She Just Needed A Helping Hand

Holly Dunn says when her husband left her and didn’t pay child support, she decided a college degree - and a career - were the only ways she could give her two children a decent life.

First, though, she signed up for welfare.

The state provided child care, medical care and $290 in food stamps. She mowed lawns and shoveled snow to stretch her $317 monthly check and to pay the $395 rent.

Later, she moved into subsidized housing, reducing her rent to $21 a month.

“I don’t let on a whole lot that I’m on it (welfare),” said Dunn, 31. “It’s not a prideful thing. That’s one of the main reasons I want to get off it.”

Dunn signed up for classes at the University of Idaho. To pay tuition, she took out student loans, applied for grants and won scholarships. Sometimes she’d use student loan money to pay bills.

“I’m determined to have a career,” she said recently, sitting in her sunny kitchen. Seated beside her, her 4-year-old daughter slurped up milk and cereal.

Last month, the university awarded Dunn a bachelor’s degree in education. She’s got good prospects for a teaching job. She has more than $15,000 in student loans to pay off.

“It’s worked for me,” she says of Idaho’s welfare system. “I really can’t complain a whole lot.”

Under the state’s new welfare reform plan, however, Dunn wouldn’t have been able to get her teaching degree. The reforms include a provision barring students at four-year colleges from receiving welfare.

“The council believes that when a family has no other means of support, work must be the first consideration,” said the Governor’s Welfare Reform Advisory Council report. “Pursuit of a four-year degree postpones entry into the work force and runs counter to this philosophy.”

The point of the change was to dislodge “professional students” from the welfare system, said council member Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden.

Welfare, he said, is intended to get people to a “subsistence” level. “Then it’s up to you and your self-reliance to get above that.”

To Dunn, that sounds penny-wise and pound-foolish. As a teacher, she expects to get off welfare quickly, support her family and pay taxes. She said she doesn’t think she’d be able to do that with a low-skill, low-pay job.

“One of the main reasons I went to college was so that I could be self-supportive,” she said. “I wanted to be out there and make it on my own.”

She acknowledged that many people work hard to put themselves through college, but said it would have been impossible to work, pay for college, and afford child care while she was on the job or in class.

“I couldn’t spread myself any thinner,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PLANNED WELFARE CHANGES Among other things, the proposed changes would: Set a lifetime two-year limit on monthly cash payments, with a three-year limit on child care and medical benefits. Require all welfare recipients, including new mothers, to work or learn job skills. Suspend state licenses (driver’s, hunting, fishing, professional) for child support or visitation scofflaws. Have a one-size-fits-all cash payment, regardless of family size. Hold parents of under-18 mothers - and fathers - financially responsible for the baby until the parents turn 18.