Ten years after welfare reform, many still live below poverty level
JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - Maria Moore married at 13, lived with domestic violence for 20 years, got mixed up with drugs but now is a single mother on the straight road with a nontraditional job at a decent wage.
It's a busy, jumbled history for someone only 34 years old. Moore has four children ages 9 to 17.
One of four single mothers in a 12-week integrated systems technology course at Rocky Mountain Industry Training Center on the campus of Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Moore graduated on Friday. She already has a job with a wind turbine company located near Cheyenne.
Getting into a man's traditional field of better-paying work is the key for many single mothers looking for a way to make enough money to support their families.
The state's "Our Families, Our Futures" program pays their tuition and covers their wages while they're learning on the job. The program also provides cards or vouchers they can use to buy gas or items at Wal-Mart or Safeway.
"This has been the deciding factor in helping me to make an honest living," Moore said during an interview at the center. "We go into drugs because we need to take care of our families."
Moore said she tried drug dealing, spent time at the Wyoming Women's Center at Lusk - where she earned her GED - and participated in a then-new program on nontraditional job training.
"I wanted to start over, but I didn't have an education," she said. "I came from working at Burger King. That doesn't cut it with four kids."
Moore credited her counsellor, parents and friends who supported her in her drive to get a fresh start. She home-schools her children and regularly attends meetings of support groups including Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Moore is one of the lucky ones. While these training programs are proving to be successful, the number of eligible women far exceed the number of slots available.
Ten years after welfare reform, Wyoming has only 315 families on the cash program - down from nearly 5,000 before the transition from the old Aid To Families With Dependent Children program to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, block grant program.
About half of those families are grandparents raising grandchildren or other relatives acting as caregivers. These people are not subject to the five-year limit for receiving cash benefits.
Wyoming gets about $18 million per year in TANF block grant money.
According to 2004 figures, the latest available, 34 percent of single mothers in Wyoming have incomes well below the poverty level. This compares to 30 percent in Nebraska and 28 percent in Colorado.
Success, or not?
Wyoming has been both praised and castigated for the drastic reduction in cash welfare cases.
The goal of welfare reform was to break the generational cycle of welfare by getting heads of households, virtually all of them women, to work outside the home. The idea was that work would foster self-esteem for the single mothers and make them better role models for their children.
In 2004, the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute gave Wyoming an "A" grade for changes in its welfare system.
"Wyoming received an A grade because it has stringent work requirements and sanctions, shorter time limits, tighter loopholes, and narrow definitions of work activity. The state had a 93 percent reduction in caseloads, an overall decline in poverty rate, and fewer pregnant teenagers," the Cato report said.
Critics - and there are many - contend that all welfare reform in Wyoming did was increase the ranks of the working poor who still aren't making a living wage. These families still need help through food stamps and the Medicaid program.
"When I first got here, the question I was asking was what happened to those people," said Rodger McDaniel, director of the Department of Family Services. "I think the answer is they all went to work. But typically they are earning very low wages."
"We've moved away from welfare to where we're providing a safety net, really, for working families who are making very low wages," he said.
"It's not just a welfare issue. It's also a child protection issue," McDaniel added.
The Legislature this winter allocated an additional $2 million to the new "Our Families, Our Futures" program. Developed by Fleming and Associates in Cheyenne, the voluntary program uses a comprehensive approach to deal with all the parents' needs.
"If you provide only job training without meeting substance abuse treatment needs or parenting skills or mental health needs, you are really wasting your money," McDaniel said.
"By the end of the program, they're clean and sober and have the job skills to earn a living wage," he added.
Deanna Frey of the Wyoming Children's Action Alliance said that, although there have been success stories, programs including "Our Families, Our Futures" have not matured enough to produce any large results in making single mothers economically self-sufficient.
Child care is a huge key, and if a community has child care that is open nights, for example, the mother can work nontraditional hours and make more money, Frey said.
Frey also said a recently completed economic self-sufficiency study is a "huge piece of information for us to have as a tool."
Some high schools in Wyoming are using that chart to give career counseling to students by showing how much they must earn to be self-sufficient.
"There's still a massive amount of work that needs to be done," Frey added.
Mary Ann Budenske, a Casper attorney and advocate for poor people, said the fact that her Poverty Resistance operation is still running is evidence that welfare reform has not been a smashing success in elevating poor people higher in the economic ranks.
"The only change I've seen is that women with children who once got $300 to $400 per month in welfare assistance now are working 40 to 50 hours a week and still need assistance," she said.
"The people I see are working two jobs," she added.
The Rev. Jon Laughlin, pastor of Grace United Methodist Church, who advocates for poor people and helps them navigate the government bureaucracy, said he hears little from people on the cash benefit welfare program.
"Very few clients we've talked to are even enrolled in it because so many people got ineligible. They dropped the rolls in Wyoming so drastically, it makes you wonder why the staff didn't drop with it," he said, referring to Department of Family Services offices.
The majority of people he deals with can't get food stamps or can only get $10 to $15 worth because the federal government keeps changing the rules.
"That's the trickle-down economy, and it trickles down to the worst bottom level and it hurts those people the most," Laughlin said.
Capital bureau reporter Joan Barron can be reached at (307) 632-1244 or at joan.barron@casperstartribune.net.