Copyright 2002 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company  
The Houston Chronicle
December 10, 2002, Tuesday 3 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 21 MetFront

LENGTH: 685 words

HEADLINE: Welfare study shows more services needed

SOURCE: Staff

BYLINE: POLLY ROSS HUGHES, Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

DATELINE: AUSTIN

BODY:
AUSTIN - Tens of thousands of needy Texans are exhausting lifetime limits for cash welfare without getting services they need to become self-sufficient, a legislative review shows.

Already 19,000 adult Texans are barred from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits under a five-year freezeout required by the state's welfare reform law.

The federal welfare overhaul will block another 17,000 parents and children from receiving benefits for life in the next two to three years, according to the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission's special review of the Texas Department of Human Services.

Lawmakers are set to review the state's handling of its welfare system at hearings this week. Since welfare reform laws passed in the mid-1990s, state rolls have dropped by more than half. Currently, 360,000 Texans receive welfare. Two-thirds of them are children.

"Families that do not successfully achieve independence from TANF appear to be contributing to the need for higher-cost services," the commission's staff report said.

The report suggests that children in families leaving the welfare system are ending up in foster care instead.

It noted that some 3,300 children from families leaving welfare rolls made up one-third of all new foster care cases in fiscal 2000 at an estimated state price tag of $ 47 million.

"It's a pay now or pay later kind of issue," said Jason Sabo, a welfare policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

"Considering the funding crisis in our foster care system, what are the fiscal implications of that, but also the human implications?" he asked.

Others questioned the report's assumptions.

Jeff Wool, spokesman at the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, said children might have been abused or neglected while their family still received welfare.

When the child is moved into foster care, the parent is dropped from the rolls, and the child shows up as a separate case. So data might appear that the child was placed in foster care after the family left welfare, when the opposite might be the case.

"Our folks are saying there's not a cause and effect in this situation. We don't look at what forced them or inspired them or put them in a situation where they go abuse or neglect their kids," Wool said.

The report noted that 40 percent of families who leave the welfare system end up back in it and suggested the state needs to better help families overcome all barriers to a steady work life.

Families racked by domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse need more social services in order to better support themselves, the report said.

The state also needs to better identify welfare recipients held back by learning disabilities and problems speaking English.

"However, the TANF system still lacks a function specifically responsible for identifying and diverting at-risk families into supportive services to help break the cycle of dependency," the report said.

Neither DHS nor the Texas Workforce Commission regularly or thoroughly screens families for multiple barriers to employment or directs them to services.

Plus, the report said, both agencies often give clients confusing or even inaccurate information about what's expected of them.

Larry Temple, director of welfare reform initiatives at the Texas Workforce Commission, countered that the agency is "aggressively seeking out those people" coping with obstacles.

He also noted that during the five-year freezeout, children continue to receive benefits even if their parents are cut from them.

Plans to identify learning and other disabilities are under way, he said, and the agency has just completed four hours of training for its caseworkers. It also screens for substance abuse in the Belton area of Central Texas.

Ken Levine, project supervisor of the Sunset review, said he's having a difficult time assessing how much the Workforce Commission is actually doing to help clients today.

He said a letter from Temple said the agency "has developed" programs, but it also used the future tense in describing what they "will" do.



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