ADDRESSING KEY WELFARE QUESTIONS.

I think there are four policy questions that need to be asked (about welfare reform). In the way the governor has laid it out, he's answered the policy questions from his perspective; the question is, how's the Legislature going to (answer those questions)?

The first question that really has to be dealt with is: Should mothers work outside the home?

Now, you're probably thinking: ``Gee, a lot of mothers work outside the home; why is this a big policy question?'' (It's a big question) because the major policy of AFDC was to keep mothers at home with the children. So if you do anything in terms of work - which AFDC has actually never done - you really question the primary policy. I don't think we - as a country or as a state - have really answered that question.

I think what is interesting about the debate around the whole notion of mothers working is that there are more single mothers working who are not on AFDC than there are single mothers who are on AFDC. So, in many ways, the question has been answered; but we haven't answered that question in our policy.

And right along with that goes a different thinking that we haven't really stepped up to. It is: Do we believe that mothers ought to be financially responsible for their children - maybe not totally, but at least have some financial responsibility for their children?

And if you look at how we have designed the AFDC policy from the 1930s all the way up to the present, what the government has done is assumed a husbandry role. Now, think about it; AFDC was designed because fathers were not in the home, mostly because of death. So the thinking here, in the original program design, is to replace the father's income.

All the programs that will be put on the table need to be looked at with that first question in mind: What do we believe about mothers working outside the home? What do we believe about mothers' financial contribution to the raising of their child?

Which then moves us to the second policy question: What do we really believe the safety net is for?

The safety net question

We haven't actually answered the safety net question for about 80 years, because the G.A. (general assistance) or local programs are much older than AFDC. And the questions I would ask here are:

What is the purpose of the safety net? Who should we service in a safety net, under what conditions should they be serviced, and how long?

Once you begin to ask those questions, you begin to look at both general assistance and AFDC in a brand-new way, and not necessarily the way we looked at them in the 1920s and the 1930s.

The next policy question we try to answer is: What is the role of government?

Government's role

We have probably three questions inside that one. The first one is actually: What is the role of the state, because this is a county-run system - and there are only 11 county-run systems in the country. So what is the state's role in a county-run environment? We believe that it's a different role.

And next question you have there is: What is the role of the county? And this is a larger role than the role of the state. The counties need to ask the question that other states have asked, and that is: What is the role of government in assisting people, and this is different than the safety-net question, because you begin to ask: How much do you expect people to do?

Which I think is the fourth policy question: Should we have an expectation of people we aid? And if we should, what should that expectation be?

Low espectationsj

Historically we've had no expectation.

Now, that flies in the face of most of the rhetoric of people who deal with these programs. Most people say the AFDC program is a program for children. I would suggest to you that it isn't, because it has never done anything for children. It has never cared what happens with children; we never go look at what happens with children; we don't look at whether kids are in school, we don't look at whether kids are fed, we don't do anything except give the mom money - and it's mostly moms - and say, ``Get out of our face.'' That is not a program that's about children.

Actually, I think what we have tried to do in this program is to move much more toward a program that concerns itself with children.

Those are the policy questions that one has to answer, and as you look at our program I think you'll see that we tried to answer all those - probably differently than most people would expect - but we did answer them.

And the first one is, we actually believe that mothers ought to work outside the home. If the financial need of the home is such, we also believe that mothers ought to be financially responsible for the children equal to participation on the father's part. We don't believe that it's a singular financial responsibility. So we have a requirement of 32 hours for single-parent family and 35 hours for a two-parent family. Now, one would say that's a pretty high response in terms of work; we believe that level of work will do two things:

One, it will begin to put an economic base in the family, that the family can sustain itself; and second, it will meet the federal work requirements, which after two or three years get pretty strenuous. We are over the federal work requirements because we know that all counties and all people won't meet them, so if we go above them we'll be able to meet the requirements on the aggregate.

Eligibility requirements

The other thing we ask here is that we have a different set of eligibility requirements because we actually believe that fathers ought to be responsible for some of the financial conditions of their children; and we also know where there is child-support payment along with mothers working, the need for aid has disappeared.

So it is important that both parents contribute. Just as we know that when two parents are living with the children, children very seldom are in poverty. If two parents are contributing to the children, children are better off.

So we have a paternity establishment requirement, which says that before you are eligible for aid, paternity must be established for all children that you are seeking aid for. Right now, 38 percent of the children who are on AFDC do not have a legal father. We believe that all children have a right to their father; plus, if they don't have a legal father, we have no means of getting child support. So they go hand in hand.

Plus we know from the data that when fathers contribute, they see their children - they participate in their children's lives; and as a side result, children will do better with the participation of their fathers.

The next two requirements are very different requirements. They say, when a parent comes on aid we want you to bring with you the school attendance records of your child and your immunization records. So if you have a school-age child, we want them not just enrolled in school - we want them attending school.

The other one is that if they're not school-aged, we want them to have their immunizations or at least be in the process of having all their immunizations up to date. Again, you can see the movement of our program toward the notion that children are in this program and we need to have some responsibility to children here, in making sure parents are doing right by their children.

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Photo: Eloise Anderson, director of the California Department of Social Services, speaks to Daily News editors about the state's position on welfare reform.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News