Rhonda Stewart's day started at 5 a.m.
By 6 she had her three children up, fed, dressed and ready for the sitter, who would get them off to school at 6:30.
Then came a 45-minute drive to York Hospital as part of her clinical nursing education program at Harrisburg Area Community College.
Just a typical day in the life of a single mom — a single mom on welfare.
Stewart, who lives in Leola, knows what people say about welfare recipients. She's heard the talk.
"Never once did they suspect I was one of the people they were talking about," she said.
And that, welfare advocates argue, is part of the problem: Society has plenty of stereotypes about welfare, but few hard facts.
That extends, advocates say, to the state House Republican Policy Committee, which has been holding hearings depicting a state welfare system that's ballooning in costs and failing to hit its targets under the federal welfare reform law.
In fact, say spokesmen for the state Department of Public Welfare and the Pennsylvania Welfare Coalition, cash assistance rolls have been shrinking. The growth in welfare, they contend, is in medical assistance and food stamps, and much of that is the result of the "graying" of the state's population.
In Lancaster County, workforce development officials say, welfare-to-work has been a big success.
In May, more than 70 percent of adults on cash assistance in this county were engaged in "work activity," which can mean jobs, job searches or job training. That rate is among the best in the state, and it's the highest of the big-population counties.
It's not the end of the story, though, said Scott Sheely, executive director of the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board.
Most welfare-to-work clients start at $8.50 or so an hour. In Lancaster County, a parent with one child needs to earn $13 to $14 an hour to sustain a family with no government aid.
"We've got to move them to the next step," Sheely said.
'Work first'Before they get to the next step, welfare recipients have to get a job.
Nationally, welfare reform, enacted in 1996, has slashed the numbers of people getting cash assistance by limiting benefits to five years in most cases and requiring states to have 50 percent of the caseload in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program in "work activities."
Locally, people who qualify for a first check must register with CareerLink, the job center at Liberty Place on North Charlotte Street, as a condition of getting a second check.
There, through the Lancaster Employment and Training Agency, they can not only search for jobs but learn the skills they need to get one.
That change in state welfare rules means that LETA, which used to see 150 to 200 welfare clients a year, served more than 900 through the beginning of June, according to LETA Operations Manager Mark Sprunger.
Melissa Allison is one of them.
She moved from York to Lancaster a few months ago with her three children.
"I didn't want to go on welfare, but it's really turned me around," she said.
At LETA, she started classes for her high school GED and learned how to write a resume and conduct herself during interviews.
She's been working as an activities assistant but is sifting through 15 new job offers as a certified nursing assistant.
"People say, 'You can get a job,' " Allison said. "It's not that. It's that I want to get a better job, so I'm not back in this predicament again."
Estelle Collazo came to Lancaster County from New Jersey in May. At 31, with two children, she had been working in administration and customer service for five years before moving.
"I didn't want to go on welfare, but I had no choice," she said. CareerLink helped her to write a better resume and cope with tough interview questions.
"I did get a lot of calls to interview for jobs — good-paying jobs," she said.
Ysenia Pacheco has lived in Lancaster all her life. She started working at age 15. But at 30, she found herself pregnant. Then she was fired from her warehouse job.
"I was sending out applications everywhere, and I wasn't getting calls," she said. "So I had to go on welfare."
Pacheco started at CareerLink on June 4. Weeks later, she had gotten a job offer at $2 an hour more than her last job, with "great benefits."
"I thought I had a good resume till I got here," she said.
Pacheco used to have preconceived notions about welfare recipients too, until she found herself out of work.
Being on welfare, Allison said, is "probably the lowest thing you can feel."
By the numbersLETA officials and welfare advocates agree that not everyone on welfare has the same desire to get a job.
"One of the difficulties we have [is that] there are a lot of unmotivated people," said Donna Voigt, LETA's director. "They have no desire to work whatsoever."
Work participation has become a flash point in state government.
The House Republican Policy Committee hearings — the committee met in Lancaster on May 17 — have produced testimony indicating that the state system is growing at a time when welfare rolls nationally are falling and that fraud is going unaddressed.
DPW went on the offensive last month, setting up a Web site with statistics arguing that the growth is coming not in cash assistance — what most people think of as "welfare" — but in medical assistance and food stamps.
According to DPW, there were 567,698 cash assistance recipients in 1996-97. In 2005-06, the number dropped to 317,035. In May, it was 277,620.
But Medicaid rolls have grown from 1,532,072 in 1996-97 to 1,833,768 in 2005-06 and 1,886,836 in May.
Of the May total, 1,184,786 recipients do not get cash assistance.
DPW spokeswoman Stacey Witalec said Medicaid is "81 percent of our budget." State welfare spending was budgeted at $9.5 billion in 2006-07.
Most Medicaid recipients are elderly, people with disabilities and children, she said. Other welfare advocates, like the Pennsylvania Welfare Coalition, point out Medicaid growth is fueled by the state's large population of elderly, some of whom get nursing-home care with Medicaid.
The department also disputes the House committee's findings that Pennsylvania is failing to hit the federal benchmark of 50 percent of the TANF caseload doing "work activities."
"Those are old statistics," Witalec said. "They continue to report the old statistics. We have always been in compliance with federal regulations."
The state work participation rate is 52.3 percent now, she said.
"It's possible that some of our information is older," said Rep. Gordon Denlinger, R-99th District, a member of the House committee.
But the problem, he said, is that DPW has not been forthcoming. He sponsored an amendment passed by the House last week (see related story, A8) to require DPW to give other state officials the same numbers it reports to the federal government.
DPW's Web site (
www.dpw.state.pa.us/familyindependence) does confirm statistics presented to the House committee that the state work participation rate in 2004 was 7.1 percent. Since then, the rate has risen to 15.7 percent in 2005, 27.5 percent in 2006 and 51.6 percent in April.
Lancaster County's numbers are far more impressive, partly thanks to the county's low unemployment rate.
The county's welfare work rate in May was 70.3 percent, best among the large counties. In August 2006 it was the first large county to break 50 percent, Witalec said.
DPW's numbers show the county had 6,045 cash assistance clients and 54,561 people on Medicaid in May.
Witalec said 207 adult cash assistance clients here are working; 92 are in postsecondary education; and 130 are in training programs. Many cash assistance recipients are children.
"I really believe the Lancaster welfare offices are some of, if not the best, in the state," Denlinger said.
"I don't view this as a county-level problem. It's a problem more at the top of the system, with policies not being enforced as far as checking for fraud."
Independence daysAt 33, Rhonda Stewart is taking her next step.
A high school graduate, she dropped out of college and went to work, earning about $27,000 a year. But she had three children, now ages 9, 8 and 5, whose father is absent.
"I couldn't make ends meet," said Stewart. She lost her job and ended up on welfare.
Then she found out about the KEYS program, a partnership of DPW and 14 community colleges that has about 1,000 parents on welfare enrolled.
Through KEYS, Stewart got support — child care, partial reimbursement for mileage, medical assistance, food stamps and cash benefits — while she studied nursing at HACC.
After 3½ years, Stewart graduated in May with an associate degree in nursing and $31,000 in student loans to pay off. She started work last month at Lancaster General Hospital.
"I expect to make $45,000 to $50,000 a year," she said. "I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make ends meet with that."
The question of making ends meet is one that plagues welfare reform.
Studies show that "the vast majority of parents relying on cash assistance work," said Peter Zurflieh, an attorney with the Harrisburg-based Community Justice Project.
"Without skills or life education, they very frequently find low-wage jobs," where they don't make enough to support their families. They often end up jobless, producing a "churning effect" of going off and on welfare.
"The education part is what helps break this cycle," he said.
Sheely, of the Workforce Investment Board, agreed. It's not just getting a job, he said, but "what are you going to do next?"
"Our system has been very poor at followup, pushing to the next step."
The next step is away from entry-level jobs and into jobs that pay enough to keep families off welfare.
Welfare clients "have to look beyond McDonald's or the mall," Sheely said, "... to have a family-sustaining income."
"Not that there's no value" in low-wage jobs, Zurflieh said. "But as a one-size-fits-all [policy], it doesn't make much sense."
"The clear emphasis is 'work first,' without a doubt," LETA's Voigt said. TANF recipients have to get a job right away; if they can't, after eight weeks they can be moved into a career development program.
"It's unrealistic," she said, particularly for people who have little or no work experience or education.
"I think it's unfair to everyone to require that. The customer gets discouraged. They've already had a lot of disappointments in their lives. They don't need another one.
"... I think it could be more effective if we were given the opportunity to do a better job up front."
But for some, welfare-to-work has indeed worked.
Stewart was on welfare once before. This time, "I knew when I'm done, I will be able to take care of myself and my kids," she said. "It gave me a lot of self-confidence and pride in myself.
"Just to say, 'I have an associate's degree' — it gives you purpose."
Allison is preparing to take the GED exam. After that, she wants to begin classes to become a licensed practical nurse. She gives CareerLink the credit.
"The day I get that cap and gown," she said, will "probably be the biggest day in my life."
"This program works," Pacheco said, "for people who want it to work."
Helen Colwell Adams is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her email address is hcolwell@lnpnews.com.
