Suit Planned Over Welfare-to-Work Program

Attorneys for four Legal Aid agencies intend to file a complaint today against Los Angeles County’s welfare-to-work program, charging that people who don’t speak English are denied access to a full range of services, including job training.

The complaint alleges that the county’s Department of Public Social Services violated the civil rights of an undetermined number of welfare recipients by denying them an equal opportunity to participate and succeed in a program that is supposed to wean them off federal assistance.

Los Angeles County, the complaint charges, has a two-tiered welfare-to-work system. The county social services department handles English and Spanish-speaking clients, but those who speak other languages are parceled out to 16 different providers that often lack the county’s resources.

In September, the county’s welfare-to-work programs, CalWORKs, had 218,754 clients. About 33%, or 72,647, are Spanish speakers and 8% speak other foreign languages, including Armenian, Cambodian, Russian and Vietnamese.

With many of the foreign languages, the county has contracted with community groups that have experience working with immigrants and refugees, said Eileen Kelly, chief of the county’s GAIN division, one of the programs in CalWORKs.

“The county certainly shares their concerns about the non-English-, non-Spanish-speaking clients,” Kelly said. “There must be 30 languages in this category. Many of these issues are very complicated.”

Lawyers contend that because the Supreme Court has ruled language discrimination is tantamount to discrimination based on national origin, the county has violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It bars any program receiving federal funds from such discriminatory practices. Lawyers plan to file the complaint in San Francisco at the regional office of civil rights for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Why is it that limited English proficiency folks have been marginalized?” said Muneer Ahmad, a staff attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, the lead legal firm writing the complaint. “The county has failed to keep civil rights obligations at the forefront of their minds while crafting a program.”

The danger, lawyers say, are clients who may have their five-year federal lifetime limits of aid wrongly reduced or terminated. Many also may not get the full range of welfare-to-work services that are available only for 18 to 24 months and that can help them from falling deeper into poverty.

Legal Aid lawyers point to the case of Hong Tran, a 28-year-old mother of two whose husband is a Pizza Hut deliveryman. A refugee who moved to California in 1989, Tran twice requested forms in Vietnamese and a caseworker who spoke the language.

Neither materialized and after receiving documents in English that she couldn’t read, Tran lost her benefits two years ago because she had not signed a welfare-to-work contract. The family, Ahmad said, was forced to borrow money to pay for food and rent.

Last summer, Asian Pacific American Legal Center attorneys successfully had Tran’s $3,500 in back benefits reinstated.

The complaint cites several deficiencies in the county’ welfare-to-work program, including:

* Failure to provide translated notices, despite state law and the availability of many such translated forms from the state.

* Failure to offer bilingual caseworkers or free interpreter services.

* A lack of language-accessible job training and vocational education programs for many limited English speakers.

* Lack of bilingual providers to offer key components of GAIN, including child care, vocational assessment, domestic violence counseling and mental health and substance abuse services.

* For nearly a year, people who didn’t speak English or Spanish were denied access to ESL classes.

English- and Spanish-speaking clients can often find services at one county office, while those who speak other languages often don’t receive the services at all, the complaint states.

As a result, these clients often end up “parked” in a “work experience” program that involves low-level clerical or maintenance skills, “and they’re not getting skills to move them out of welfare,” said Christina Chung of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

The complaint, which was brought by three other co-counsels--the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services--seeks corrective action by the county, including bilingual services and a roll-back on welfare-to-work benefits if time limits ran out and participants suffered discriminatory policies.