Md. Plans to Tie Welfare to `Responsible' Behavior
Maryland officials, staggered by soaring welfare costs, announced an innovative plan today that would give full public assistance benefits only to recipients who get preventive health care, keep children in school and pay their rent.</br></br>Under the plan, which requires federal approval, benefits provided by the mainline welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, would be reduced 30 percent beginning July 1. Welfare clients could then get the money back by displaying what Secretary of Human Resources Carolyn W. Colvin called responsible behavior.</br></br>Some other states, notably Wisconsin and Ohio, have adjusted state programs to tie AFDC grants to school attendance, but welfare advocates said today that Maryland's proposal appears to seek the most fundamental changes by attacking problems of health care costs, education and housing all at once.</br></br>"Doing business as usual has not helped our families and children," Colvin, the driving force behind the new approach, said during a news conference here today. "AFDC should be a temporary program. And at some point we should be expecting that they will move toward self-sufficiency."</br></br>However, some advocates for the poor expressed grave reservations about the plan, saying that many of Maryland's 215,000 AFDC clients will not be able to meet the new requirements and others simply will not. Either way, the result will be smaller monthly checks.