Welfare Cut Leaves Tough Choices for Recipients

With the dawn of the new year, Ventura County residents receiving welfare awoke to a new financial reality: a 4.9% cut in their monthly assistant checks.

The change, effective today, is the first in a series of steps that by the end of 1997 will significantly alter the way the county doles out welfare. It will also cost a family of three receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children--the government’s primary welfare program--about $350 annually.

Although the cuts for many will amount to $30 or $40 per check, they worry local welfare recipients, who wonder which expenses to cut.

“I don’t see how they feel we can make do with less and less while we’re trying to get on our feet,” said Montalvo resident Kimberly Ware, who uses her $948 monthly check to feed her six children. “This kind of stumbling block--it holds you back.”

The cut will affect more than 10,000 families countywide, said Helen Reburn, deputy director of the county’s Public Social Services Agency. Although the step will save taxpayers money, people receiving government aid see it as another hardship, one that will strain household budgets already stretched thin.

“The cutbacks are ridiculous, especially for the people who really need it and the children who need it,” said Delores Kovach of Simi Valley. With three children under 5 years of age, Kovach has to live with her parents to make ends meet.

She recently took a waitress job but still dreads watching her $675 monthly checks shrink. “They don’t give you enough to live on,” she said. “I don’t really go out and spend money on anything.”

For Ware, the cutback will amount to roughly $48, about the size of her electric bill. She already can’t afford cable service, she said, and stashes household trash in nearby dumpsters because she can’t pay for garbage pickup.

Ware, who hopes to attend Ventura College and eventually become a medical assistant, said she does not know how she will adjust to the cutback.

“I just wish it wasn’t so abrupt,” she said.

Some families facing the cuts may be eligible for more food stamps, said Maria Older, Ventura district manager for the county agency. The food stamps, however, will not necessarily make up the slack, she said.

“It’s not really like, ‘Here, I’ll trade you,’ ” she said.

Staff members in Older’s office, as well as the agency’s three other district offices scattered around the county, have been counseling clients about the upcoming change. The county this past fall also mailed fliers explaining the cuts to local welfare recipients.

As nervous as recipients are about the cutback, they will soon face several other dramatic shifts in California’s welfare system--including cuts in aid to teenage mothers living away from their parents, changing rules for new California residents and the elimination of extra money for additional children.

Also, state and county officials are exploring new ways to deliver welfare payments, including plans to put more recipients back in the work force.

County officials are hoping the Legislature will approve a pilot program they devised to create a network of services for helping welfare recipients.

“That’s not going to give more people more money in terms of grants but would give them more opportunity and would give the staff more flexibility to help them,” Older said.

And yet for some, a scaled-back program may be their only choice. Brad McInnerny of Thousand Oaks recently applied for welfare after the onset of colon cancer made work impossible. Although upset about the cutbacks, he still hoped for entry into the program.

“For people who do need it, it’s a necessity,” he said.

* FIRST ROUND

Reduction is beginning of new state, federal restrictions. A1