Pubdate: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2001 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Forum: http://forums.bayarea.com/webx/cgi-bin/WebX Author: Karen De Sa Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) UNCOVERING, TREATING THE TRAUMA Intensive New Program Is Designed To Help Those Hardest To Train Single Women On Welfare In San Mateo County Are Having Their Ongoing Personal Problems Addressed In Hopes They Finally Can Get Off The Welfare Rolls And Have A Better Life. San Mateo County leads California when it comes to moving people off welfare, but it can't shake free Kayla Gaines, Hope Richard and 600 other single parents stuck on aid. Gaines is 44, recovering from a heroin addiction and quick to acknowledge her work history includes ``nothing legal.'' Richard is 36, a mother of three, and wants her supermarket job back but battles depression and the lure of liquor. Crash courses in job training and a wealth of low-wage jobs have helped San Mateo County slash the number of people on welfare since 1995 by a record 77 percent. But these women need something more. That's why the county is gambling on a new intensive eight-week treatment program designed to uncover the women's deepest traumas before they're sent into the work world. Substance-abuse and mental-health counselors, three with doctorates in psychology, meet with the women eight hours a day at a newly opened Women's Enrichment Center. A specialist manages the single mothers' lives: housing crises, dental needs and custody battles. They're given rides to the center and back; their kids are dropped off at day care. Breakfast and lunch are served, with an occasional food basket to take home. No one knows whether the program will work, and it isn't cheap. The county pays $4,000 for each participant -- more than three times what the average welfare recipient receives in cash aid. The first group started in October with six women. Four dropped out within weeks. Another ended up in jail, after an outstanding warrant caught up with her during a trip to Nevada. But now she's back at the Women's Enrichment Center for eight more weeks. ``If I don't get it right this time, I don't think I can come back,'' Gaines said during a recent class, echoing others' sentiments. ``I can go straight from this door and get some heroin, but my next stopping point will be death.'' Yet for all the good intentions, some say the program is too short to do any long-term good. ``People with serious addiction or mental-health problems are not going to recover in an eight-week period of time,'' said Sandra Naylor Goodwin, director of the California Institute for Mental Health in Sacramento. ``That's just not the reality of a serious clinical depression or a serious drug addiction.'' But local officials say there are few options, so they've paid a non-profit agency $350,000 to run the Women's Enrichment Center for a year. The old welfare system asked no questions about why women remained on public aid. Now, with the task of putting recipients to work within five years, welfareagencies-turned-employment-centers have to probe personal lives. ``There are experiences like chronic trauma, poverty, educational deficiencies, drug use and mental-health issues that honestly and truly get in people's way. That's what we have to focus on now,'' said Marilyn Kissinger, director of the new center in San Carlos. The women gather there in a plushly carpeted classroom that overlooks a courtyard dotted with bird feeders and a splashing fountain. In class, even the simplest accomplishments count. Maggie Casson gets applause for using her free time to grab a burger, not a syringe. Gaines gets praise from counselor David Meshel for ``identifying her core beliefs.'' ``Everything that I used to believe for 30 years as a heroin addict didn't work,'' she tells the class bluntly. Richard sits in the circle next to Gaines. She's nodding. ``I'm tired of being a failure,'' said Richard, who's been trying to pass her high school equivalency exam since 1982. Counselors press her to find time to study. She listens to a fable about Genghis Khan, debates the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous sponsors and helps herself to a lunch of croissant sandwiches, fresh strawberries and sparkling juices. She misses life with paychecks. Child-care problems cost her a job, she said. She cries when recounting how her daughter reacted to a Thanksgiving Day handout: ``I don't want to eat that turkey -- that thing ain't no good,'' the 6-year-old told her mom. ``That turkey's for poor people.'' Richard compares the conversation with the shame of her own childhood as one of nine children her grandmother raised on domestic work and public assistance. Her brother would melt the ``W'' off the back of his sneakers so no one could tell they came from Woolworth's. Now, Richard is crushed to see her daughter suffering the same shame. Substance-abuse counselor Deborah Casta=F1eda coaxes Richard to say: ``I'm a successful person.'' But it isn't easy to say, or to feel like the image fits. ``It's been a tough week,'' marriage and family therapist Clarise Blanchard said with a sigh after class, ``a lot of crying and people needing individual sessions to just contain themselves.'' The sessions mark a dramatic break from welfare-to-work programs of the recent past. Job readiness classes have been required for all San Mateo County adults on welfare since 1997 -- one year before other California counties began the transition. But human services agency Director Maureen Borland has since discovered that the job clubs aren't working for the vast majority of moms who stay on aid more than the typical two to four weeks. Resume writing is out because many can't write. Mock interviews don't help -- the women are too beaten down to present themselves confidently to strangers. Even the freedom to work, for almost half of the women, is bridled by an abusive mate. A study of welfare moms in two California counties confirms these women are not alone. The California Institute for Mental Health reports that in two long-term case studies, most welfare parents had at least one diagnosable disorder. Almost half said they'd been battered by a mate within the past year, often resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder or injuries that interfered with work. Meanwhile, since 1995, the number of families on welfare has dropped 50 percent nationwide and 34 percent statewide. San Mateo County led the state, dropping from 7,156 families in 1994 to 1,641 last year. That number includes 1,030 families in which children are eligible for welfare, but their caregivers aren't required to work. Santa Clara County still has 10,400 families on welfare -- down 69 percent from 1994. That county has spent the past year broadening its services for welfare recipients, including expunging criminal records and removing tattoos. Mental-health and substance-abuse treatment is available as part of a broader array of job readiness and education programs, but nothing as intensive as in San Mateo County. ``We can't carve people up into little pieces,'' said Kissinger, the Women's Enrichment Center director. ``We have to treat them and see the whole person.'' - --- MAP posted-by: GD