial city on the Mississippi River, Tracie and Richard Farley tried to keep their 16-month-old son entertained on a recent afternoon while their welfare caseworker helped them map out the next two years of their lives.

Tracie Farley, a high school dropout, was to get a high school equivalency degree and go to nursing school while her husband works part time and goes back to college. The state would help pay for their schooling and provide financial assistance, food stamps and medical coverage during the 24 months it should take them to finish.

The schedule was written down step by step in what is called a “family investment agreement,” with specific dates stipulated for the attainment of each incremental goal.

“When you sign this, you are telling the state of Iowa that this is your plan to become self-sufficient,” caseworker Rhonda Scott told the couple. “It is binding.”

Passing a fidgeting Richard Jr. from lap to lap, both of the Farleys signed the agreement, as did the caseworker.

“It gives you an outline of what you’re going to be doing for the next two years,” said Tracie Farley, 22, who quit school at 16 and previously worked as a beautician. “It’s better than just staying on welfare and having more children you can’t support.”

Iowa’s family investment agreements are among a number of devices being tested in different parts of the country to reverse what many experts see as one of the root causes of welfare and related problems: a breakdown in the implied social contract that exists in all organized societies between government and citizens.

The social contract consists of the unstated but real obligations and responsibilities that members of any society have to themselves and one another--responsibilities that some experts say have been ignored by welfare recipients and government agencies alike. Now, policy-makers are trying to make the abstract idea of the social contract more tangible--and more likely to be honored--by writing it down.

“This is the social contract taken to the personal level,” said David Ellwood, one of the architects of President Clinton’s welfare reform plan and an assistant secretary of health and human services.

In political terms, the move toward having welfare recipients sign contracts is a response to the broadly held public sentiment that many aid recipients have forgotten their basic responsibilities.

“This is a reaction to the fear Americans have had over the last couple decades that things are falling apart and some people aren’t playing by the rules of the game,” said Theda Skocpol, a professor of sociology at Harvard University. “Drawing up and enforcing these contracts is a way to respond to that fear.”

Moreover, proponents of the approach say, the written contract focuses welfare recipients’ attention on precisely what it is that society expects from them, especially at a time when those expectations are changing. This, in turn, may increase the likelihood that the expectations will be met.

“If you’re asking people to play by the rules, you have to be sure they know what rules they should play by,” said Avis LaVelle of the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “The contract clarifies what the government expects from you and what you can expect from the government. It isn’t fair to change the rules unless you’re sure everybody understands them.”

The Administration’s blueprint for welfare reform, which is expected to be unveiled next week, includes provisions for written agreements with welfare recipients to reinforce the idea that the government expects them to support themselves and their children. Similar provisions exist in other federal welfare reform proposals already introduced in Congress.

Under the Clinton plan, within 90 days of applying for Aid to Families With Dependent Children, participants would have to sign an “employability plan” outlining the steps they would take to become self-sufficient. If applicants refuse to sign, their AFDC check would be reduced to only the child’s portion, which is one-third to one-half of the grant, depending on the state.

A written agreement is essential, Administration officials believe, because welfare is changing dramatically--from a system that provides checks to anyone in need to a system that puts people to work.

Iowa is the first state to impose contracts on welfare recipients statewide, but other states are experimenting with them. In Utah, for instance, “self-sufficiency agreements” are an integral part of a welfare reform experiment that has been credited with reducing the caseload in the three areas of the state where it is being tested.

“The individualized plan is critical,” said Bill Biggs, director of Utah’s Single Parent Employment Demonstration program. “If you really want to get people into the work force, you have to deal with them as individuals. You can’t take a cookie-cutter approach.”

Similarly, a call for a “personal responsibility contract” with each welfare recipient was a key element of Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh’s State of the State address this year.

“Most Hoosiers understand how someone can get down on their luck and need a helping hand,” said Bayh, a Democrat. “But they do not understand and will no longer tolerate those who accept public assistance without also accepting personal responsibility or who accept the benefits of the system without doing all they can to get off it.”

Indiana officials are working on an application for waivers from the federal government, which would be necessary to introduce the plan.

While state and federal officials see the contracts as a way to make people responsible and push them off the public dole, welfare recipients in Iowa said the documents make the government live up to its obligations.

Valerie Harvey, 22, said she had been asking her welfare caseworkers for a year to put her in classes so that she could earn a high school equivalency degree. She finally pinned them down, she said, after signing a contract in January.

“It’s not just a contract about you. It’s a contract for them to help you,” said Harvey, who has a 2-year-old son. “They can’t back out of this because they have to sign it the way we do. It ain’t just a one-sided thing.”

That is exactly what worries some local welfare administrators and counselors.

Brad Scott, who has been a welfare caseworker in Davenport for four years, said the attention he can give each client has diminished greatly since the reform was launched.

“I used to have 50 clients, and now I have 120,” Scott said. “I sign contracts with four or five people a day and each is added to my caseload. The light at the end of the tunnel looks like a freight train.”

John Kiley, who runs the job-training programs for the five counties around Davenport, says he worries that he will not be able to provide welfare recipients with the tools they need to get good jobs.

“There are not 5,000 job-training opportunities out there,” he said, referring to the number of people expected to need such positions in his area. “This puts tremendous pressure on the system.”

In Iowa, these concerns are particularly troubling because of the huge changes that have taken place in the state economy. During the 1980s, the Davenport metropolitan area, which has about 300,000 residents, lost 28,000 jobs, many of them high-skill factory positions that paid well and offered great benefits.

In the last few years, the economy has begun to generate new jobs again, but many of them pay poorly and offer no employee benefits.

To live up to its side of the bargain, the state will have to be successful at creating jobs, Kiley said.

In both Iowa and Utah, the welfare benefits of those who refuse to participate in the contracts are reduced.

Those who opt out in Iowa receive their full grant for three months, then for three months they receive only the children’s portion of the grant and for six months they receive nothing. People who sign the agreements but then abandon them also are subject to reduced benefits.

One-twelfth of the state’s 42,000 welfare recipients have been introduced to the program each month since January. So far, 14% have chosen not to participate, but no one has yet felt the sting of the sanctions because that part of the plan took effect only last month.

Everyone who signs a contract has to attend school or job training or get a job. Staying home and collecting welfare checks is no longer an option. But counselors bend over backward to help participants and will amend the agreements if unexpected barriers, such as a child care problem or legitimate illness, emerge.

As Scott told the Farleys, participants are required to earn at least a C average in their post-secondary schooling and must bring their midterm and final grades to their caseworkers. Participants must show up at all meetings with caseworkers, attend activities to help them find work, accept child care arrangements provided and take the jobs they are offered.

Some participants resent such hands-on treatment from the government, but most said the family investment agreement gave them the push they needed but never got in a welfare office.

“Sometimes it intimidates me, because I understand the downsides of a Big Brother system. But when you’re receiving assistance from taxpayers, you should put your best foot forward,” said Martha McCall, 27, of Davenport. Her family investment pact envisions the state supporting her and her daughter until 1996, when she expects to earn her bachelor of arts degree in pre-law and education.

“It’s getting us off our butts,” said Marsha White, who dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and has an 8-year-old son. “I’m 27 going on 28. I need to get something going in my life. This gives me goals, so I won’t have to depend on a man anymore. I want to depend on myself--for my son’s sake.”

Other welfare recipients, however, disagree with one premise of the new contract: that single mothers with children should work to support their families and not lean on the government.

Debbie DeTrent, one of about 50 people at an orientation session in a large room at the Davenport job service office, said she still likes the old terms of the welfare system, which was originally set up to honor motherhood by offering financial support to widows and divorced women with children so they did not have to work.

“I feel our place is to be with our children,” said DeTrent, who has two children--ages 3 and 12--and has been on welfare since a divorce three years ago. “There’s too much going on in the world today--with guns and knives in the schools. I can’t see myself going to work. Who could I trust to take care of my children?

“But if I chose not to go to work or to school, I’m out--no benefits. I don’t think that is fair.”