County’s Welfare Goal: 60,000 Jobs

Los Angeles County welfare officials have set a goal of moving 60,000 recipients into jobs by June 1999, an ambitious undertaking designed to jump-start implementation of welfare reform.

In addition to finding employment for what amounts to a small city of job seekers, officials have set an objective of ensuring that at least 75% of those who find jobs are still working six months later.

The goals are included in a draft county welfare plan released Wednesday by the Department of Public Social Services, one that is intended to be the first step in transforming the welfare system in the nation’s most populous county.

Social service officials say the county’s ability to meet such goals will provide a good measure of how well they are succeeding under CalWORKS, the state’s new welfare program designed to implement the massive federally ordered welfare overhaul.

The county plan sets out specific proposals for meeting new welfare-to-work requirements. It outlines an array of job training, post-employment, child care, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse services intended to usher recipients onto the path toward self-sufficiency.

The plan must still be approved by the county Board of Supervisors, which Wednesday was getting its first look at the particulars. Three declined comment until they had a chance to study the plan more closely and the other two, Zev Yaroslavsky and Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, could not be reached for comment.

Department of Public Social Services Director Lynn W. Bayer is scheduled to brief supervisors at a board meeting Dec. 16 and the board is due to vote Jan. 6.

In other quarters, however, the document garnered mostly positive reviews, especially from welfare advocates, who had unprecedented access and input into the final recommendations. Many said it would form the basis for a new and more cooperative relationship with the county.

“I’m certainly feeling like we’ve got a chance in L.A. County to make the best of this new era,” said Jacquelyn McCroskey, a professor of social work at USC. “The whole notion of reform in welfare has caused a good deal of apprehension and fear about what it is going to mean, in this county in particular, and one of the things that Lynn Bayer has been able to do is dispel a lot of that simply by the very clear messages she has given out, that it is her intention to continue to involve people.”

Alice Walker Duff, director of Crystal Stairs, one of the state’s largest child care agencies, was equally optimistic.

“I think the county has taken a very bold step in going beyond itself, going beyond its sort of insular process and has attempted to reach out to partners who can help them make this work,” she said. “In doing that, they have crafted probably what is the best shot at being able to provide child care to people who need it.”

However, nearly everyone interviewed also cautioned that while the plan on paper is impressive, how it would be implemented, if approved by the county board, must be closely monitored. Others complained that the plan remains sketchy and that major pieces of the welfare puzzle seemed left out.

The plan, for example, lacks specific ideas about where jobs will be created or how the county would deal with an economic downturn.

“I think it is a good skeleton of proposals within the framework of CalWORKS, but there are two paragraphs on transportation [and] where are those [better-paying] jobs?” asked Bob Erlenbusch, director of the Los Angeles County Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.

Erlenbusch also questioned the county’s reliance on the state-initiated GAIN program, Greater Avenues for Independence, as the centerpiece of its welfare-to-work plan. The GAIN program operated for years in many counties, including Los Angeles, but received mixed reviews for its inability to enroll large numbers of eligible recipients.

L.A. County officials a few years ago shifted the focus of GAIN from training and education to employment, and in the process it has become a national model of success.

In 1996-97, about 42,000 GAIN participants were placed in jobs.

But many critics contend that the program leads only to dead-end, low-paying jobs. County officials say that many of the families in the GAIN program still make so little that they continue to qualify for aid.

“In some studies of the program, the income of people actually went down when they went into GAIN,” said Tanya Akel, project director for the Human Services Network, a nonprofit organization that represents dozens of advocacy groups. “I haven’t seen effort [in the plan] to be aggressive in putting people in jobs with real living wages.”

Phil Ansell, a special assistant to Bayer who has coordinated the county’s welfare efforts, countered that the overall welfare plan is a work in process designed to be flexible.

“The plan reflects where we are up to at this point in time,” Ansell said. “It’s important to note that of the 14 work groups [responsible for preparing the plan], 12 are still meeting to deal with continuing issues.”

Ansell acknowledged that many involved in the GAIN program were relegated to low-paying jobs, but said that has mostly been because the program until now had limited resources.

The county will have about $330 million in state and federal funds to implement welfare-to-work programs through mid-1998.

“In 1998 and 1999 our primary focus will be on helping CalWORKS participants compete successfully for unsubsidized jobs available in the local economy,” Ansell said. “We’re interested in contributing to the economic development efforts that can increase the overall pool of jobs. But based on our experience in the GAIN program and the success we’ve had with hundreds of private sector employers who look to GAIN as their hiring source of first resort, we’re optimistic we will be able to locate sufficient work.”

* WELFARE CONFERENCE: Few employers attended a welfare-to-work event. D1