State welfare savings mean child care cuts

Dawn Miller

Charleston Gazette

November 16, 2001

As the state continued to save federal welfare money, the Department of Health and Human Resources increasingly cut state funding spent on foster care and other help for abused and neglected children.

The department transferred $6.7 million in 1999, $7.3 million in 2000 and $3.9 million in 2001 out of the its Office of Social Services. That office provides child care, foster care and other treatments for abused and neglected children.

To make it up, the state spent welfare money, called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF.

Department officials could not say exactly how the transferred money was spent at a meeting of the TANF Advisory Council on Thursday.

DHHR Secretary Paul Nusbaum says the state will be $90 million short by 2003 at the rate it is spending welfare money.

Gov. Bob Wise appointed the advisory council to recommend which programs should be cut, which should be kept and which should be paid for with other money. That report is due Dec. 7.

At times, the debate has centered on how to cut services for poor people and services for abused children.

After West Virginia cut thousands off welfare, the state spent more money on things that help people find and keep jobs, such as child care, money for car repairs and clothing allowances.

Some of the money also went to higher payments to foster parents, more children in state custody and programs to prevent abuse and neglect.

Several council members suggested they consider cutting more than just poor families and abused children, those served by the Bureau for Children and Families.

"This is a department problem, not just a bureau problem," said council member Julie Pratt.

While the state used welfare money to pay for foster care, state funding for foster care dropped from $48.39 million in 1998 to $36.75 million in 2001, according to data compiled for the council.

The transferred money could have gone to Medicaid, public health or child support collection, for example.

Several people who have received help in the past spoke to panel members.

Kimberly Hargis of Raleigh County said she and her three children were homeless for six months after she divorced and worked two jobs.

She couldn't afford to get her car fixed, which caused her to lose her job, which caused her to lose her house, and eventually all her things she put in storage.

She has received a TANF check for 36 months. The lifetime limit is 60 months.

DHHR helped her get housing and money to buy suitable work clothes, to fix her car and to pay for the insurance.

Hargis took the last two parts of the general equivalency diploma test on Wednesday.

She's considering a two-year nursing program.

Advisory council chairman Tom Heywood asked speakers which program could most afford a cut.

She receives food stamps, Medicaid and a clothing voucher for her child, who started kindergarten.

If she had to take a cut, she'd rather have limits on Medicaid, she said.

Others said they could weather a cut in cash assistance better than a cut in child care or car repair money.

Ethel Hardy, a mother of four, said she relied on cash assistance from DHHR and help from the Family Refuge Center in Lewisburg when she tried for the fifth and final time to get away from her abusive husband.

Hardy suffered black eyes, bruises, stitches, concussions and broken ribs.

Eventually, one of her children began to fantasize about killing the abuser and himself. Her ex-husband always found her when she tried to run away, and would never leave all the children in her company at a time in order to keep her from leaving.

"I don't know what I would have done in the beginning without the help for housing and AFDC," Hardy said, referring to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the program that TANF replaced.

"I don't know how I lived without those benefits, but without everything the domestic violence shelter did for me, it wouldn't have mattered.

Hardy now counsels women at that shelter herself. Her children are now 20, 19, 15, 14.

Her own position is not paid for with TANF, but several others are.

"We're not sure what's going to happen to them," Hardy said.

To contact staff writer Dawn Miller, use e-mail or call 348-5117