Agencies Help the Welfare-to-Work Progression

Aired December 7, 1999

It is the 7th of December, 1999. I am David C. Barnett, welcoming you to INFOhio After NIne, and we're going to visit some places of learning this morning. Nearly 25,000 Cuyahoga County residents who are receiving welfare checks right now, under federal guidelines, most of them have until next October to find jobs or they'll lose their benefits. Two years ago, the county hired several public and private agencies to train welfare recipients for work and those contracts are now up for renewal. 90.3's Lee Garnett has more.

Lee Garnett–Cuyahoga has more people on welfare than any other county in Ohio. Early in the welfare-to-work effort, county officials decided to contract with outside agencies for job training. Jerry Slabe, associate director of Cuyahoga Work and Training, says existing government programs couldn't handle the massive project alone. In addition, Slabe says the county is blessed to have an abundance of social service agencies, both public and private. He says the task of finding everyone a job is quite immense.

Jerry Slabe–The vast majority of the folks that are on assistance today have limited work experience, and for those people, we feel the pathway to self-sufficiency needs to start with an entry-level job, a job that may pay only minimum wage or $6 or $7 an hour.

LG–One of the few public agencies the county is contracted for welfare-to-work training is actually a division of the Cleveland Municipal School District. It's called the Cleveland Skills and Career Center. That's where Sandra Golden works as a job placement officer. She admits that many welfare clients enroll in the program just because they're forced to.

Sandra Golden–I believe once they get in the program they find out it is really to benefit them and help them in the long run, that they feel that they're more comfortable and they know that this is a good thing for them.

LG–Golden says most welfare clients enter her program with no concept of what the government is trying to accomplish through welfare reform. Typically, they're women with dependent children. Sylvia Blair is a good example.

Sylvia Blair–Well, I'm trying to build my reading and my math skills, because I've been out of school for a long time, so I'm trying to get that back up so I can go in my trade.

LG–But the skill center offers much more than remedial education. It tries to give welfare recipients basic employment skills they've never been exposed to before.

SB–I had to fill out an application, what to say on the interview, and do a resume, showing us the right way of doing it, and I like it.

LG–As a trainer, Sandra Golden has a ground-level view of welfare reform, and though she's optimistic about the sweeping process, she still has doubts.

SG–And I think if providers aren't sensitive to the individuals that they're working with and trying to help develop their work socialization skills and other skills that's really going to help them be successful in the workplace, it's not going to work.

LG–One of her major concerns is job location. Most people on welfare in Cuyahoga County live in Cleveland or its inner suburbs, wile most of the higher-paying entry-level jobs are in the newer suburbs, dozens of miles away.

SG–And I know that RTA is working and developing transportation programs to get people to those outlying jobs. However, when you have a woman who has three or more kids, and they're all in different schools, and one of the schools calls and says, "your child is sick" or "we're having a problem," how do I get from Solon to Cleveland in a sufficient amount of time to take care of my child?

LG–Connecting the unemployed in the inner city with suburban jobs is also a major concern for county welfare officials, including Jerry Slabe.

JS–A number of those jobs are on the second and third shifts, and when you consider the fact that the majority of these populations with whom we're dealing are single parents who have children, then day care is an issue.

LG–Work training agencies, such as the Cleveland Skills and Career Center, have an incentive to keep track of their job placements. Their county contracts pay them bonuses if their trainees stay employed. Slabe says that's an important part of the county's two-step approach to welfare-to-work training.

JS–We don't expect that those initial $6 or $7 an hour jobs are going to cause anybody to become self-sufficient, and therefore the second part of our strategy is to bring people back in once they've established a level of experience, but then come back in, and avail themselves of some of the occupational skill training programs that we have available, so that they can then move up the ladder and take that next step to a better job.

LG–The county's contracts with all outside agencies, like the Cleveland Skills and Career Center, will be up for renewal at the end of December. Each will be graded on their job placement records. Slabe says with today's booming economy, there are more jobs available than qualified workers to fill them, but no one knows how long the boom will continue, and the success of welfare reform seems to hang in the balance. For INFOhio, I'm Lee Garnett in Cleveland.