Flynn Unveils County Welfare Reform Plan

County supervisors will split the responsibility for handling some of the most critical issues surrounding welfare reform, Board of Supervisors Chairman John K. Flynn announced Tuesday.

With little more than seven months before sweeping federal welfare reform legislation takes effect, supervisors and social-service providers are trying to reinvent the way the 60-year-old welfare system works.

The plan is to develop one-stop centers across the county where welfare recipients can be connected with the services they need to find employment. That will run the gamut from job searches to child care to alcohol and drug rehabilitation.

“We all have to be involved,” Flynn said Tuesday, after putting a spotlight on welfare reform during a special board meeting in Fillmore. “It’s such an important issue. Everyone wants to make sure that it works.”

Flynn and Supervisor Kathy Long will concentrate on opening pilot programs in Oxnard and Santa Paula, where the one-stop concept will be put to the test in July.

Supervisor Frank Schillo, a financial consultant by trade, will work to persuade the county’s major employers to hire welfare recipients.

Supervisor Susan Lacey will focus on child care issues--one of the largest obstacles to employment facing single mothers on welfare--while Supervisor Judy Mikels will concentrate on convincing welfare recipients and potential employers that they can benefit from new reform measures.

Helping welfare recipients improve their standards of living can curtail the nation’s social problems and ultimately save taxpayers money, Mikels said, but everyone, from elected leaders to citizen volunteers, is needed to make the concept work.

“If we cannot care any longer about each other and our fellow human beings, and give them a hand up, then we don’t care about anything,” she said.