How the Welfare System May Not Help Everyone

Aired July 7, 1999

This is INFOhio After Nine, I am David C. Barnett, welcoming you to the 7th day of July, 1999, as we celebrate the retreat of humidity, the turning off of the sauna, at least temporarily, this is summer, after all. This morning, we're going to try and not work up a sweat over the complexities of the local welfare system. We're going to step back and consider how welfare reform is supposed to work, how the system is supposed to work. As we have traced "The Changing Face of Welfare" over the past few months, we've dealt with specific issues, challenges such as day care and transportation. Today we look at how the system is set up. Ralph Johnson of Cuyahoga Work and Training will give us a little of his insight after we present a primer for you. Welfare reform, since its inception, has been heralded by some as a model top end public assistance. Critics argue while it may help in the short term, reforms don't necessarily provide the tools for more productive opportunities. 90.3's Yolanda Perdomo reports on the process of going through the welfare system and how it may not help everyone who needs assistance.

Len Telleck–We would hope that you would not come into a center deciding that you need public assistance, but you would come into a center because you have a number of needs. One of them may be that you feel that you cannot meet, for instance, your bill to-you don't have enough money for food or you can't pay for rent. We would hopefully look at the situation and try to assess why that's happening, and begin to develop a plan, a self-sufficiency plan for you, with you, I don't want to say for you, but with you, to try to determine what route we need to take.

YP–Part of that plan, after the initial interview, is getting set up with a self-sufficiency coach. On average, a coach handles around 100 public assistance cases. A one-on-one interview is set up to help with not only finding the right job opportunity, but also to get health care and adequate child care if needed. One of the first checks issued is the TANF, a Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. But Telleck says the whole point of welfare reform is to slowly steer people from getting a check and helping them lead more productive lives.

LT–I believe somewhere along the line are going to be getting out of the business of giving people checks, and be more involved with them, having access to training, to developing themselves to having better jobs. I think that we're going to be much more involved with providing things like tuition and basically it's changing what we're doing.

Gail Long–People have to learn that stuff, and the workers have to learn it. This is a real complicated piece of legislation, and even I don't know it like the back of my hand. I don't think any of us in the community do.

YP–Gail Long is the executive director of Marek House, a community center on Cleveland's west side that provide everything from early child care to activities for senior citizens. Many of her clientele are on public assistance. She says because of the recent changes made as a result of welfare reform, many people are falling through the administrative cracks, because there's some confusion about who needs help and how they go about getting it.

GL–Workers at the county having to learn the regulations and be comfortable with it and use it enough so that they understand what they're doing, and I think it's the consumer who has to know what it's all about also, and I don't think there's been enough education on this in the community. I think for all of us there has not been enough education, and it's ongoing and slowly but surely we're all learning it, but we don't know it well.

YP–Long says education is not emphasized enough throughout the process, and that's why there are some who may never get the job they need, even though they may fill out forms and see a self-sufficiency coach.

GL–People who are undereducated are not afforded the opportunity to become educated. The federal law does not value education in the whole welfare reform package. It does not say that it is important for you as an individual to one, have a high school diploma, and two, be able to go to college or a two-year program if you want. Unless it is job-related, there's no way that anybody will be given the opportunity. It's now a luxury, so it now says that we've created a situation where if you have a high school diploma and you can get into a training program that'll lead to a job, you're fine, you're cool. But if you don't have a high school diploma and the program that you want to enter does not guarantee a job in the immediate future, then you're out of luck. So we've created another class system as far as education is concerned, and that, to me, is unconscionable.

YP–Len Telleck of the Cuyahoga County Broadway Neighborhood Family Service Center concedes the system is not perfect, but insists they monitor every case by verifying the progress of the individuals who need help. The changing of procedures, which were put in place over 20 years ago, to how it's set up today leaves room for education on the system itself for both the agency and the people who use it. For INFOhio, I'm Yolanda Perdomo in Cleveland.