County OKs Bare-Bones Welfare Plan

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a skeletal plan for implementing welfare reform Tuesday, taking a tentative first step in the nation’s unprecedented attempt to move recipients of the assistance into jobs.

Among the few key items approved were provisions that mothers be exempt from welfare-to-work programs until their youngest child is 1 year old and that other single parents be required to engage in 32 hours of work or related activities each week in order to remain eligible for a cash grant.

The county was required to submit an outline to the state by this coming Saturday explaining how it will implement reforms under California’s recently enacted CalWORKS program or face penalties and the loss of state and federal funding for critical social services.

The plan approved Tuesday satisfies Sacramento’s demands, but its bare-bones nature pleased almost no one present--not the five supervisors, not the welfare administrators who presented the plan and not the representatives of community groups.

But the supervisors voiced hope that the plan will soon be fleshed out and serve as a national model, one with enough flexibility and durability to meet the diverse needs of a welfare system larger than that of any other county in the nation and of many states.

More than 1.6 million county residents receive some form of public assistance, with 768,000 enrolled in the largest cash assistance program, formerly known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children and now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Under federal laws enacted last year, most welfare recipients can get benefits for no more than five years over the course of their lives. Each state can exempt 20% of families as hardship cases. The head of each family on welfare must find work within two years, or the family loses benefits.

Los Angeles County will receive first-year funding of $345 million from the state and federal governments to implement welfare-to-work programs.

The 32-hour workweek was adopted despite the fears of some welfare recipients and their advocates that the stringent standard will prove difficult to meet under a new, untested system.

Supervisors also approved creation of a committee to review and evaluate the implementation of CalWORKS in the county. The committee, whose size and makeup have not yet been determined, comes in response to concerns voiced by supervisors and community advocates that the public maintain some input throughout a process that will now extend into 1999.

And, perhaps most important, the supervisors agreed to adopt a timetable for considering other key issues.

Welfare officials had concluded that proposals in important areas such as child care, transportation and job development could be most efficiently dealt with over the course of several months rather than all at once. Despite some reservations, most of the supervisors agreed.

Los Angeles County “can be the showcase, but I don’t see any of the details here,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina, addressing her remarks to Department of Public Social Services Director Lynn W. Bayer. “I am hopeful we’re going to get meat on these bones soon, but that is all it is right now, bare bones.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky addressed the same theme.

“No one is going to be satisfied that we don’t have this whole thing all tied down with a nice bow and a rose on top,” he said. “The way we are approaching it now does not lay out all the roads in the map, but it does have the major interstates on it, and we will get to the streets and roads.”

Under the new plan, 14 working groups that have been hashing out welfare issues over the last six months will continue to meet and will offer separate specific plans for transforming public assistance in the county.

Bayer sought to assure the supervisors that the details they were seeking would materialize.

“The plans we’re going to submit will be extremely full,” she said. “This approach will give us additional time to work with the board offices, to get into more details and to focus more light and attention on all of these issues.”

Under the tentative timetable approved, the board would consider specific proposals for facilities, staffing and budget issues in February. Child care, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse programs would be handled in March and child support in April. Job creation initiatives would be taken up in June.

This strategy will not hinder the provision of services to welfare recipients, officials say. For example, CalWORKS will not be launched in the county until April, so some issues do not have to be resolved now.

Los Angeles County is not alone in barely meeting the deadline. As of the new year, only a handful had submitted plans, state officials said, and most are also rudimentary.

In Orange County, supervisors adopted a plan Tuesday that also requires welfare recipients to work 32 hours each week. Unlike the Los Angeles County plan, however, county officials there will decide on a case-by-case basis how long mothers with infant children should remain out of work, ranging from 12 weeks to one year.

In Los Angeles, some community advocates voiced frustration Tuesday at the slow pace of resolving many issues of deep concern.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Sam Mistrano, program director for the Human Services Network, a coalition of community groups. “Yes, we want the county to take the time to get things right, but hopefully recipients will not be left in the dust while [officials] are trying to get up to speed.”

Supervisors expressed particular concern that caseworkers receive the training needed to usher in the new era of welfare reform.

“If reform is going to work in America it’s going to have to work in L.A County,” Supervisor Don Knabe said.