Beneficiaries testify against proposed cuts to human services
Legislative hearing brings a plea to save family assistance
Beneficiaries testify against proposed cuts to human services
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Saerom Yoo & Peter Wong, Statesman Journal
Debby Ohling of Shedd was working at her heavy equipment job in 2006 when she injured her wrist so badly that it required surgery.
Then her employer fired her.
A single mother, Ohling had a young son - then 2 1/2 and now 6, who has Asperger’s syndrome - and faced two more operations on her knees.
So for the first and only time, she turned to the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provided her with cash assistance for three years.
Now Ohling is in college, a few classes short of her associate’s degree in child and family studies. She wants to be an advocate for special-needs children in public schools.
“But if I hadn’t had TANF, I don’t know what I would have done for myself or my son,” said Ohling, one of those who came to the state Capitol on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to reject some of the cuts to human services included in Gov. John Kitzhaber’s budget. “My parents are gone, and my family lives far away, so we probably would have been on the streets.”
The governor’s budget proposes among other things:
-A limit of 18 months, instead of five years, on lifetime use of the program. Federal law allows states to have limits shorter than five years, but the shortest in any state is two years.
-An end to the Parents as Scholars option, which allows a limited number of people to continue education beyond high school. Also, there would be more cuts to a program that moves recipients into jobs and training.
-No more help for families leaving assistance, who now qualify for a transitional stipend of $50 monthly for up to one year after employment.
-No more payments to families with disabilities awaiting qualification for federal benefits. The state now recoups some money when federal benefits are granted.
Lawmakers on the human services budget subcommittee, who heard testimony Tuesday, got little specific guidance about what to do with family assistance in the budget framework released last week by the Legislature’s chief budget writers.
Jessica Chanay, now deputy director of Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, said she benefited from some of the changes made in the mid-1990s, when the previous program of Aid to Dependent Children was converted into a broader effort to help recipients receive training and obtain better-paying jobs.
Comments
There are no comments yet for this entry. Why don't you make one?