Many Still Require Support, Assistance

For former welfare recipient Laura Askew, a job offer from the White House sounded as exciting as a free trip to Disneyland. “I was just overwhelmed,” she said. “I called my sister. I was just hollering on the phone.”

Askew, 29, is exactly the type of person likely to succeed under the country’s new welfare-to-work program. She had an employment history; she had been laid off from a plant in Raleigh, N.C. During the last year, she applied for welfare for the first time, and signed up for an office skills class. The White House mail clerk job, with a salary in the $18,000 to $20,000 range, became her storybook ending.

We hope welfare reform, that enormous new undertaking, generates millions of similar success stories. Welfare regulations which actually gave the poor incentives not to work have been struck down. New programs, called WorkFirst in Washington state and Temporary Assistance for Families in Idaho, limit a family’s tenure on welfare and are designed to gradually ease people into the workplace.

But everyone’s story won’t wrap up so tidily as Askew’s. Businesses, regardless of the tax incentives, won’t necessarily be eager to dive in. Welfare recipients won’t always be qualified, or even available, to work.

Washington state officials estimate that 9,000 adults are receiving welfare in Spokane County this summer. Of that number, one-third should be ready to go to work with minimal assistance. Another third will need skills they can market to an employer and a brush-up on work culture: what to wear to an interview, the importance of calling in if you’re sick, how to punch a timeclock.

Another third, officials estimate, will have severe barriers to employment: learning disabilities, functional illiteracy, no high school diploma, social problems such as domestic violence, or mental or physical handicaps.

These issues cannot be resolved by a compassionate employer. They can’t be easily remedied by the recipients themselves. They require the gritty, day-after-day support of social service agencies, community groups and government.

Some of these programs already exist, others are presently gearing up, yet others remain to be envisioned. Some groups polish job skills; others are struggling to devise new child care solutions. An estimated 6,500 of Spokane County’s welfare recipients are women, and the minimum-wage jobs they’ll enter are likely to require weekend, evening and holiday hours - the times most day care centers are closed.

Federal and state governments have been attempting to change this country’s welfare system overnight. This week, President Clinton himself was out campaigning for this new effort, hawking a toll-free number, 1-888-USA-JOB1, for businesses. It’s a worthwhile effort, and one that in a booming economy has a better chance than ever of working.

But that doesn’t mean it’s time to get out the mouse ears and start humming, “It’s A Small World.” The work ahead requires patience, commitment and perseverance. The complex social issues underlying the lives of many welfare recipients will not magically disappear.

Real life rarely resembles Disneyland.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board