Counties’ Tailor-Made Welfare Reforms Debut

In one month of historic reforms, the landscape of welfare has changed dramatically in California as counties embark on innovations to overcome barriers to employment faced by the poor.

In Ventura County, where transportation is a frequent problem, a pilot program allows the county to purchase used fleet vehicles, fix them up and sell them to recipients at low cost.

In El Dorado, where there are few big employers, officials work with two casinos in nearby Nevada to train and hire recipients.

In San Mateo, where jobs are plentiful but housing is costly, the county intends to provide short-term rent subsidies.

And in Placer, the sheriff has been directed to give unclaimed bicycles to the welfare department for recipients who need transportation for short distances.

To comply with a legislative requirement that they devise new welfare plans by Jan. 10, California’s 58 counties have designed vastly different systems tailored to problems and attitudes in their areas.

Their efforts have set off an explosion of experimentation, as each county grapples with the core issue of welfare reform: How to make poor parents, especially single mothers, self-supporting and ensure that their children are not neglected.

The result, a Times review of the plans found, is a crazy quilt of services, programs and requirements that vary from locality to locality.

“We’ve thrown them [counties] the biggest social change in this century, and most of them I think are pretty excited about it,” said Diane Cummins, Gov. Pete Wilson’s deputy director of finance. “They’re thinking outside the box to make it work.”

From tiny Del Norte at the Oregon border to San Diego, counties have made radical changes to convert welfare offices into centers that promote employment.

Some counties are experimenting with privatizing certain welfare functions; others are transforming welfare offices into one-stop centers that offer families on aid a smorgasbord of services.

Adopting a tough love approach, some counties require recipients to immediately engage in work or training at least 32 hours a week, while others settle for 20 hours.

“They’ve seized the opportunity for local flexibility,” said Bruce Wagstaff, deputy director of the welfare-to-work division of the California Department of Social Services.

Unlike most states, California has turned welfare reform over to its counties. As a result, the new system did not actually take shape until last month, when the counties submitted their welfare plans to the state for certification.

Counties were given wide latitude as long as they complied with minimum work requirements and time limits set by federal and state laws.

In Santa Clara County, where the success of Silicon Valley has created both a booming economy and a high cost of living, officials decided that the challenge of welfare reform is to keep people employed and boost them up the job ladder.

Santa Clara invested heavily in job retention programs like “job keeper,” a 24-hour hotline for recipients and former recipients who face a crisis that might threaten their jobs. The county also established Employment Connection Centers equipped with phone banks, job listings, computers and staff to assist those who lose their jobs. And officials have been urging employers to provide training that helps entry-level employees move to higher-paying jobs.

“In our county, due to the dynamic nature of the jobs, even our most highly skilled people must constantly upgrade their skills,” said Alette Lundeberg, manager of the county’s Employment Support Initiative. “I think getting our moms and dads to do that once they’re employed may be the hardest part of our job in the long run.”

In neighboring San Mateo County, officials addressed the high cost of living by establishing a low-interest family loan program with private funds and a short-term rent subsidy program for new jobholders. Special family self-sufficiency teams were organized to deal with families where long-standing problems such as domestic violence or drugs are barriers to employment.

“People who end up on welfare for long periods usually have a number of issues in their family,” said Lois Koenig, assistant to the Human Services Agency director. “You need to deal with those issues . . . otherwise they’ll be back six months later.”

The county plans appear to reflect local attitudes about welfare recipients and the political climate.

In Fresno, a county with high unemployment, the Board of Supervisors decided to require 32 hours a week of work activity although community groups protested that job shortages would make that too burdensome for recipients.

In San Diego, officials said they intended to seek state permission to punish entire families when the adults fail to participate in mandatory employment activities.

“Our Board of Supervisors was crystal clear that it wanted a strong emphasis on work-first and sanctions,” said Health and Human Services Agency Director Robert K. Ross.

Los Angeles and Orange counties said they may consider offering community service jobs to recipients who lose aid when they reach the 60-month federal time limit.

In the agricultural counties, the design of welfare plans was dictated by the realities of high unemployment and shortages in transportation services. “Rural communities are at a tremendous disadvantage,” said Kim Gaghagen, Glenn County Human Resources Agency director. “We have to develop many of these things from scratch. We have to develop transportation systems where there are none. We have to develop child-care systems where there is none.”

To cope with its transportation problems, Glenn County worked out an agreement to transport some recipients to work in taxis. Gaghagen said the county also plans to have recipients take turns driving each other to work in shuttle vans.

Several rural counties said job shortages had forced them to place recipients in jobs many miles away.

El Dorado County said it already had an informal agreement with Harrah’s of Lake Tahoe and Harvey’s Resort and Casino to hire and train recipients for casino jobs in Nevada.

Officials in Plumas County said their search for jobs had stretched all the way to Chico, 90 miles away, and Reno, 80 miles away.

The plans by the counties are scheduled for a review before the Assembly Human Services Committee on Tuesday. Chairwoman Dion Aroner (D-Berkeley) said job creation and transportation problems are among the issues she intends to highlight.

“They are issues we never really addressed when we approved welfare reform legislation,” she said.

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A Patchwork of Plans

Under state and federal guidelines, California’s 58 counties have been required to come up with individual welfare reform plans. A review of these plans shows that welfare in California has become a patchwork, with each county having a unique program for steering recipients into employment. Some highlights of the state’s new picture:

* Work requirements: Counties were almost evenly divided between those that decided to require recipients to work 32 hours a week and those requiring only 20 hours. A few opted for 26 hours and one county, San Mateo, required 40 hours.

* Exemptions: More than a third of the counties took a tough approach to work requirements for the mothers of newborns, allowing an exemption of only 12 weeks. Other counties permitted six months to a year.

* One-stop centers: To make it easier for recipients, many counties are offering job placement, training and mental health and drug counseling at a single location.

* Job stability: To help former recipients keep their jobs and stay off welfare, many counties are offering counseling, transportation and child-care assistance for up to a year after people have become employed and left the rolls.

* Private sector: For the first time, every county in the state has involved the private sector in welfare reforms, using business people to help find jobs and set up training and counseling for recipients.

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Selected features of welfare plans in major counties:

* Los Angeles: Has set up an experimental program under which the county will guarantee child support to some working mothers to keep their families off welfare.

* Orange: Has developed major partnerships with big employers such as Xerox and Marriott to hire and train welfare recipients.

* Ventura: Has set up a program to train parents ages 18-25 who do not have custody of welfare children so they can get jobs that will enable them to pay child support.

* San Francisco: Is contracting with a private company to help place recipients in jobs. The hotel and restaurant union is working with officials to establish culinary training opportunities.

* San Diego: Pays wages, rather than welfare benefits, while providing community service jobs for hard-to-employ people and those living in economically distressed areas.

* Marin: Has established a mentor system for recipients who find jobs but still need employment counseling. A mentor is assigned to each recipient for a minimum of three months with the hope that the relationship will last at least a year.