Welfare Clock Will Run Out Before Job Supply Catches Up

As the coordinator of a network of 1,000 community-based social service agencies, I hold a front-row seat in observing the delivery and impact of welfare reform in Los Angeles County. Here’s what I see: Welfare reform is failing in every respect.

First, the time limits imposed by reform are arbitrary and counterproductive. Politics, not thoughtful insight, created the 18- to 24-month limit for mothers to receive aid in one stretch of time. The clock will run out for the first of L.A. County’s nearly 170,000 adult recipients this October.

Reducing welfare rolls through time limits might sound good in theory but what about the reality? Linda R., a mother of two, told us at a recent meeting: “I don’t need a clock to go off to motivate me to get a job. Poverty has been enough. Getting my kids into decent clothes is enough. I resent the government saying they’ll help me and my kids but then will pull the rug out from under us.”

Support services that help eliminate barriers to employment could help thousands of people like Linda, but L.A. County is not effectively providing them. Fewer than 4% of the county’s adult welfare caseload has been referred to services for domestic violence, mental health and/or substance abuse problems--all of which are barriers to employment. In addition, the county’s child care referral and reimbursement systems are dysfunctional; tens of thousands of mothers seeking work are unable to get child care for their children.

The story of Joyce M., a client at a prestigious West Los Angeles service agency, is all too common. Joyce, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, found a secretarial job and was excited at the idea of getting off welfare. Because she could not afford child care, she wanted her sister to take care of her son, which is supposed to be allowed under welfare reform. But the county welfare staff forced her to go to a specific child care center, which was dirty, rundown, had hours that did not match her new work schedule and didn’t take children who weren’t potty-trained. Joyce went back to the welfare office, but the staff was unsympathetic. Not wanting to leave her son with the county’s suggested center, not able to afford it on her own and confused over whether her sister could help out, Joyce missed the first day of her new job. She was fired.

But the most damaging part of welfare reform is its so-called work first philosophy. Work first hearkens back to England’s Poor Law of 1834: “If any would not work, neither would she eat.” However, in the L.A. County of 1999, there isn’t enough job training, or jobs for that matter, to help welfare mothers earn a living. A recent study by the Milken Institute found that Los Angeles County would need a 17% increase in the total number of jobs available to help welfare recipients find work in their skill ranges. A study released last year by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit group that studies welfare reform in Los Angeles County, showed a 5.4-to-1 ratio between the number of welfare recipients and unemployed workers who want an unskilled job and the number of jobs available.

Without more jobs, training becomes critical in helping recipients locate work. But the county has enrolled only 150 people in its federally funded training programs out of the estimated 20,000 or so who might be eligible. Nor does the system encourage them to get further education. Instead, recipients are referred to motivational seminars and presentations on how to dress for success--the theory apparently that being eager and neatly dressed can overcome the lack of marketable skills.

What does this add up to? The welfare rolls certainly are going down; half the people who go through the new welfare system drop out in frustration or are pushed off, their grants withheld for breaking a rule they often did not know about. It is no coincidence that there are more homeless children today in America than at any other time since the Depression, according to a study released recently by Better Homes Fund, a national nonprofit group that uses research and fieldwork to recommend policies and programs to benefit the homeless.

Of those able to tough it out in the system, some do indeed find jobs. But these new workers do not earn enough to move above the poverty line. The vast majority of them still require public assistance to feed their families. Meanwhile, since the system does not effectively provide support services, the county is carrying a $400-million welfare surplus of unused state and federal money for these services. This is obscene, given the needs out there.

It is time for all levels of government to reassess welfare reform. Congress needs to replace time limits as a strategy for getting people off welfare with an increased emphasis on supporting impoverished and working poor families through services like child care and drug counseling. The state and the county should reverse its “work first, jobs last” philosophy and instead invest in people first by creating jobs and training programs.

So far, the effort and money going into welfare reform barely allows poor families to build a career ladder one rung high. When the economy slows down, this rung will break, and low-skilled workers will be the first to fall.