Welfare Plan Would Add Staff, Shift Assignments

Ventura County’s welfare reform efforts are intended to produce a greater number of gainfully employed people, smaller public assistance rolls and leaner government.

But for those results to take place, county agencies will have to be restructured--and bureaucracy will get bigger, at least in the short term.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will again revisit the county’s plan to carry out CalWORKS, the state’s new welfare program. And according to the latest estimate by county officials, the plan will require supervisors to reassign 182 employees, mostly from the Public Social Services Agency, as well as add more than 80 jobs to the county payroll in this and the next budget years.

But county residents should not be alarmed, according to Supervisor John K. Flynn, one of the leaders of the county’s 2-year-old welfare reform effort.

Helping welfare recipients enter the world of work--and overcome the adverse conditions that have held many of them back, from a lack of marketable skills to a need for affordable child care and transportation--takes more resources than simply making sure people are eligible for public assistance and handing out checks, he said.

But it is the only thing that is ultimately going to reduce the number of county families--now about 8,000--on the dole, he said. If the county can help half the people on welfare land full-time jobs, Flynn has said he would consider the program a success.

“I’m sensitive to what the public must think: ’83 new positions, here goes government again,’ ” Flynn said. “But people need to understand that we are doing something completely different.

“This is a second try at the War on Poverty,” he added. “We’ve got the experience and resources, and we can improve on what we did before. There will be fewer dropouts and gang members if we can make this work, not just smaller government.”

Other supervisors, however, are expressing concerns about expanding government.

“I’m a bit worried about this,” said Supervisor Frank Schillo. “I’ve been trying to reduce government, and here we are adding 83 new people. I did not expect this many new positions.”

But Schillo said he will support adding the positions, which requires a four-fifths vote. He believes the time is right for creative alternatives to old-fashioned public assistance.

“I seriously doubt anyone is going to vote against this,” he said. “I’m pleased at all the different things we are trying to do. We’re headed in the right direction.”

County leaders have no choice but to try something new. Like all California counties, Ventura County must implement CalWORKS, the welfare-to-work program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children at the start of the year.

CalWORKS is a response to the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act, which, among other things, restricts to five years the time most people can collect cash assistance and imposes strict work requirements. To continue receiving public aid, a single parent has to work or engage in work-related activities at least 32 hours a week. Counties can exempt only families that are deemed extreme hardship cases.

To that end, county officials are moving forward with a multifaceted approach to getting welfare recipients on the path to self-sufficiency: creating a team of employees from county agencies, partnering with nonprofit agencies and the private sector, and seeking volunteers and mentors. The state is providing millions of dollars to get the programs rolling.

“Get a job, get a better job, get a career,” goes the program’s slogan, reflecting the desire not just to get welfare recipients jobs, but work that will fully sustain them.

The cornerstone of the county program is a series of seven “one-stop job and career centers” from Oxnard to Simi Valley. The public assistance “supermarkets” would allow needy people eligible for CalWORKS to walk in and tap a variety of resources at once, such as work listings, child care, educational and vocational training opportunities, and job transportation.

Each center would handle 1,000 to 1,500 families and would be staffed by employees from a variety of county agencies, such as public assistance eligibility experts, probation officers, social workers and child care advisors. That team, in turn, would work closely with community organizations, businesses, job mentors and community colleges to help people get jobs or learn what it takes to get them.

The one-stop centers “will become the backbone of this new delivery system,” said Randall Feltman, a deputy director in the chief administrative office whose primary job since last year has been to put CalWORKS into effect. “We have 8,000 different families on this plan, and we can’t be bouncing them around to different agencies.

“And there’s much more responsibility, because there will be no pointing back and forth between agencies,” Feltman added. “We’ll all be working together.”

But assembling such a team requires a radical shift of 182 government positions, as well as training of county employees for their new roles. UC Davis has developed a program to help government workers adjust to CalWORKS and will send educators to Ventura County for a crash course, officials said.

It also requires more personnel, and county officials are requesting the addition of 84 positions in the 1997-98 and 1998-99 fiscal years.

Of those, 67 would be hired in this fiscal year, but because of the influx of state and federal money to get the program in place, the net cost to the county’s general fund would only be $123,760. The cost for the remainder of the positions next fiscal year would be $157,700.

The majority of the positions--61--would go to the Public Social Services Agency, which would have to process more welfare-related paperwork than ever, along with handling its new CalWORKS responsibilities. The Behavioral Health Department and the Public Health Department each would receive seven new positions. The Probation Department would get four new employees, information systems would get three, and the auditor-controller’s office would get one.

That was the initial sum last week, totaling 83 new jobs, but county officials decided to add a pilot position for the child support division of the district attorney’s office, bringing the total to 84. The child support enforcement officer would work out of one of the job centers on a trial basis.

“Everybody, regardless of political persuasion, wanted the previous [welfare] program to change,” said Helen Reburn, the Public Social Services Agency’s chief deputy director. “But the reality is, a program where you are giving people a check is far less expensive than the one we are pursuing now.”

That is not to say that county officials aren’t looking for ways to keep the bottom line low. In fact, many of their efforts are directed at responding to pleas from President Clinton on down to have volunteers and community groups take some of the burden from government. Realistically, they have no choice, since there is no other way to accomplish the lofty goals of the CalWORKS program, even with the showering of state and federal funds.

For example, county officials, Supervisor Kathy Long and the Oxnard Soroptimists Club are working on a program in which working women would donate clothing to needy CalWORKS women--and provide advice on how to dress for career success.

To address what is perhaps the most critical shortcoming of CalWORKS--a lack of transportation to get people to work or school--Flynn and county officials are discussing hiring the Salvation Army in Oxnard to operate a system of van pools for welfare-to-work participants. The Salvation Army already operates such a program in Alaska.

And county officials will ask supervisors Tuesday to hand off the centralization of child care for CalWORKS participants to a nonprofit organization. The county’s two big nonprofit child care providers, the Children’s Home Society and Child Development Resources, would likely be the bidders for the contract.

County officials are also discussing novel ideas, such as having some CalWORKS mothers take care of others’ children after special training at community colleges.

“We’re setting very ambitious goals to set every CalWORKS person up with a mentor if they want one,” Feltman said. “We’re especially interested in working-women mentors, since women make up 90% of adults in this program.

“Given the fact that this is a revolution and development of a whole new government infrastructure, we are not adding a lot of positions,” he added. “We’ve devoted a lot of energy to keeping the number as low as possible.”