New Realities for Recipients, Caseworkers

After waiting four hours, Linda Sharp was led to a tiny cubicle by a welfare worker. She spilled out the intimate details of her life to the stranger: Bank accounts? None. Cars? She borrowed a neighbor’s to get here. Jobs? None. Information on the father of her children? Little.

Then the worker, Gina Swank, broke the news to the 43-year-old single mother of twins: no chance of a lifetime on welfare.

“You need to think of it more as a savings account for emergencies than income,” Swank told Sharp. As a new applicant--she last received welfare in 1996--she will receive a maximum 18 months of welfare checks this time, and a lifetime cap of five years.

“That’s 60 checks total, forever,” Swank emphasized.

Without fanfare, welfare reform has moved out of carpeted congressional chambers, off the governor’s desk and away from cantankerous county supervisors’ meetings to the front lines. On Feb. 17, the Orange County Social Services Agency began implementing the nation’s most sweeping changes in aid to the poor since 1931. By year’s end, more than 22,000 adults on the county’s welfare rolls will be told they need to get a job and get off the dole in two years.

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“It is monumental,” Social Services Agency Director Larry Leaman said.

The changes are enormous for welfare workers as well as recipients. One Anaheim welfare supervisor, Pat Stuteville, said: “Before, it was always just shuffling papers. We didn’t want to talk to the clients. If they got a job, it was actually a problem; we had to re-budget. . . . Now we want to talk to them, we want to help them. It’s the most positive job I’ve had in 16 years.”

Leaman and others acknowledge that not all staff, and certainly not all clients, are as excited. There are plenty of incentives to ease the transition, however. Far from cutting taxpayer dollars, substantial state and federal funds have been earmarked for welfare reform. An estimated $100 million will be pumped into Orange County in the next year, said Angelo Doti, self-sufficiency director for the Social Services Agency.

Child care, transportation and even vouchers to buy interview clothes will be provided to recipients. And when they find work, they will still receive aid at first. For instance, even if Sharp earns as much as $800 a month, Swank told her, she will receive nearly $300 a month in assistance for as long as 18 months and free day care for as long as two years.

“That means you’ll be living on $1,075 a month instead of $565,” Swank said. An adult with two children currently receives $565 a month.

“It sounds good, as long as it works the way they say it’s going to work,” Sharp said guardedly to a reporter. “I don’t want anyone else watching my kids, though. I want to stay home with them.”

The news had not sunk in that to collect anything, she will have to either work 32 hours a week or spend that time looking for a job and undergoing extensive skills training ranging from personal grooming to computer training.

“The message from Washington is the taxpayers are not going to subsidize stay-at-home moms anymore,” Leaman said.

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Others are getting the message. Eligibility technician Eileen Lafferty smiles at Melissa Avalos, an energetic 19-year-old mother sitting in Lafferty’s office for job counseling. Avalos has a part-time job at Pizza Hut but knows she is not earning enough. She recently earned her high school diploma through night school, has filled out 17 job applications in the last month and is looking hard every day. She has to--her benefits run out next year.

“It’s scary, but I think it’s fair,” Avalos said. “Half of me doesn’t like it. I don’t like being pushed from behind, but the other half of me thinks it’s good. It’ll give those people who want to stay on for life, excuse me, a good kick in the ass.”

After Avalos leaves, Stuteville, using the social services office lingo, asks Lafferty, “Was she cooperative?”

“Extremely high functioning,” Lafferty responds.

Of course, not everyone is happy. Stuteville and other staff members handle phone calls each day from screaming longtime clients who received fliers with their checks last month explaining the changes.

“He said they never made him work in Fresno, and he isn’t about to work in Orange,” Stuteville said, sighing, as he hung up the phone after dealing with an irate caller. Half an hour later, a woman swears she is disabled, even though her workers’ compensation claim has been denied.

One-third to half of the county caseload is mentally ill, alcoholic or has other substance abuse problems, according to several surveys. Those clients will be the hardest to tackle, Stuteville said.

Lafferty’s next appointment after Avalos, a single father of three, is a no-show. He’s also missed a job interview she helped him set up. If he doesn’t shape up, he’ll lose his piece of the family’s benefits, $120 of a $565 total package.

“They can choose to not be aided by us, but we will start sanctioning very quickly, much more quickly than in the past . . . as soon as 20 days,” Stuteville said.

Still, there are plenty of success stories. The pilot program Stuteville runs has helped 400 people make the transition from welfare. Even a self-proclaimed gang member with a shaved head and tattoos was successfully placed in a warehouse job. The young man also is receiving some public assistance, since the mother of his young child was killed in a drive-by shooting.

“That was his wake-up call, when he lost her,” Stuteville said. “If he can get a job and keep it, there’s no reason anybody else can’t.”