A LOOK AHEAD * Los Angeles County this week will unveil a plan to implement welfare reform on the local level. By including an intensive program of support services and counseling, officials hope they are . . . : Drawing a Road Map to Self-Sufficiency

After months of deliberation, collaboration and public input, Los Angeles County officials will unveil an eagerly anticipated welfare reform plan this week designed to restructure the way public aid is delivered in the nation’s most populous county and to propel thousands of recipients from dependence to self-sufficiency.

The massive federal welfare overhaul enacted last year gave states broad authority to draft laws tailored to the needs of their populations. But under California’s state welfare plan, CalWORKS, counties were handed the task of working out the nuts and bolts of welfare-to-work programs, including making key decisions about the provision of supportive services.

In nearly every area of discretion in the draft plan, which must be approved by the Board of Supervisors, Los Angeles County social service officials have proposed the most expansive level of support for recipients.

The idea is that an intensive program of upfront services and counseling will keep people off aid or more quickly move them to independence, administrators of the county Department of Public Social Services say.

“Parents who participate in welfare-to-work services, who immunize their children, ensure that their children attend school and cooperate with child support enforcement efforts will receive the same level of benefits that they had in the past, coupled with a vastly enhanced system of services designed to help them attain true economic self-sufficiency,” said Phil Ansell, who has coordinated the county’s welfare reform strategy for the Department of Public Social Services.

The plan is the result of more than three months of unprecedented collaboration among virtually all public and private groups involved in welfare--advocates for the poor and for children, private industry, education and government leaders, and welfare recipients--who were asked to participate in work groups that had the responsibility of making suggestions on the design of a particular aspect of the plan.

One of the few key areas in which the work groups could not reach consensus was how many hours of weekly work to require of single parents in the short run in order to maintain full welfare grants. The county has the option of requiring 26 to 32 hours per week before July 1999, when 32 hours will become mandatory under state law. Social Services Director Lynn W. Bayer will decide what option to recommend in the final plan.

The draft plan will initially be available Wednesday on the county’s World Wide Web site. It will get a hearing at a community meeting at Holman United Methodist Church on Dec. 10, and a final draft is expected to be presented to the Board of Supervisors for adoption on Jan. 6.

The county has received an initial allocation of more than $200 million in state and federal funds to implement welfare-to-work programs, with tens of millions of dollars of additional funding for child care, support services and job development.

Key provisions of the draft plan include:

* Mothers would be exempt from welfare-to-work activities until their first child covered under the plan reaches the age of 1. With subsequent births, mothers would receive a six-month exemption. But parents would be encouraged to find work and would have to meet with case managers periodically to discuss time limits and child care services.

* The 18-month time limit for aid will be routinely extended to 24 months for people who have complied with welfare-to-work regulations. If they still have not found work, they will have to perform community service to receive a full family grant. The soonest most recipients would be subject to the limits is April 2000.

* Cash rather than vouchers will be issued for children in families in which adults have reached the five-year lifetime limit on eligibility for aid. Officials concluded that vouchers for rent, clothing or other needs would require more paperwork and prove more costly.

* The county will attempt to monitor the impact of welfare reform by tracking such basic statistics as how many people get jobs and retain them. It will also monitor more subtle data, such as changes in teenage pregnancy and child immunization rates and the numbers of low-birth-weight babies born in the county. The data will be used to refine programs at the local level and, if necessary, seek legislative changes.

Under federal welfare laws enacted last year, most welfare recipients can receive only five years of benefits over their lives. But each state can exempt 20% of families that are deemed hardship cases. The head of each family on welfare must find work within two years, or the family loses benefits.

With a welfare population larger than the entire public assistance caseloads of each state outside California except New York, the plan devised by Los Angeles County officials has been eagerly awaited because the impact of its provisions could reverberate throughout the state and nation.

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More than 1.6 million county residents receive some form of public assistance, with 768,000 people enrolled in the largest cash assistance program, formerly known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children and now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The Los Angeles County plan calls for a detailed reworking of the county’s child care system and vastly expanded services for the mentally ill, those seeking help for substance abuse and domestic violence victims. It is in the restructuring of decades-old ways of providing public support that the latent revolution would take place.

For the first time, for example, the county will be able to provide extensive post-employment services, designed to help recipients keep jobs, upgrade skills and education and increase wages.

The program would offer counseling and other supportive services for the first few months on the job, career development assistance and job search assistance for participants who lose their jobs.

Beginning this month, all county staff members will undergo new training, to be provided by UC Davis and the county office of education, designed to change the culture of welfare and help workers motivate and encourage recipients, who will now be called participants.

Other workers will receive training to help identify and assess the needs of victims of domestic violence and those needing mental health and drug services.

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“While [meeting] with participants, workers will be expected to promote the message of welfare-to-work and relate to them in a way that is empowering,” Ansell said. “In the past, welfare has viewed recipients as essentially passive vessels, expected to follow certain rules and then we do things for them. We now must help them take control of their lives, motivate them to create a belief that their lives can be better.”

The plan calls for acquiring at least four new buildings to expand services under the Greater Avenues for Independence program, the county’s primary ongoing welfare-to-work program, which emphasizes work over training.

The program has previously been criticized for lacking the capacity to enroll most welfare recipients who are eligible for services. Currently, in only about 30% of the county’s 223,600 welfare cases are parents enrolled in the program. Beginning in April, all new welfare applicants will be enrolled in the program and the county will almost immediately have to double the number of people it can serve at any one time from about 45,000 to 90,000.

A major new element of the county welfare plan would be the attempt to keep applicants off welfare rolls with an upfront one-time lump-sum payment of cash or other assistance. The idea is that many people only need a quick fix of cash or other support to get them through an emergency before they regain their footing. A person applying for welfare would have to first agree to enter the diversion program and could use the cash to pay for such things as transportation, child care, uniforms or other work-related expenses, rent and utilities or even relocation costs.

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The amount of support would be based on individual need up to a maximum of $2,000 or the equivalent of three months of welfare assistance, depending on family size. In special cases in which there is a compelling need, senior welfare managers could approve payments of up to $4,000 or the equivalent of six months of welfare assistance.

Officials concede that the county’s welfare system will not be transformed overnight, but they express confidence that their new way of doing business will help many children and mothers who might otherwise be mired for years on the public dole.

“The comprehensive system of services we’ve designed to help participants overcome barriers to work and to progress from entry-level jobs to self-sustaining employment has the potential to very positively impact hundreds of thousands of low-income families in Los Angeles County,” Ansell said.

The county’s draft welfare plan will be available Wednesday via the Department of Public Social Service’s Web site at: https://www.co.la.ca.us/dpss