Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994 TAG: 9405170040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DON BEYER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia Independence Program, the pioneering welfare-reform legislation passed by the 1994 General Assembly is based on these values.
The program was born in Virginia's Commission on Poverty and Welfare Reform. The commission, created by the 1992 General Assembly, spent two years listening to Virginians who live in poverty, researching state and national welfare-reform efforts, and working to draft a plan for Virginia.
During this year's assembly session, commission members, legislators, advocacy groups and representatives of the Allen administration joined in a remarkable collaboration to improve the plan. It passed with overwhelming majorities, and Gov. George Allen has approved it.
The welfare-reform plan, called the Virginia Independence Program, is built on a series of interlocking responsibilities.
First, we ask parents living in poverty - mothers on public assistance - to take responsibility for the future of their families. We ask them to finish their high-school educations, to participate in job training, and to keep their children in school and get them immunized.
We ask these recipients of public benefits to get ready to go to work - and then to find a job and work hard.
The second responsibility is the responsibility of government to invest in those struggling for independence. Job training, basic education, day care, transportation, intensive case-management and transitional support - these are the fundamental building blocks for a move from welfare to work. And it is worth saying again: The best social program in the world is a good job.
Third is the responsibility of employers and businesses to help find jobs for AFDC recipients. It doesn't do any good to get your GED, finish your job training and line up day care for your children if no one will hire you because you are poor and on welfare.
When Virginia's Poverty and Welfare Reform Commission, which I chair, held hearings around the state, hundreds of people living in poverty stepped up to the microphone and spoke.
Here is what they said:
If I go to work, who will take care of my children?
If I take a minimum-wage job, with no medical benefits, what do I do if my children get sick?
If I get a part-time job, why does the government take away a dollar from my benefits for every dollar I earn?
The Virginia Independence Program answers these questions. Day care will be provided on an ability-to-pay basis. Medicaid benefits will stay in place for three years, and by then we hope national health-care reform will be a reality.
And you can keep the money you earn up to the poverty level. Work pays.
The VIP program is designed to move families off public assistance in two years. There will be exceptions in certain cases - for those with disabilities or those living in communities with extremely high unemployment - but most recipients who can work will be expected to find jobs or accept public employment within two years.
During its two-year phase-in period, the program also limits benefits for additional children born to participants. This controversial ``family cap'' provision raised strongly held arguments on both sides. Attempts to remove it failed repeatedly in the General Assembly after supporters argued that public policy should not encourage the birth of additional children to unmarried mothers receiving public assistance, many of whom are little more than children themselves. The trial period will provide objective data on the impact of the limitations.
Poverty has a human face. To change the way welfare works, we have to learn from real people who are struggling to make it.
In Roanoke recently, I met Lisa Campbell, a former welfare mother with two daughters, 10 and 11. She completed a job-training program at the city's community-action agency, Total Action Against Poverty, and now she works at an insurance company.
Karen Price, a mother receiving AFDC now in TAP's employment program., will take her GED exam this spring. She's getting ready to work. She is planning to be independent.
Lisa and Karen and others like them are creating higher expectations for themselves. The Virginia Independence Program will set real limits and expectations for a generation of parents on welfare and make the investments to enable them to be self-sufficient.
The Virginia Independence Program will begin on July 1, enrolling 3,000 families from across the commonwealth in each of its first two years. It is scheduled to take effect statewide in 1996, after a required evaluation and assessment. Virginia will soon be applying for the necessary federal waivers to implement the plan's innovative provisions.
Virginia's plan isn't perfect or final, and welfare reform won't be easy or simple. But it is a beginning, a place to start. We cannot do nothing.
Don Beyer is lieutenant governor of Virginia.
by CNB