Welfare Programs

The House on Thursday approved a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's welfare programs, voting to transfer primary responsibility for administering the system to the states and to begin moving able-bodied recipients into the work force. Under the Republican legislation, cash assistance would be limited to a lifetime total of five years, and states would be given broad flexibility to design their own programs for helping participants make the transition from welfare to work.

Congressional negotiators agreed Tuesday on the final version of a historic measure to overhaul the nation's welfare system and key Democratic senators signaled that President Clinton is likely to sign the bill into law. The House scheduled a vote today on the sweeping legislation and the Senate probably will vote Thursday. Both chambers are expected to pass the measure easily. The bill would end the 61-year-old federal guarantee of cash assistance to every poor family with children.

In Russell James' neighborhood, winos guzzle booze from bottles masquerading as paper bags. Abandoned row houses, their punched-out windows patched with plywood, pockmark the landscape. Tough young men in knit caps and baggy blue jeans own the street corners, peddling cocaine and heroin with their beepers and their cell phones. Just a few months ago, Russell was one of these hustlers.

Here is a week in the life at Lampson Elementary School, a pioneer on behalf of its needy: Five children received free medical exams at the school's mobile health van, 27 parents learned how to read to their children, and a dozen or so mothers and fathers brainstormed ways to become better parents at a monthly support group.

Faced with a tide of child abuse and neglect that leads the nation, California is faltering in trying to grapple with the problem, state researchers reported Friday. Almost half the cases of abuse or neglect reported to authorities result in repeat episodes, often because the counties responsible for checking on reports of a child in danger simply "screen out" the information and do not respond, according to the state legislative analyst's office.

A West Hollywood housing organization that manages low-income housing for people living with AIDS will be able to quadruple its social services liaison program because of a grant of more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, directors said.

Representatives of nonprofit organizations gathered Wednesday searching for ways to strengthen the delivery of social services to needy people in the Valley. Participants at the first Valley Non-Profit Alliance meeting stressed the importance of collaboration, especially in light of the welfare reform law and shrinking federal assistance. "With everything that's happening on the federal level, I've heard everything from 'watch out' to 'disaster,' " said Richard Hill of Bridge Focus.

He's 17 and he's seen his share of fights. But a strapping high school senior from San Pedro named Shane acknowledged Wednesday that he faces his toughest battle two months from today. That will be his birthday--the day he turns 18 and is legally "emancipated" from Los Angeles County's child-care system, the day he starts providing his own food and housing and leading an independent life.

Removing a major obstacle to a state budget deal, the Assembly on Monday approved Gov. Pete Wilson's welfare cuts, but Los Angeles Democrats held up final approval of the spending plan by demanding that Wilson agree to help financially battered Los Angeles County. Several Democrats joined Republicans to approve cuts of 4.9% in welfare statewide, with additional 4.9% cuts in the state's lower-cost regions, including San Bernardino and Riverside counties and all of rural California.

President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole pushed their competing versions of welfare reform before the nation's governors Monday as Clinton announced tentative approval for California to cap the amount of money welfare families can receive for additional children. Clinton's announcement, made in a speech to the National Governors Assn.