Welfare Reform for Teens Runs Into Harsh Reality
By Judith Havemann
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 4, 1996; Page A01
LANSING, Mich. -- President Clinton and most Republicans in Congress think poor young mothers who want welfare assistance should have to live at home with their own parents or with other trustworthy adults.
They have not met Dakeyia Scott.
Scott, who turned 17 in February, said she and her 1-year-old son, Davion, can't live with her mother because her mother doesn't have a home. Dakeyia Scott's mother is temporarily staying with Scott's grandmother in a senior citizens complex where babies aren't allowed.
Besides, Scott said in a slow monotone, "We have fights and arguments. Davion's my child, and she acts like she's the boss."
As the Scott family illustrates, it is one thing to propose welfare reform measures that are sensible in theory and quite another to carry them out in practice. Requiring young teenage mothers to move back in with their families assumes that there is a family to move back into.
Statistics show that even if there is a family, it could well be troubled. Teenage mothers are more likely to come from families that are already poor, have been on welfare for more than a genera tion and whose own mothers gave birth as teenagers.
Here in Michigan's capital, the Scott family's situation is far from unusual -- even though Michigan has an 18-month-old welfare policy requiring minor mothers, 17 and younger, to live with their parents, guardians or in an adult supervised setting. Of 85 mothers 17 and younger who were living on their own in Ingham County last year, all but 11 are still living independently today.
That means that 74 teenage moms got exemptions from the requirements that they live with an adult, most because they convinced workers that their "emotional and physical well-being," would be jeopardized if they were sent home.
A survey conducted by the state found that 45.8 percent of the 1,468 mothers ages 14 to 17 who lived independently in Michigan in 1994 had been kicked out by their parents or guardians. Another 37 percent would be at risk of injury, abuse or neglect if they moved back in with their mothers, the study found.
Furthermore, almost one-third of the teenagers were already known to child welfare workers because their families had been involved in cases of abuse or neglect.
County social workers who are charged with implementing the live-at-home policy say that Dakeyia Scott, who lives in a Spartan, phoneless apartment with brown decor and barren shelves, is comparatively lucky. Her relatives help her out, driving by and banging on her window to see if she needs a ride to the doctor or other help.
"For a lot of my clients," said social worker Lavonne Lafayette, "the mothers say, `Get an abortion or get out.' "
In other instances, said caseworker Gail Cacciani, having a baby and moving out is a way of life, almost an expected rite of passage, marking the end of the mother's responsibility for her daughter and the beginning of the daughter's adulthood.
To be sure, the problem of teenage mothers can easily be exaggerated, according to Douglas Besharov, a prominent voice among conservatives on welfare issues. Not every unmarried teenage mother is on welfare, although Besharov notes that nationally most do receive some aid before their baby is 5 years old.
"But when you look at the mothers who eventually make it," said the American Enterprise Institute resident scholar, "almost all of them have stayed at home living with their parents."
The problem arises with the proportion who either can't or won't follow that prescription.
Dakeyia Scott and her son live alone in a $350-a-month apartment in a crime-ridden neighborhood in this automobile manufacturing town of 125,000. Her welfare grant is $401 a month and she is eligible for food stamps and milk for the baby from the government. "All my money goes for Pampers," she said.
Soon after Davion was born, his father stopped dropping over and began denying paternity, Dakeyia said. She is trying to earn her high school equivalency degree but said that arranging rides to school is often difficult. She said that the reason she can't live with her mother -- even if her mother had a place for her -- is that "she calls me names and stuff, that I'm so young. She makes me feel bad." When asked, she could think of no examples.
Other teenagers in Lansing and elsewhere who have been ordered to live with their mothers have disappeared, relinquishing money rather than freedom, social workers believe, although they have no way to track the young mothers once they are cut off welfare. Caseworkers say they hear of some mothers and their infants drifting from acquaintance to acquaintance, sometimes living in garages and cars rather than submitting to adult authority.
In October, Michigan is scheduled to crack down on teenage mothers like Scott, by prohibiting minors from receiving welfare checks in their own names. The state legislature last year vowed to eliminate the loopholes that teenagers have used to stay on their own.
Even though Scott says her relationship with her mother is untenable, she will lose her grant unless she can find a responsible adult to live with. "I have nowhere to go," she said. "My brother is only 20, my aunt is so crowded with two kids. I'll have to find me a roommate, somebody I'm able to trust."
Clinton, in a radio address on May 4, called on every state to "use its power to keep children who have children at home where they belong. There should be no incentive to leave home for a bigger welfare check." He acknowledged that the policy couldn't be ironclad. "Of course," he said, "if there's an abusive situation at home, children should be living in another safe, responsible setting."
But the president said that only 21 states, including Michigan, had implemented such a requirement. "That's wrong," the president said, and the same day the White House issued a statement challenging all 50 states "to put minor mothers on the right track by requiring them to live at home or with a responsible adult in order to receive assistance."
"We have to make it clear that a baby doesn't give you a right and won't give you the money to leave home and drop out of school," Clinton said in the radio address.
Typically, teenage moms who set up their own households get $401 a month from Michigan. If the parents they are staying with are receiving welfare, only about $88 is added to the monthly grant for the new baby. If the parents are not on welfare, the grants vary depending on the parents' economic conditions.
But not all of the 21 states listed by Clinton as having a stay-at-home policy have carried it out.
Virginia requires teenage mothers to live at home and has denied welfare to 97 underage mothers who failed to live with a parent or guardian. Maryland will implement a similar policy on July 1 for its underage caseload, and the District of Columbia has set a target of requiring its 666 teenage moms to live with their parents "if at all possible" sometime this fall.
Congressional Republicans would go further than Clinton. They would prohibit welfare payments unless the mother lives with an adult and allow officials to stop payments to unmarried teenagers no matter where they live, at state option.
Here in Lansing, the number of safe and responsible alternatives to parental homes are nowhere near the need, social workers say. Catholic Social Services, state and local housing agencies and the Junior League have teamed up to establish the Ballentine Stepping Stones, a strictly monitored housing complex for homeless teenage mothers and their babies.
But it has room for only 16 families, and always has a waiting list.
Cacciani, the social worker, said that Ingham County's arsenal of safe alternatives for teenagers is meager indeed. Theoretically, caseworkers can make the child move back in with the parents or grandparents, and if there is demonstrable abuse or neglect they can petition the court to place the mother and her baby in foster care.
But Cacciani, who is a former prison guard and child protection worker, said, "It won't happen." Child welfare investigators, who field complaints involving potentially life-threatening danger to much younger victims, are far too busy, she said.
White House aide Bruce Reed said that Clinton believes "states should make sure that they find supervised settings for young mothers, but they shouldn't throw up their hands and maintain the current system just because that is hard to do."
"We forget," said Besharov, "that for every young mother thrown off welfare because she refuses to follow the rules, many more are encouraged to live at home, and therefore have greater likelihood of succeeding in life."
Cacciani said she followed the rules recently and cut off a pregnant 17-year-old she found living in a garage. "The girl's adoptive mother wanted her back, but she wouldn't go home, so the state closed her case, cutting off her Medicaid, her food stamps and leaving her with no money."
"After that," she said, "I felt so bad. I called other social workers and I gave her name to the hospital to see if they could find her."
She had vanished, Cacciani said. "She had her baby somehow."
© 1996 The Washington Post Co.
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