THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 6, 1996 TAG: 9605060033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
If the philosophies supporting welfare reform were reduced to bumper stickers, some might read:
``Education, good; welfare, bad.
``No education - know welfare.''
That's certainly the idea behind Virginia's ``Learnfare'' - the state's new rules under welfare reform that cut public assistance to the parents of students who chronically skip school.
The intent is to pressure the parents so they'll pressure their children to go to class. Keeping the kids in school now will help keep them off welfare later, goes the thinking. Most would agree.
While the guts of Gov. George F. Allen's welfare reforms - time limits on benefits and all that - are still two years away for Hampton Roads, Learnfare's been in operation here and throughout the state for several months.
So far, it hasn't received a lot of fanfare. That may be because it hasn't affected that many people.
Less than 2 percent of Virginia Beach's welfare families were called in because of truancies in the first month, with less than half a percent eventually losing benefits. About two-tenths of a percent were dropped in Norfolk, few or none in other local cities.
Statewide in the first three months of Learnfare, 85 families were penalized out of a welfare caseload of about 70,000 families - a little more than a tenth of a percent. Apparently, the bulk of school-age welfare children are attending school.
That doesn't mean Learnfare's gone unnoticed.
The new mandate has increased the workload - but not the staffing - of congenitally swamped Social Services workers who've had to notify clients of the new law, investigate those labeled truant and set up and monitor school-attendance plans.
``It's not a simple issue to try to help them make a plan,'' said Nancy H. Hinch, a supervisor with Virginia Beach Social Services. ``It's not easy.''
Often, absenteeism results from more than uncaring parents letting their kids sleep in. Social workers have had to help teenage mothers find day care for their children, teach unskilled parents how to manage their obstinate offspring and try to enroll unhappy students in the Job Corps or other alternative education programs. Children have been caught in the middle of their parents' divorces, struggled with drug addiction, left homeless - the gamut of social problems often exacerbated by poverty.
Critics still question whether threatening to penalize parents is the best way to keep kids in school, or whether such penalties even work. Some studies have shown that the country's model Learnfare program in Wisconsin has had minimal if any effect on welfare children attending school.
Still others counter that pressure can't hurt if it forces some neglectful parents to act.
And, as with so many things bureaucratic, there have been problems and delays in sharing information - in this case, getting the names of affected students accurately from the state to the schools, and then to local Social Services offices.
Computer programs have had to be established and coordinated. The state and the schools often have different names and Social Security numbers for the same students, which have to be corrected. Some localities have had to check names by hand.
``It really takes a whole, whole lot of time,'' said Judy L. Mallory, the chief eligibility supervisor for Portsmouth Human Services, where the Learnfare process only recently became automated.
``We're averaging 300-some names a month that have to be individually researched. And that's every month.''
Virginia's Learnfare took effect last July 1, but wasn't implemented locally until January.
It affects payments under Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the main component of welfare. It kicks in when school-age children of families receiving AFDC have 10 unexcused absences from school in a month - that means they're missing almost half of the school days - or have consecutive months with eight unexcused absences, or aren't enrolled in school sometime during the month.
The state Department of Social Services sends computer-generated lists of AFDC children to the school systems. The schools match the state list with their absentee lists. The names of students who violate the Learnfare standards are sent each month to the appropriate local Social Services office.
Social workers contact the children's parents or whoever is rearing them. This originally was done by letter, and parents had five days to respond or have their AFDC benefits cut for the children missing school. The General Assembly changed this in March by passing a law requiring notice be given face-to-face or by phone.
After being notified, parents and children meet with their social workers, determine why the children aren't in school and agree to a plan - steps to take, time frame to complete them - to get them back in class. If the families refuse to make or follow a plan, their AFDC benefits can be cut. They still can receive food stamps and Medicaid benefits for the children, though.
For some parents, Learnfare has helped by forcing them to seek doctors' care for chronically ill children who otherwise would continue missing school. It resulted in a Virginia Beach mother learning that she could pick up homework assignments for her sick children each week. School counselors who have been fighting the truancy battle for years credit Learnfare with giving them ``a little more muscle,'' said Roberta H. Bunch, an eligibility supervisor with Suffolk Social Services.
``The goal is not to penalize anybody; the goal is to keep kids in school,'' Bunch said. ``I think it just puts more teeth with the schools. And I think it gives more reason for the clients to make sure their kids are in school.''
And social workers have found that a lot of ``truant'' children weren't truant at all. Some actually were home sick. Others had moved to other school zones or out of state.
Some had even been expelled from the same schools that later reported them absent without excuse.
Wisconsin began a similar Learnfare program in 1988 that includes a heavy counseling component. A study by the state released in December concluded that the program didn't improve school attendance by students from welfare families by any statistically significant amount. It had its strongest effects on dropouts, teen parents and older students.
Wisconsin's Health and Social Services Department reports that welfare families penalized under Learnfare has dropped from 8 percent in the first years to 6 percent recently.
Critics question whether the nominal attendance increase is worth the costs of Learnfare.
``Making families poorer is likely to increase pressure on families,'' perhaps even forcing truant students to work more and miss more school, said Evelyn Z. Brodkin, associate professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, who is studying welfare reform around the country.
``So there are a lot of potential harms in these get-tough policies.''
Michael L. Wiseman, a professor and researcher for The Poverty Institute in Madison, Wis., said Learnfare may make parents and schools more conscious of attendance, but called it ``a symbolic thing, more than a substantive thing.''
And ``very expensive'' to implement and monitor.
``A real question arises, whether it's worth using the money that way rather than alternatives,'' Wiseman said.
Mark H. Greenberg, senior staff attorney for the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, agreed.
``If the goal is to improve school attendance and increase the likelihood of graduation, there's a need to do something more than to simply threaten to reduce welfare benefits,'' Greenberg said.
Learnfare, he added, ``is grounded in the notion that school attendance would improve if parents were more motivated. In many cases, the situations are much more complicated than that.''
That's what local social workers often find.
``Our feeling is, incentives work just as good as disincentives, even better sometimes,'' said Noel D. Finney, program administrator for Norfolk's Department of Human Services.
``The object is not to sanction. That's not what we want to do,'' countered Constance O. ''Connie'' Hall, program manager of the Economic Assistance Unit of the state Department of Social Services.
``We've been wrestling with the issue of just plain refusals of the child to go to school. And we don't want to take any action immediately on something like that. We want to do everything we can to convince the child of the necessity of going to school and getting an education.''
Still, the state will penalize the families of such children, Hall said.
Local school systems report it's too early or the numbers are too small to tell if there's been any change in attendance.
And the state might never know for sure how effective its Learnfare program is. It hasn't ever tracked truancy rates for students on welfare, so it has nothing to compare.
KEYWORDS: TRUANCY LEARNFARE TAP TRUANCY ACTION PROGRAM WELFARE
REFORM SKIPPING SCHOOL by CNB