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Getting Skills
By Dan Olson
October 13, 1998
Click for audio RealAudio 2.0 14.4
Part of the MPR Welfare to Work Series

Most people on welfare in Minnesota go to work. Only a relative handful are allowed to enroll in training or education programs. Critics say more recipients need training and education so they can get better paying jobs in order to stay off welfare in the future.

TWENTY TWO-YEAR-OLD CRYSTAL HAS BEEN a welfare recipient - off and on - since 1993. She says the fathers of her two sons are in no position to help her.

Crystal: One is currently in prison, the other can't even support himself, so there's no way the two can provide at this point.
Crystal's mother was on welfare for a time. She has a job now, but Crystal says her mother doesn't earn much money and can only give Crystal a little help with the rent.
Crystal: I pay my own rent, and my mom actually helps pay some of my rent so I can live in a better neighborhood.
Like most welfare recipients, Crystal gets a cash grant and food stamps. The total is $732 a month. Unlike most welfare recipients, she's getting an education. Crystal's a full-time student at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. She works part time; she's vice president of the student body. She's an exception to the rule. She's allowed to attend school because she was already enrolled in a two-year program when welfare reform went into effect.

The 10-month-old welfare reform program in Minnesota requires nearly all 45,000 adult recipients to find work. Only 8 percent are in training or education programs. In the old system, recipients were allowed more flexibility to choose between a job or education. But in the old system, many recipients chose to do nothing - refusing to get a job or an education. State officials say some chose training that did not lead to employment. Minnesota Department of Human Services spokesman Chuck Johnson says nowadays a job counselor decides at the first meeting if an applicant needs more training to find work.

Johnson: The counselor's very basically looking at labor market, person's skills. Can I get this person a job given the current situation?
The job counselor can only approve training or education programs within certain strict guidelines. Jason Walsh is director of St. Paul-based Affirmative Options, a coalition formed by churches, labor unions, and others monitoring the effects of welfare reform. Walsh says the guidelines are narrow, but fair.
Walsh: It has to lead directly to a job, that job has to pay enough to get you off the program, the job has to be in your area. So they're strict, but do-able.
What's unfair, Walsh says, is not enough people are allowed to pursue training or education programs. Crystal and the others who do get the same benefits as those placed in jobs. There's money for transportation. Crystal says owning a car is too expensive. She relies on the bus. Every week, she gets a free bus card - but there's a problem. It's only for regular, not express bus service.
Crystal: Sometimes if it's raining, or cold, I take an express. So that means more money out of my pocket. It means an hour-an-half each way from school with two kids, and that gets kinda frustrating as well.
Minnesota's welfare program pays a large part of a recipient's day-care costs. Crystal puts her 5-year-old and 2-year-old sons in full-time day care in order to attend classes. But her two-year training to be a Human Services Specialist - a step to becoming a social worker - requires an internship. The internship is at night and welfare does not cover extra day-care costs.
Crystal: I have to pay my own childcare when I intern there at nights, because the self-sufficiency agency will only pay for so many hours per week.
Welfare recipients allowed to enroll in training or education programs get up to 12 months to finish the course, with an extension to 24 months under some conditions. Welfare does not pay tuition. The students must find a scholarship, a loan, a grant, or pay for the education out of their own pockets.

Minnesota could allow many more people - up to 20 percent of the state's recipients - to enroll in training programs. The federal government granted the state a waiver for that purpose. But state officials are reluctant. Department of Human Services spokesman Chuck Johnson says there's a penalty if Minnesota doesn't meet its quota of recipients who are working.

Johnson: What we have to do is make sure we have enough people in federally defined work activities for each month and year to meet federal standards in order to avoid having our block grant reduced.
Senator Paul Wellstone proposed changing federal law to allow welfare recipients up to 24-months time for training or education programs. But a Senate conference committee stripped the language from a higher education bill, and it's dead for this session. Welfare critic Jason Walsh says the welfare law's priority of putting people to work first is short-sighted and shortchanges many recipients.
Walsh: People who are often low skilled with little education - often women, often immigrants, often single parents - and this is the face of the labor force in this state and we have an opportunity. We have a great need for workers, but we need to train them, and we need to support them. And the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), at present, are not doing a good enough job.
Crystal finishes her two-year degree in a few months. She's confident she'll find a job, earn enough to support her two sons and, in fact, go back to school on her own to earn a four-year degree. She says the state's welfare program isn't working for a lot of other recipients not allowed to get training for higher paying jobs.
Crystal: I don't think it'll work. A lot will end up working at McDonalds or Burger King, and they won't earn enough and they'll get frustrated, and they'll quit, and they'll go back on welfare.
But by then many will have used up a year or more of the lifetime maximum of five years state law allows people to be on welfare. State officials say when the five years are up, as many as 20 percent of the welfare recipients might be eligible for more time, but only in special cases where there are large families or language problems.