Serving Up Welfare as a Half-Full Glass : Social Workers Discuss Program That Emphasizes Job Finding Over Job Training

With all the budget slashing and welfare trashing going on in legislative halls these days, you might expect a few long faces among social workers, job counselors and others who work with society’s downtrodden.

But then again, these are people used to declaring the glass half-full. A single mother who has lived on welfare for a decade is a potential data entry clerk. A fruitless job search is an incentive to get an education. And--now more than ever--funding cuts are an opportunity for invigorating reform.

So when hundreds of those who work with welfare recipients gathered in Los Angeles this week, the mood was surprisingly upbeat, as participants swapped ideas for nudging people into work, boosting program success rates and retaining funding.

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“Before I came here, I thought I was just going to hear bad news,” admitted Paula Schaffner, an adult education teacher in San Louis Obispo County. “I’m very much realizing it’s not going to be business as usual,” she added, but her chats with other welfare workers had persuaded her that the reforms “might make things better.”

Participants insisted they were not caving in to conservative pressure by shifting emphasis from traditional training and education to a more hard-nosed tactic of pushing welfare recipients into jobs.

They may no longer be able to offer the intensive, expensive boosts that Los Angeles resident Letha Williams told of receiving--a package of government funds that let her attend computer classes and send her son to a private preschool for a full year before landing work as a telemarketer. But they will still provide the kind of quick intervention that 33-year-old Elizabeth Duncan of West Covina said helped her find work in the billing department of an HMO after just two weeks of classes in resume writing and interview skills.

“It’s no sell-out,” said Dwayne Ross, an employment service specialist in San Bernardino County. Wearing a bright orange button exhorting welfare clients to “get over” their fear of job interviews, Ross said he was looking forward to the more hard-edged approach: “We can’t baby-sit [clients] any more. They need to be independent instead of us always grabbing them by the hand and showing them the way.”

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Nibbling Danish pastries in an Airport Hilton conference room, Ross had joined the conference to discuss a welfare-to-work program called Greater Avenues for Independence, or GAIN.

About 1,000 people a month enter Los Angeles’ GAIN program, run by the county Office of Education. The participants, all of whom subsist on federal welfare checks, receive financial help with child care and transportation, plus counseling from a caseworker.

With help, 38% of participants find work within three weeks, usually taking entry-level jobs just above minimum wage with such companies as United Parcel Service or unions such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Once they start working, 60% retain their job for at least a year, program coordinator Dan Miller said.

The GAIN slogan, “A job, a better job, a career,” reflects the program’s new focus: to find participants entry-level work, then urge them to work their way up the ladder. Instead of relying on government handouts, participants are encouraged to start earning money right away, even in a menial job, so eventually they will be able to pay for their own education.

To emphasize that message, California Secretary of Health and Welfare Sandra Smoley unveiled a new campaign Friday dubbed “Work Pays.” Through television ads, posters and an educational video, the state hopes to encourage welfare clients to get jobs. Now, about 14% have at least part-time jobs.

The Work Pays campaign might be a hard sell.

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“A lot of welfare recipients would prefer to have training instead of employment,” acknowledged Sandra Grady, a Los Angeles GAIN worker. Her counterpart in Ventura County, Monica Ortiz, added that “there’s a general feeling among my clients that something is owed to them.”

But converts to the jobs-over-training approach insist they can break that sense of entitlement by insisting that clients work.

Congress has already proposed cutting off government checks after a few years on the dole. Anticipating that welfare reforms will dry up funding for programs like GAIN, Riverside County case manager Kevin Gaines urged his colleagues to prove their effectiveness by embarking on an all-out effort to help their clients find work.

“It scares a lot of people, because they’re not used to caring about [job placement] numbers,” Gaines said.

“I want them to know it’s OK to step out of where they feel comfortable and expect themselves to do better--and expect their participants to get out there and get a doggone job.”