Child Care Vs. Workfare

Requiring welfare parents to prepare for employment is a worthy goal. It can help break the cycle of dependence on government that can rob these people, most of them mothers, of self-esteem and self-reliance, even as it puts food on the family table.

But there is a tendency in workfare programs to be simplistic, or to fail to take into account certain realities. This may be the case in Orange County, where new state and federal workfare programs are colliding with a shortage of affordable child care affecting both poor mothers and middle-class working families.

For example, children’s agencies in Orange County that are observing the state’s mandatory workfare program, Greater Avenues for Independence, or GAIN, say they don’t know where welfare mothers will find child care while training for employment and beginning work. In an effort to deal with the problem, the Children’s Home Society, a private, nonprofit referral agency, was hired by the county to develop 591 new child-care slots. So far, it has created 150, but there are 2,500 children on the lists for subsidized child care. There are fewer than half the child-care spaces needed in Santa Ana and several other Orange County cities for parents who are mandated to enter GAIN. It’s no surprise that GAIN has been nicknamed by some as “Greater Avenues to Insanity.”

Then there’s the question of child-care costs. According to the Orange County Social Services Agency, the average starting wage for GAIN clients is $7.24 an hour, for a take-home pay of about $1,000 a month. Child care in Orange County averages $250 per month per child . It’s easy to see how hard it is for welfare mothers to get launched in the workplace.

The GAIN program provides money for child care during parents’ education and job training. At least temporarily, there also is assistance up to 12 months for child care after parents leave welfare. But a concerted effort by children’s service and government agencies is needed to confront the serious shortage of child-care facilities before any such workfare program can be expected to achieve its goals. Without adequate child care, such programs are only avenues to greater frustration.