Making the Leap from Welfare to Work:
How Clevelanders Are Training For New Jobs

Aired March 31, 1999

This is INFOhio After Nine and I'm David C. Barnett, welcoming you to the 31st day of March, the last day of March, 1999, and coming to the end of the '90s, and over the course of this decade the number of Ohioans on public assistance dropped by about a half-million people. Welfare as we know it is changing fast, and over the course of this year, we here at 90.3 are tracing the course of that change, getting a measure of where it seems to be going, and how effective is welfare reform. Today, our examination is of the changing face of welfare as it focuses on job training for those thousands of Ohioans, and to put a local spin on it over the course of the past year-and-a-half, welfare cases in Cuyahoga County are down from a high in 1993 of 43,000 to about 17,000 last month. One of the keys to getting people off the public dole is to train them for new jobs, but there can be some obstacles as we hear from 90.3's Lorna Jordan.

Lorna Jordan–There are lots of jobs out there; just go into any fast food restaurant and you'll see the "help wanted" sign. But finding a job with better pay and advancement opportunities can be difficult. That's one of the reasons why the County Commission set up Cuyahoga Work and Training, a program designed to help former welfare recipients find jobs. Dean Fineman is a manager with Cuyahoga Work and Training. He says the program uses various agencies like Goodwill to teach vocational or job search skills.

Dean Fineman–The job search contracts are basically of two types. We would have a preliminary job search activity in which people would be involved in a 12-week job search activity to try to get them employed as quickly as possible, if they have marketable skills, and then we have a longer-term job search program for those individuals that are identified with barriers to employment.

LJ–When a former welfare recipient goes to Cuyahoga Work and Training, he or she is assigned a self-sufficiency coach. Jerry Slade is an associate director with Cuyahoga Work and Training.

Jerry Slade–For the most part, the linchpin to all of this is our self-sufficiency coach, and they may go ahead, and they may make referrals to outside agencies. But they're the ones that pull it together into a coherent plan, and monitor it, and make sure that things are working in a coordinated fashion.

LJ–Slade says they try to identify needs and select contractors that will help meet the requirements of all their clients.

JS–The first step is helping people who have either never worked or have worked inconsistently or who basically have a bad work record, and getting them into the workforce, usually in a $6-$7-an-hour job for six months or so, just so we can establish that they've got the work readiness skills that an employer is looking for. Then the second part is taking some of the occupational skills training and using those to help people get from, say, a $7-$8 job level to a $9-$10-an-hour job level.

LJ–Slade says many of their clients are particularly weak when it comes to math proficiency. In addition, many have reading and writing skills below the eighth-grade level, and a more substantial problem is they don't have important job skills.

JS–Don't know how to show up every day, like employers expect, so you can't expect that they're going to show up, that they're going to work hard when they get there without supervision, that they'll have the skills to be able to get along with others in the workforce, whether it's their boss, coworkers, customers.

LJ–In addition to lack of job skills, there can be other barriers. Those include substance abuse, domestic violence, child care, and transportation. Another hurdle can be a prison record. That's where some of the Cuyahoga Work and Training contractors come in. One of those agencies is Cleveland Works. David Roth is the executive director.

David Roth–We have over 100 ex-offenders a day, and when you think that our only barometer is to make sure that they get gainfully employed, and here's every statistic you see saying 9 out of 10 people go back to prison, well, how about just for starters 9 out of 10 we serve for sure never go back to prison. How about the fact that they're also paying taxes, abide by-it's such a-well, when you get such an extreme switch that way, you know, where the light at the end of the tunnel for once isn't a train but bright light, it makes it easier to do all the right things because you know that this family, the children on up, are now going to have a fighting chance for a decent life.

LJ–While getting the first job may be a challenge for some, Rick Warner of Cuyahoga Work and Training says the most important goal for former welfare recipients is to take the second step from the first job, which may only pay minimum wage, to a higher paying job with benefits.

Rick Warner–Because that first job probably won't do it alone, it'll do it because we can provide some transitional day care, we can provide some transitional medical benefits and all that kind of stuff but once that goes away, that person and that job with family responsibility probably isn't at what we'd all think of as self-sufficiency, so we've got to concentrate our efforts, not only in helping them to get into that first job, to get the experience, to get the, hopefully, the background and the education, but also then to assist them if they want to move up.

LJ–Everyone connected with efforts to move people from welfare to work agrees the key to making this succeed is not just to find jobs for those on public assistance, but help them keep those jobs and also move up in the workforce. For INFOhio, this is Lorna Jordan in Cleveland.