Welfare Work Program Said to Be Limited in Key Areas

Although Ventura County’s welfare-to-work program has surpassed local expectations and persuaded even lifetime recipients to work for their aid checks, social workers say there are serious limits to the program.

Women struggling with depression, drug and alcohol problems, issues of domestic violence and the looming threat of homelessness lack a support system needed to successfully enter the work force, social workers and county officials say.

Stronger partnerships must be formed between the county’s Behavioral Health Department and law enforcement agencies to ensure that women who need help prosecuting an abusive husband, fighting a drug problem or recovering from years of abuse have the means to do so, Human Services Agency Director Barbara Fitzgerald said.

Once a recipient has the support to address these core problems, that person will have the confidence and stability to seek and sustain employment, Fitzgerald said.

“They take three steps forward and then three steps back,” Ventura social worker Janis Anderson said. “You’re not going to cure some lifelong pattern in 18 to 22 months.”

Since January, more than 200 Ventura County welfare recipients have been required to leave the jobs program because they didn’t find lasting employment within the two-year time limit.

Now, they must work 32-hour-per-week community service jobs to continue receiving aid.

This requirement may unfairly reduce recipients’ chances for the job-skill training or counseling needed to get them out of poverty, social workers say.

A survey conducted in January by the League of Women Voters of Ventura County showed 53.6% of the 28 families interviewed blamed language barriers, job layoffs and past drug and alcohol problems for their inability to support their families.

League member Ann Gist Levin, who helped coordinate the study, said Ventura County’s efforts have been stunted by federal regulations limiting the type of services the jobs program can offer.

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The needs of welfare recipients are more complex than just finding employment, she said.

“It’s an educational problem, it’s an economic problem, it’s a social problem,” Gist said.

The state’s welfare program, called CalWORKS, was initiated after the federal government ordered counties to significantly reduce public aid caseloads or risk losing federal funds. There is a five-year lifetime limit for welfare recipients.

Ventura County officials launched the local jobs program in 1998 with seven job and career centers and partnerships with colleges in Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark.

A more enhanced partnership between the Human Services Agency and the Behavioral Health Department could bring more state funding for mental health services and drug and alcohol programs for welfare recipients, Fitzgerald said.

“People who touch our services touch a multiple of services,” she said. “Women who have been in situations for many, many years really need group support to know they aren’t in this by themselves.”

In Ventura County, about 5,600 families, mostly single mothers with two children, remain on the welfare rolls.

About 450 families leave the program each month for a variety of reasons, said Craig Ichinose, a senior researcher with the Human Services Agency.

That is nearly half the 700 families who left the program on average each month when the welfare caseload reached its peak in the mid-1990s, Ichinose said.

“The margin of people coming in and going out of the program is getting smaller and smaller,” Ichinose said.

Under the terms of the program, those who fail to show up for job interviews, miss appointments or quit a job for unjustified reasons are cut from the welfare rolls.

An adult’s check is reduced on average from $600 to $480 if the person refuses to work, but their children will continue to receive aid, regardless of their parents’ status, because California is among a handful of states that provides a safety net for kids.

The adults can return to the welfare program if their two-year job search limit has not expired and if they agree to keep looking for work.

“The old program was called an entitlement,” Anderson said. “And that’s the attitude the clients had. That’s changed. The realization is that there’s a limit and the time is up.”

Patricia Guerra said she has lived most of her life on welfare and the first and only job the 39-year-old mother of five ever held was one she was required to accept to keep her aid checks coming.

Working outside the home was so intimidating to Guerra that she relinquished her aid check for a month by refusing to take an office skills class.

She lived off the welfare checks of her children, and eventually the family was evicted from its one-bedroom apartment.

But Guerra rebounded. She moved in with her sister and enrolled in a 16-week computer skills class at the Academy of Education in Oxnard.

Her future is still uncertain, and she said she is worried about the job search she faces in August when she graduates. But, she said, the alternative is worse.

“It really gave me a really big scare being out there in the world and not knowing anything,” she said. “Now, I’m more independent. . . . I feel that I’ve come a long ways. I have faith.”

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Randall Feltman, the director of Ventura County’s job and career center for welfare recipients, said despite its limitations, the program is doing what it set out to do.

“Given the fact that we’re changing a system that was in place for 60 years, we’re surprised at how far and how fast we’ve come,” he said.

“We know there’s a lot more to do, but we feel like we’ve come a long way.”