Shrinking Welfare Rolls Building Bridges Program Helps Put People Back To Work
Sherri Wheeler doesn’t have time to listen to the debate about cutting payments to the needy. The single mother of three is too busy working herself off welfare.
“I hadn’t worked for so long that I wasn’t sure I had the confidence to do this,” says the chirpy manager of the Tree House Consignments store, E11622 Sprague Ave. “But now that I’ve been here awhile, I’ll probably be here the rest of my life.”
That’s because Wheeler - despite only a seventh-grade education and nearly a year on public assistance - is buying the clothing store.
At a time when politicians are grasping for ways to painlessly trim the federal budget and turn welfare recipients into amply paid workers, Wheeler stands out as an example of a program that works.
Wheeler is a graduate of Building Bridges to Employment, a free, monthlong class in Spokane for the disadvantaged.
The BBE has an astonishing record: 68 percent of its 79 graduates have moved off the welfare rolls and into the work force since the program began two years ago.
The BBE graduates who dropped public assistance are saving taxpayers a total of $12,200 a month, officials say. These men and women earn an average wage of $7.20 an hour in their new jobs, which range from bankers to hospital chaplains and office secretaries.
“It’s questionable whether that’s a livable wage, but it’s heading in the right direction,” says Dan Jordan, director of community services for Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs, founder of the BBE.
Recent studies by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, an Olympia-based think tank, show that single women with children need to earn at least $8 an hour to stay permanently off welfare.
The need is great and neighborhoods are full of families not working, or holding jobs that pay too little. Each month in Spokane, taxpayers pay $3.3 million to support 8,265 needy families under the government’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Another $5.9 million is spent on food stamps and Medicaid.
The BBE is not a cure for everybody, and critics say the program is expensive to manage and excludes less-ambitious people who would depress the BBE’s success rate.
But business leaders and social workers say the program demonstrates that pouring respect - not money - on the unemployed and underemployed is key to shrinking the welfare rolls.
“The benefits are obvious,” says Susan Meyer, executive director of Momentum, which invested $18,000 to get the BBE started in 1993. “It gets people off the taxpayer payroll and paying their own taxes.”
Many people have encountered BBE graduates and not known it. Some of the graduates are: Evanlene Melting Tallow, affordable housing representative for Washington Mutual Savings Bank; Karen Bachmeier, administrative assistant for Gov. Mike Lowry’s Spokane office; Martin DeBerry, case worker for Community Mental Health; and Arlene Olson, an accounts receivable manager for Empire Ford.
“A number of programs seem to have design failures in them, but I don’t see that in this program,” says Roberta Greene, vice president for sales development at Empire Ford, which has hired two single mothers on welfare who graduated from the BBE.
“People need help to get things going. They need direction and how to find the right contact. That’s where this program is useful.”
Unlike conventional programs that offer vocational training for employment, the BBE assumes everyone has some skill that can be parlayed into a good paying job. The program is free to participants.
During an intensive four-week course that mixes homework with speeches from local business leaders, the BBE boosts the self-esteem of class members. By the end of the term, some become so confident and knowledgeable about their business that employers are hard-pressed to turn them down.
“My goal is $25,000 to $30,000 a year,” says Mike Rough, a snappy young salesman who graduated last week from the BBE’s 10th class. “It taught us to focus on what we want and go for it.”
But that takes work, and BBE leaders won’t put up with sluggards. The program carefully screens applicants referred by Employment Security or the Department of Social and Health Services to find those who are motivated for change.
“I target those who want to get out of poverty,” says BBE director Chris Deviny, who abandoned a sales career six years ago to get into social work. “With them you can work miracles.
“I teach them that it’s just as easy to get a job at the bank as it is at 7-Eleven. Once they get the opportunity, there’s no stopping them.”
Deviny designed the BBE curriculum after four years as a case worker for Spokane Neighborhood Action, a private, non-profit group best known for providing housing and heat to the needy. She became discouraged that the same people kept returning to the agency, and longed to teach them how to escape the grip of poverty.
A street savvy woman who roars about town in a full-size Dodge pickup, Deviny corralled business leaders from Boeing, Deaconess Medical Center, Washington Mutual and other companies to visit BBE classes and help knock participants out of their comfort zone.
In the process, the meetings have broken the stigma of people on welfare and led some employers to hire class members.
“Before I met Chris, I thought I was invisible and nobody would ever notice me,” says Arlene Olson, who now earns double the $600 monthly public assistance she received before joining Empire Ford two years ago. “But Chris taught me to understand that people do see me, and that I’m great!”
Wheeler also credits Deviny and the BBE with giving her the confidence to get on the ground floor of Tree House Consignments. Her story is nothing short of miraculous.
Sent out by the BBE, Wheeler pestered manager Mary Lou Forness for a job at Tree House Clothing boutique, an Argonne Road shop that had operated a consignment room for used clothing.
“I told her to get out of my face, I haven’t got time to talk to you,” recalls Forness, a tough retailer who has owned the store for 18 years.
But Wheeler, an ambitious 35-year-old who once worked for First Interstate Bank in Post Falls, wouldn’t give up. Hearing that Forness wanted to move the consignment business into a stand-alone store, she went looking for shop space with no authorization to do so.
“I found this building and called the owners from a pay phone to come down and let me inside,” Wheeler said from the four-room house that she and Forness converted into a clothing store. “Then I called Mary Lou and asked her to go through it with us.”
Forness was thrilled with the site - and Wheeler’s spunk. She hired Wheeler on the spot and agreed to slowly sell her the store over the next six years.
Wheeler, who opened the consignment store last October, says she stills gets some public assistance to care for her three children. But as store sales increase, she expects to earn too much to qualify for welfare.
Not every graduate’s career skyrockets like Wheeler’s. But many are trying.
Martin DeBarry, a 31-year-old rehabilitation manager for Community Mental Health, says the BBE welcomed him after other social agencies turned him away. As a single African-American with four children, DeBarry says he didn’t fit the profile of unwed moms that some other agencies like to assist.
“I’m completely independent now,” says DeBarry, who no longer gets the food stamps and welfare he lived on for five years before graduating from Gonzaga University and the BBE.
Critics say Deviny’s success is skewed by tight screening of applicants who are either unwilling or unable to escape the cycle of poverty. They also complain that the program is costly at $120,000 a year, with taxpayers footing half the bill.
“They say I’m creaming the crop,” Deviny says. “My program does one thing and does it well. If you’re happy on public assistance and don’t want change, I can respect that. If that’s the case, then this program is not for you.”
Terry Covey, who oversees jobs programs for the state Department of Health & Human Services in Spokane, says the BBE is one of the most successful programs under contract with the department. The department, he says, hopes to pattern other jobs programs after the BBE to meet the public demand for greater results from welfare-to-work programs.
While flattering, the BBE believes congressional support is flagging and its future may increasingly depend on private donations. A management consultant has been hired to develop a business plan that would guide the BBE during the next few years.
“Will the BBE really make a difference, or is it a flash in the pan?” says Jordan, with Spokane Neighborhood Action. “I think as long as we’re investing in people, it’s going to generate success.”
MEMO: See sidebar that ran with this story under the headline: Job training programs