The state's 15-year-old welfare program, Work First, will begin living up to its name this year by requiring adult recipients to work, go to school, or job hunt before they get their monthly benefits checks.
A handful of counties already have a "pay after performance" rule. The state Department of Health and Human Services made the pay rule a statewide policy this month, though it sent out payments as usual a few weeks ago to give the 8,900 households that have to live by the new policy a month to adapt to the change.
Adults in this group have agreements with their counties that say they will work, look for work or attend classes for a set amount of time each month. In the past, recipients got their money whether or not they stuck to the plan. In November, payments won't be automatic anymore, and social workers will expect recipients to show that they've complied, or have a good reason for not following through, before they get their money.
The state made the change because it falls short of federal goals for getting welfare recipients working or on a steady path toward getting jobs. Historically, about one-third of the adults in the state welfare program who must work or engage in work-related activities meet monthly requirements, said Dean Simpson, chief of economic and family services at the state Department of Health and Human Services. The federal government's goal for the state is 50 percent. The state feared a strong penalty -- a cut in its welfare grant -- if it didn't take steps to meet the federal goal.
"Counties that were doing this were showing it was successful," Simpson said. "It was good for the client and good for the state."
State and federal changes to welfare laws in the mid-1990s put a time limit on benefits, and they set work and job preparation requirements for recipients.
The changes in welfare laws emphasized getting adults who were able to work into jobs and providing support as they moved from unemployment into the workforce. As a result, some welfare recipients work in low-paying jobs and are subsidized by the government, while others work at jobs without pay to learn skills and work habits.
County Work First directors said they welcomed the rule requiring recipients to stick to their work and training agreements.
Susie Parrott, the Work First manager in Mecklenburg, said the new rule will benefit most of the 2,000 households that must comply because it's another prod toward moving families toward self-sufficiency.
But she anticipates that some recipients will decide to leave Work First because they don't like the new requirements. "You will have some that will say, 'This is just not for me,'" she said. "You have to work first before you see your check, and that is a change."
Funding child care
The state usually helps pay for child care for parents who are required under welfare rules to look for work. But child-care money ran short in Wake County this year. In April, the county stopped giving Work First parents who asked for child-care subsidies any help unless they had jobs.
The county received permission last Friday to begin offering child-care subsidies to Work First parents searching for jobs or training for them, said Barbara Harris, Wake's Work First program manager.
The lack of child care could have kept about 300 of the 500 Wake families from complying with the performance rule, but recipients can still receive their money if they can show that a lack of child care, illness or other problems prevented them from fulfilling work requirements. "There are a lot of good causes [for not complying with the work rule]," Harris said.
But social workers will look for patterns to see what keeps recipients from consistently complying with their work agreements. For example, if parents consistently say sick children kept them out of work, social workers will follow up to see what kinds of medical care children are getting, Harris said.
Danita King, 24, a mother of two, spent months trying to meet her job-search requirements and patch together day-care arrangements for her children. "It's kind of crazy," she said.
King, who was searching for work at a Wake jobs center, said she had to leave a job at a Cary technology company in March because she did not have reliable transportation.
She is trying not to become discouraged by the bad economy and high unemployment rate while she intensifies her job search. One of the advantages of a new job would be relief from the new welfare rule.
"I'm basically trying to find a job anywhere I can so I don't have to worry about that," she said.
The performance rule is 2 years old in Wilson County, where more than half of welfare recipients land jobs, said Ron Hunt, spokesman for the county's social services department.
About 90 percent of the parents in the county's 45 single-parent households that must adhere to the rule stick to their work and training agreements, Hunt said, which is significantly higher than the statewide average.
"It's a lot more than a statistical thing and a jobs thing," he said. "The clients are gaining skills, GEDs, gaining real work experience, and they're gaining work. It's about changing their whole environment."
