County Tests Own Welfare Reform With Pilot Project

Ventura County officials have opened the doors to an experiment in welfare reform, a pilot program in south Oxnard designed to help 150 aid recipients trade in their welfare checks for payroll checks.

Unwilling to wait for state lawmakers to forge California’s version of the federal welfare reform law passed last year, county officials have their own theories on how best to get aid recipients off the dole and on the job.

And last week, 13 south Oxnard families newly approved to receive Aid to Families With Dependent Children began showing up not at the welfare office on the north side of town but at the Employment Development Department building at 5th Street and Ventura Boulevard.

Over the coming months, this pilot program will gradually expand to include 150 people. Their success or failure in the job market will be measured against another group of 150 aid recipients going through traditional welfare channels.

“This pilot project will help develop the ultimate structure that we will use to reform welfare in Ventura County,” said John K. Flynn, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, who has permanently moved his office from the County Government Center in Ventura to south Oxnard in part to be closer to the reform efforts.

The center “is going to turn into a facility unlike any governmental facility we’ve ever had,” he said. “We don’t want any old, stale bureaucratic models that have failed for years and years and years. We want a more streamlined model that sheds a lot of red tape, that serves the employer and employee both without discrimination.”

Last summer, state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) carried legislation that sought to put state and county agencies under one roof to better help aid recipients hurdle the barriers they face to employment, including child care, transportation, depression, health problems, schooling and alcoholism.

But the bill was vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson, who was working on his own welfare reform measures.

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But county social engineers decided to push on with a version of the Wright plan anyway.

They expect that once Democrats and Republicans in Sacramento finally do agree on how to overhaul the 60-year-old welfare system, there will be enough flexibility for counties to shape their own visions of reform.

“We didn’t want to just sit back and wait,” said Helen Reburn, deputy director of Ventura County’s social services agency. “Having the EDD site was an opportunity to put our vision into place before we are under the gun with the state legislation.”

Dubbed PRIDE--Partnerships to Restore Independence and Dignity Through Employment--the program will be expanded countywide in January. Officials will see what works and what does not over the coming months and will revise the welfare-to-work program to comply with all provisions in the yet-to-be-passed state welfare legislation.

“This is going to be very much of a training operation to see what is important and what is not,” said Craig Ichinose, a senior researcher in the county welfare department who will track the progress of both groups of recipients. “It’s hard to predict what will happen.”

The pilot program will be coordinated from the state Employment Development Department building in Oxnard, an agency that last month teamed up with the federally funded Workforce Development Department to create a one-stop job center for employers and employees.

Indeed, while part of the activity in the building will focus on finding jobs for welfare recipients, the center will help anyone who walks through the door looking for new or better employment.

Once aid recipients’ needs are assessed and addressed, they will be treated like anyone else looking to tap into the state and federal job-search resources.

“That’s how you integrate,” said Jonathan Barbieri, director of the Workforce Development Department, which is administered by the county. “You stop isolating people by entitlements or by categories . . . and you remove the stigma for the individual employers.”

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In two weeks, another key component to the project will begin across the street from the EDD building. Inside a converted restaurant, the Workforce Development Department will open a business resource center to help business owners craft marketing plans, draw on computer databases and develop personnel strategies.

“We have to appreciate the total picture,” Barbieri said. “What can we provide the employer that makes them want to come back? The more they come back, the more they look to this center for their employee needs, the better we’re going to be able to service the individual job seekers.”

County social services officials understand that helping some aid recipients find work won’t be easy.

An April survey of clients in the Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) program, the state’s existing welfare-to-work program, showed that half the respondents had trouble finding safe and affordable child care and low-cost job training services. Four out of 10 said they either had no transportation or owned unreliable cars.

Those problems, however, may be the easiest ones to solve. Hundreds of other clients in the survey said they had alcohol and drug addictions, mental and physical health disabilities, poor attitudes about work, or low self-esteem.

Each recipient’s case in the PRIDE program will be analyzed by a team of social workers, child care and job training specialists, mental health and drug dependency experts, child support officers, probation officers and any other appropriate agency.

Meanwhile, officials also will try to tie in to these welfare reform plans a $4.5-million state grant aimed at turning south Oxnard youths away from gangs and delinquency.

The three-year anti-crime program will begin this fall, looking to identify youth offenders with the goal of changing their lives and helping them become responsible members of their community.

Part of that effort involves work and opportunity, officials said.

“One of the best things for everyone concerned is for that kid to be a busy person, including having a job and making money,” said Calvin Remington, deputy director of the county’s Corrections Services Agency.

“People who get into this welfare system, it’s a difficult life that they lead. And many times their children end up as problem children in school, or end up in Juvenile Hall,” Flynn said. “We want to improve the lives of these people so they’re not ending up in trouble with the schools, in trouble with probation officers, in trouble with the district attorney, in trouble with the police, and mothers and fathers and neighbors, and so forth.”

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About 28,000 people--including 17,000 children--in Ventura County are reliant on monthly Aid to Families with Dependent Children checks.

Last year’s survey of GAIN clients included information from 808 south Oxnard welfare recipients--614 women and 194 men.

Six out of 10 said they were single parents. More than 65% had no high school diploma, and nearly 200 said they were not proficient English speakers.

And while such barriers to employment represent a substantial challenge to county officials, they say they remain excited about the experiment.

“We’re talking about changing a system that, for all of its good intentions, became a barrier in itself,” Barbieri said. “A lot of what’s about to happen is a tremendous opportunity to focus back on just the basic human situation, and for people to literally realize for themselves that there are opportunities, that they do have the capability, and that we are going to be able to bring an array of resources.

“I think it’s going to work. I think it’s going to improve people’s opportunity to get work.”