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.''
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