GOP’s Welfare Proposal Threatens Job Skills Program : At Mission College, counselors offer help finding work as well as providing training and support services. In the end, many find independence.

In Washington’s frantic effort to reduce welfare costs, we stand to lose a potentially skilled segment of the American labor force.

Five million families know the reality of welfare, one in every six children living in California. By 2000, mothers will give birth to about 10 million more children who will enter the system. A single parent with one child struggles to survive on $540 a month.

The system needs changing, but how? On March 24 the Republican welfare bill, HR4, was passed by the House. It would end entitlements, give states control and cut benefits.

Unfortunately, the GOP majority’s proposals on welfare threaten the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Program, which in California is known as Greater Avenues for Independence, or GAIN. States would have to choose between keeping these programs or maintaining adequate support for mothers and children. There is a real danger that what finally emerges will do little or nothing to address welfare recipients’ need for job training. Furthermore, child and health-care benefits would no longer be mandated for Aid to Families With Dependent Children recipients who need to participate in school, training or work.

“Everybody knows you’re not going to get people off welfare if you don’t have child care, if you don’t have training, if you don’t have health care,” says the House minority leader, Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

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I direct, counsel and teach mothers on welfare in Mission College’s Career Pathways and GAIN programs, and I agree with him.

I see single mothers between the ages of 19 and 35, economically disadvantaged students from Sylmar, Pacoima and San Fernando. Most have worked at minimum-wage jobs at some time in their lives. They are in school because they need to learn a trade to get off welfare.

Career Pathways provides vocational classes and supportive services to welfare recipients and other “at-risk” youths, such as pregnant and parenting teen-agers, gang members and high school dropouts. Participants train in high-demand occupations in office administration, child care, culinary arts and intergenerational care.

Just getting a job does not necessarily lead to an independent future if the job is low-paying, because the person has not been trained and there is no transitional support in the form of child care. A high school dropout who becomes pregnant at 16, gets AFDC benefits and is forced into a minimum-wage job is apt to be back on welfare in a few months.

The majority of welfare recipients want to find employment but are not equipped emotionally or educationally to hold a stable job. They need help finding work, training and support services. Although not everyone benefits from the programs we offer, many of them do. Here are three examples from my recent experience:

* Marisela got pregnant two years ago and again last year. She had no education and no job before last August, when she found out about our program. Two weeks ago, I attended a luncheon honoring the first students to complete our program in providing care for older people. Marisela was among them. She will seek work caring for elderly people in nursing homes.

* Suzanne, a mother of two, is a Career Pathways participant who received her child development certificate. She did it despite being in pain, literally, from an abusive relationship. Last semester she had the guts to seek help and get out of the relationship. This semester she received the Mission College President’s Honor Certificate for completing 12 units with a 3.5 grade-point average. She will become a teacher’s aide, then return to college to become a teacher.

* Cynthia and Maria have taken two semesters of office administration classes under Career Pathways. Maria is a former welfare recipient. Cynthia, who has never been on welfare, heard about the program through a community organization. Both are married teen-age mothers who could not afford to go back to school. They get financial help for child care, books and transportation so they can take classes in business English, typing and computers. This semester, both found employment. Cynthia works 30 hours a week as a receptionist. Maria and her husband are starting a printing business.

The college has successfully placed students in offices, schools, restaurants and care facilities. One hundred percent of students from last year’s culinary arts class got jobs in food-related occupations. The college gets calls from day-care centers and those needing in-home care, as well as businesses seeking employees with the kind of training we deliver.

As the stories above suggest, many of the young women who come to our program have multiple problems. Many live in overcrowded conditions and suffer domestic abuse. There is real heroism in their successful efforts to pull themselves into good, steady jobs with a future.

For taxpayers the benefit is obvious: the reduction of tax expenditures for welfare and the increase in tax income from the employment of skilled workers.

I hope we are allowed to keep it up.