Welfare System

More than 1,600 state workers charged with investigating and preventing child abuse and neglect are being given a competency test to determine whether they can stay on the job.State officials said the multiple-choice test was designed to cover basics that all child welfare workers should know, but only 60 percent passed on their first tries early this year.The figure had improved to about 80 percent by last week, and Maryland Human Resources Secretary Lynda G. Fox said she expects "in excess of 90 percent" to pass by year's end. Any workers who do not pass by Dec. 31 will be assigned to other jobs that do not involve casework, Fox said.

RICHMOND, Va. -- Why would a chamber of commerce grasp the sticky wicket of welfare reform? And not only preach change, but also contract to run the welfare system for a city and three suburban counties?To create a good business climate, with skilled workers, improve schools and lower the crime rate, replies James W. Dunn, president of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce."There's nothing easy, nothing glamorous about the welfare reform job we've taken on. But if we can figure this out, use our business skills to transform welfare recipients into workers with sustainable incomes, we'll have a real competitive edge.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's 62-year-old welfare system, condemned last year by federal law, will formally die tomorrow, and a season of state legislative debate has brought new clarity to the decentralized system rising in its place.If the emerging programs share a unifying theme, it can be summarized in a word: work. States are demanding that recipients find it faster, keep it longer and perform it as a condition of aid. Most states regard even a low-paying, dead-end job preferable to the education and training programs they offered in the past.

ATLANTA -- In many states, welfare workers offer classes to teach aid recipients how to dress neatly for job interviews, fill out applications and otherwise make themselves more employable.For poor women hampered by a lack of education and role models, such guidance can be life-changing. With the help of job-readiness instructions, thousands are moving from welfare to work. Nationwide, welfare rolls declined about 20 percent between 1994 and 1996.Though that fact is encouraging, it may offer less hope than one might think for ending ''welfare as we know it.'' That's because states are helping women, while doing almost nothing to provide job training, skills assessment or transportation for men.The surest way to lead a woman with children out of poverty is to help her find a job and a partner with a steady income.

LAST AUG. 22, President Clinton made good his promise to "end welfare as we know it" by signing into law the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996." He heralded the new law as "the beginning of a new era in which welfare will become what it was meant to be: a second chance, not a way of life."Like many big-city mayors, I believe that changes in the welfare system were long overdue. I agree wholeheartedly with the president that it ought to be a system that is transitional and moves people to independence, not to prolonged dependence.

FREDERICK -- The article, ''Welfare Reform: the return of indentured servitude'' (Opinion Commentary, March 28), was perhaps well-intentioned. Douglas Miles and his co-authors are correct about one thing: The poor may become the losers in the debate over welfare reform. Unfortunately, the divisive language could undermine efforts to reform a welfare system that many feel is out of control, placing the poor in gravest jeopardy.In the first place, ''indentured servitude,'' implying that welfare reform is moving us back to slavery, is plain erroneous.

WASHINGTON -- Because of the ''psychological bomb,'' welfare reform has been jump-started. It is working well, and will likely work better. It may end up as a salutary turning point in American social policy. It could even turn the direction of policy in other areas of the world.I say this after moderating a vigorous ''Think Tank'' program on PBS with a quite remarkable panel, who didn't agree on many things -- in some cases caustically. The four participants have been both scholars and activists in the great welfare wars of the last decade.

As a former welfare mother who now works full time, Jasmine Gunthorpe has mixed feelings about a Maryland state Senate proposal that aims to put welfare clients to work within two years.On one hand, she feels the refreshing winds of change blowing down some of the outmoded traditions of the welfare system -- requirements, she says, that forced women on assistance to "live double lives" and relinquish control over their destinies.On the other hand -- from experience -- Ms. Gunthorpe wonders where all the jobs will come from.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is asking the General Assembly to approve a major overhaul of Maryland's welfare system that would ultimately force half of Maryland's adult welfare recipients to work.Legislation introduced in the House of Delegates yesterday would set a five-year lifetime limit on an individual's right to receive welfare. Welfare recipients would be forced into community service jobs if they did not find work after two years in the program.The bill, which is sponsored by two Baltimore delegates on the administration's behalf, anticipates changes pending in Washington, as Congress and President Clinton attempt to settle their differences over welfare reform, including a plan approved Tuesday by the nation's governors, said Alvin C. Collins, secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources.

BEFORE CONGRESS recesses for the national conventions, it may actually send three major measures to President Clinton: health insurance reform, a rise in the minimum wage and the most sweeping changes in the welfare system since the New Deal. Moreover, Mr. Clinton is almost sure to sign the first two and is under intense pressure to swallow the third. He should.As Republican challenger Bob Dole surveys this scene, it can hardly be reassuring. The Senate under Trent Lott of Mississippi is, with Democratic cooperation, building up a legislative record that eluded Mr. Dole when he was majority leader.

Statistically, the most likely profile of a neglectful or abusive parent is a 30-year-old, college-educated white woman who has a job. Yet in Maryland, African-American children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be removed from their homes by child welfare officials because of maltreatment. A recent study by Advocates for Children and Youth, a group that lobbies for children's issues in Maryland, found that while African-Americans make up only a third of the state's children, they constitute nearly three-quarters of the children removed from their homes, and are five times more likely than white children to be placed in group or foster home care.

Many Maryland lawmakers want to get tougher on people who are required by law to report possible child abuse and neglect. Last week the Senate passed a bill that would impose criminal penalties for failing to report. Although the sentiment is understandable, it may be more important to increase training so that workers responsible for children and families in the child welfare system and their mandated helpers can do their jobs effectively. Maryland is one of about 18 states that requires everyone to report suspected child abuse, according to a legislative audit.

Police allege that Bryanna Harris' mother fed her methadone to stop her from crying and hit her in the abdomen. In the face of Bryanna's abhorrent death, volunteers with Maryland's Citizens Review Board for Children are frustrated that so many of our recommendations for improvements to the child welfare system have been ignored over the past decade. Bryanna's death will lead to calls for the automatic removal of children from their homes based on some fixed set of indicators - a sure formula for disaster in a stressed system.

Starting up the new computer system that is supposed to make it easier to track Maryland's child welfare cases has been postponed once again in Baltimore. But the delay seems unavoidable, as recurring glitches need to be fixed before sensitive information can be entrusted to the system and relied on by caseworkers. State and city officials promise to get the system on track in the next month or so, which is a good thing because the potential benefits are important. The new monitoring system, dubbed Chessie, promises to make child-welfare data collection uniform throughout the state.

Members of the Maryland House Judiciary Committee have squandered an opportunity to bring more accountability to the state child welfare system by watering down a proposal that would have subjected child abuse case records to more outside review and provided additional oversight of the state's handling of vulnerable children. The proposed legislation required state social service administrators to disclose information about abused and neglected children who died or suffered severe physical injuries to state attorneys' offices, local health commissioners and attorneys who represented the children in guardianship proceedings, among others.

Child welfare system is failing nationwide Like so many other cases facing the U.S. child welfare system, the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, who was beaten to death by her stepfather in New York, is a tragedy ("Experts fear `foster-care panic,'" Jan. 29). This tragedy raises two key issues. First, why should some of the child protective services workers who handled the case be suspended when they did the best job they could with the resources they were given? It is well-documented that child protective services workers are overburdened by high caseloads, which makes it difficult to thoroughly investigate all reported cases of abuse and neglect.

Alegislative audit of Maryland's child welfare system is a damning indictment of the Department of Human Resources' ability to properly monitor and protect the state's most vulnerable children, and apparently of the agency's capacity to monitor itself. It also raises troubling questions about whether DHR officials purposely misreported caseworker staffing numbers to show they were close to meeting national standards and to ensure that the department received $3.5 million in state funding that lawmakers threatened to withhold.

Legislative auditors issued a stinging rebuke of Maryland's child welfare system yesterday, charging in a special report that state officials misreported caseworker staffing numbers, failed to initiate or complete investigations into reports of abuse, and provided unreliable information to advocates. As a result of the audit, top lawmakers vowed to investigate the deaths in 2004 of 11 children who were under the care of the state Department of Human Resources, which oversees child welfare programs, including foster care.

More than three years ago, Maryland was handed a blueprint to improve the care of nearly 3,000 children in privately run group homes. The plan recommended new performance standards, tougher sanctions for violators and a public Web site that everyone could use to gauge the quality of homes. Most important, the much-criticized licensing and monitoring systems run by various state departments were to be consolidated and strengthened. But the major provisions of the 170-page plan, devised by a task force appointed by Gov. Parris N. Glendening, were not carried out. Some have blamed the price tag, others bureaucratic turf battles or the momentum lost as gubernatorial administrations changed.

Still another failure to save vulnerable kids I think it is a reasonable assumption that I am not the only person wondering how many children have to die at the hands of abusive parents before the people in authority intervene. And why in God's name would workers at Johns Hopkins Hospital allow two small children to be sent home with a mother whom they felt was "intellectually limited," and a father who "was beating on her" [the mother] in the hospital room ("Couple deny killing twins," Aug. 13)