Monday, June 12, 2000
Cutting welfare dependency by building self-esteem
Project STEPS in Butler County has personal focus
By Steve Kemme
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — Sitting at a table in the conference room, Vickie Jarrett made it clear she dislikes being a welfare mom.
The 30-year-old Hamilton woman has been on and off welfare for eight years. Ms. Jarrett, a single mother of one, lowered her head and began crying as she talked about her feeling of helplessness and her bouts with depression.
“For a whole year, I stayed home except to take my daughter to school,” she said. “I kept the blinds shut.” She stopped talking and buried her head in her folded arms on the table. Michael Howard and Vinnie Ray walked over to her and consoled her.
“It's OK to cry, Vickie. It's a sign of growth,” said Mr. Howard, a trainer for Project STEPS. “It's going to be all right. You have to believe that.”
Project STEPS — Strategic Training to Elevate Personal Success — is a new attitude-adjustment program for hard-core Butler County welfare recipients. The goal is to change people's attitudes and build their self-esteem so they can find and retain jobs.
The primary targets of STEPS are longtime welfare recipients who can't hold jobs, or those who have been temporarily cut off from welfare benefits because they broke welfare rules.
A non-profit Butler County agency, Support to Encourage Low-income Families (SELF), designed STEPS for the county after studying similar programs in Chicago, Detroit and Columbus. No other county in the Tristate has one exactly like it.
The $50,000-per-year cost of the program is covered by a two-year federal grant Butler County received in 1999 for a host of welfare-to-work programs, including STEPS. The Butler County Work Place, formerly the Department of Human Services, has helped SELF launch this program.
Mr. Howard and Ms. Ray, a case manager, are SELF employees who work on STEPS.
STEPS opened last Mondaywith three participants in a conference room of the county's Government Services Center in Hamilton. Participants must go to the day-long sessions five days a week for four weeks.
County officials hope to have as many as 40 people enrolled in the program at any given time.
“We're working with many individuals with lifelong habits which may have contributed to their difficulties in the work place,” said Jeffrey Diver, executive director of SELF. “The challenge is to change their outlook.”
In the STEPS classes, Mr. Howard stays relentlessly upbeat. With passion, sensitivity and good humor, he prods, exhorts and encourages his clients.
“I'm not out to humiliate or debase them,” said Mr. Howard, an ex-convict who grew up in Cincinnati's West End and spent years himself on welfare. “I want to help them identify their gifts and their weaknesses and turn their weaknesses into strengths. I want to give them the tools they need to succeed.”
He refuses to let them wallow in self-pity or to offer excuses for failing to make positive changes in their lives.
“What has stopped you from being successful?” he asked Ms. Jarrett, who has an 8-year-old daughter.
“A lack of support, transporta tion, day care and motivation,” she said. “All those things can stop you.”
“That's not true,” he said. “It's all perspective. If you look at them as obstacles that will stop you, that's what they'll do. If you look at them as obstacles to be conquered, you'll conquer them.”
Teaching the basics
STEPS teaches participants how to take directions, how to solve problems in the work place and how to interact with co-workers. It stresses the importance of punctuality and attendance.
A member of the first STEPS class, Linda Williams has been on welfare for eight years. The 45-year-old Middletown resident is a single mother of a 4-year-old boy.
Like Ms. Jarrett, Ms. Williams has had welfare benefits cut off for a rules violation.
Completing this program is one way for them to regain their welfare benefits. But their long-range goal is to hold onto a job.
Ms. Williams said she needs more confidence and improved social skills.
“I don't mind working,” she said. “Sometimes I have trouble dealing with people.”
Julie, the third member of the STEPS class, asked that her last name be withheld. She said she wants to finish cosmetology school and start her own business. She's a 20-year-old single mother of two children.
All three women say they often feel overwhelmed by their problems. Mr. Diver said that's a common feeling among people on welfare.
“They're so immersed in the day-to-day crises of being in poverty, they're not able to plan ahead,” he said. “We're trying to get them to focus on long-term success in the work place.”
STEPS also encourages its participants to let go of troubling issues they can't control.
“Some people have a lot of bottled-up fear, anger and disappointment in their lives,” Mr. Diver said. “Someone who feels they've been treated unfairly in life might strike out at someone who asked them to do something in the work setting.”
Program at two centers
STEPS' current location at the Government Services Center is temporary. The program will be held at two opportunity centers being prepared by the Butler County Work Place.
The center at the former Target shopping plaza on University Boulevard in Middletown will open this month. The one at the former Roosevelt Junior High School in Hamilton will be open in two months.
County officials didn't want to postpone the start of STEPS until both centers opened.
SELF will hire a second trainer and a second case manager for when the program splits between two sites.
Those who designed and work in STEPS recognize that people need more than a four-week program to make lasting changes in their lives.
The case managers will check regularly for two years on those who complete the program.
Mr. Howard has made sure that the three current participants in STEPS understand that welfare reform doesn't allow people to stay on welfare indefinitely.
“Welfare, as we know it, has changed radically,” he told them in a recent class, “and if you don't change with it, what will you have?”
Ms. Jarrett raised her hand.
“I'll have nothing,” she said. “I just want to get a job. I don't want to be on welfare.”
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