Responsibility Key To Welfare Reform Strategies For Getting Off Welfare Discussed At Forum; State Reforms May Not Need Federal Waiver

They suggested that welfare recipients take money management classes, nutrition training and basic family-planning courses.

Stress management, parenting courses and job skills training could also be helpful.

These are the types of skills that would help welfare recipients get back on their feet and off the government dole more quickly and efficiently, said the participants in a Wednesday night public discussion on welfare reform.

Such courses would also be part of the “Personal Responsibility Contracts” - one of the many proposals designed to change the face of welfare in Idaho.

Last winter, Gov. Phil Batt’s welfare reform advisory council came up with 44 proposals to reform Idaho’s welfare system.

The idea was to transform the system into one that provides short-term help while encouraging long-term economic independence.

The Legislature approved much of the program this year and more than a dozen of the proposals are already in the works.

But the state cannot go ahead with 26 of those proposal without first getting a waiver from federal rules, said Mary Anne Saunders, Idaho’s welfare reform project director.

Personal Responsibility Contracts are one of them.

These “contracts” are documents that would outline what welfare participants agree to do in order to receive cash payments from the government, Saunders said.

She and several Health and Welfare employees visited Coeur d’Alene this week to ask the public what sort of requirements welfare participants should have to meet in order to get that money.

Getting and keeping a job, learning a trade, keeping their children in school are among the foremost ideas.

“It would be a plan for how to get where you want to go - and where you want to go is on your own with minimal assistance from the state,” said State Sen. Mary Lou Reed, D-Coeur d’Alene, who attended the meeting. But “Each plan is going to have to be very individual. There would have to be flexibility.”

Among the other changes Idaho cannot enact without federal waivers:

Parents must have their children immunized to be eligible for the cash assistance program.

If the recipient’s children are not in school through high school they could have a $50 per month penalty.

A two-year lifetime limit on eligibility for cash assistance.

Idaho will submit requests for federal waivers in September, Saunders said. However, the state may not have to if President Clinton signs the federal welfare reform that is being suggested by the Senate and House.

The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that would hand power over welfare programs to the states. The House already approved a similar bill.

Differences still have to be worked out in conference committee and the president still has to give it his OK.

If he does, Saunders believes Idaho would be able to go ahead with all of its proposed changes without waiting for federal waivers.

“It would speed up our implementation and it would decrease our costs,” Saunders said.

, DataTimes