Wednesday, April 29, 1998

City keeps up leading role in welfare reform

Abilene's private sector has gained statewide recognition for its efforts to move people from welfare to work. It seems our public sector hasn't been doing so badly, either.

In December, the Texas Department of Human Services presented its very first Texas Works Partnership Award to local restaurateur Ron English. While others across the state were pondering the problems created by establishing across-the-board time limits on welfare benefits, English started hiring former welfare recipients to work in his Burger Kings, encouraged more Abilene employers to do likewise and helped organize a monthly welfare-to-work job fair to put employers and welfare recipients in touch with each other.

Top state officials called English a hero of welfare reform, and new DHS Commissioner Eric Bost came to town to honor him.

In January, Bost returned, this time accompanied by Gov. George W. Bush, to present identical awards to Tom Perini of Perini Ranch Steak House and Jeff Andress of Zapata's Cafe & Cantina. The Abilene business community was obviously being singled out as a model for other Texas cities to emulate.

Projects similar to those in Abilene have sprung up statewide as employers have seen that the goals of helping others and helping themselves mesh and that the responsibility for reforming welfare can't be simply pushed off onto the DHS staff.

New role for workers

Those caseworkers, nevertheless, remain vitally important in helping clients strive for self-sufficiency. And the excellence of the work being done by the local office was underscored this week when Bost -- who is becoming a regular visitor here -- was back in town to present another first-time statewide honor, the Commissioners Cup Award, which was given to employees of the Abilene regional DHS office because of the high percentage of their clients who opted to look for jobs rather than simply draw welfare.

In the new world of welfare reform, DHS caseworkers have become more like job counselors than benefit dispensers. They must expend a lot of time and energy identifying what keeps individual clients from working and then help to overcome those barriers.

Encouraging potential welfare recipients to look for work first requires caring, creative thinking and a true partnership with local businesses. That's what members of the Abilene DHS staff have evidently been doing exceptionally well.

In the process, local DHS workers have won honor for themselves and further enhanced Abilene's status as a state leader in welfare reform. They've helped save Texas taxpayers thousands of dollars in welfare benefits and enabled recipients to make productive contributions to the larger society.

But perhaps more importantly, the state employees in the Abilene office have allowed individual clients the opportunity to win the dignity and respect that is achieved only through self-reliance rather than government dependency. And that's the ultimate goal of welfare reform.