c. 1999 Religion News Service
MANCHESTER, N.H. (RNS) _ Melisa Guyotte is a young, single mother who has traded a welfare check for a paycheck _ and premium benefits. She doesn’t know the Rev. Robert J. Vitillo, but she is an answer to his prayers.
The priest, who runs a national Catholic social agency in Washington, has a brash idea. He wants to show what”real”welfare reform would look like. His plan is to produce hundreds of high-quality jobs around the country, for former welfare recipients who might otherwise find only dead-end work.
Guyotte, 21, has one of those jobs. She works for Quality Care Partners, a small, home health care business that opened its doors here in April, with financial backing from Vitillo’s organization, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. She started at $8.50 an hour, with full health insurance coverage and other benefits including affordable day care for her 1-year-old son.”I like the work. And it sure beats standing behind a cash register for $6.00 an hour, with no benefits,”Guyotte said while helping to lift a patient with diabetes out of his recliner during a recent visit. She had worked as a grocery store clerk before landing on welfare late last year.
The Catholic Campaign, together with the national umbrella groups of Catholic hospitals and charities, has embarked on a unique joint venture. They are looking to start up eight companies in as many cities, all of them, like Quality Care Partners, designed as worker-owned enterprises. The welfare-to-work project is targeting two chronically low-wage sectors: home health care and child care.”We’re trying to show that if you pay people a living wage, and also give them vacation and health benefits, they won’t be on public assistance,”said Vitillo, whose agency funnels millions of dollars every year to local anti-poverty initiatives.
In a telephone interview, Vitillo said that despite a nationwide economic boom, many who have left the welfare system find themselves worse off than before, or scraping by with two or three jobs at the expense of family life. The joint Catholic initiative aims to lift a relative few out of poverty and dependency, while fostering leadership and entrepreneurial skills through the cooperative structure of employee ownership.
Many religious leaders, like those behind the Catholic venture, are adversaries of welfare reform as lawmakers have fashioned it. In their view, politicians have made scant provision for jobs that could hold a family off welfare or away from soup kitchens and homeless shelters run by churches.
Nevertheless, in the three years since Congress overthrew the welfare status quo, many religious groups have surfaced on the front lines of welfare reform.
Some, like Catholic Charities USA, which is part of the new Catholic joint venture, look at reforms like strict work requirements as unproductive at best, and punitive at worst. Reluctantly, however, they have enlisted in the welfare-to-work crusade, often in collaboration with state departments of social services.
The expanding list of transitional services offered by religious social agencies includes worker training and housing as well as transportation. Programs in which congregations assign”mentors”to welfare mothers have become popular in many places. These teams of parishioners offer a blend of moral and material support, from helping to arrange dental work for the children to teaching habits of work and saving.
In the St. Paul-Minneapolis area, churches are helping to give dozens of low-income mothers a new start as day care providers in their own homes. Often, the women get their training and licensing, but can’t afford to buy crucial items such as high chairs, cribs and first-aid kits.
That’s where Vision Twin Cities has stepped in, with supplies donated by church members.”We’re filling in a gap that has kept these women from being income earners. That was the missing piece,”said Sara Anderson Hsiao of World Vision, the evangelical relief and development agency that sponsors the project.
In Washington, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and its sister organizations appear to be taking a longer leap into the business of welfare reform.”I haven’t heard of any other religious groups directly creating jobs or starting companies”as part of a welfare-to-work scheme, said Victoria Wegener of the Welfare Information Network, a private research group in Washington.
Leaders of the initiative are seeking to amass a philanthropic pool of $2.5 million for the creation of home care and child care cooperatives in eight cities. Under the funding formula, local sponsors would match the grants that flow from this pool. The Catholic Campaign, an agency of the U.S. bishops, has pledged $500,000 to the drive.
The St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association would like to tap the expertise, and budgets, of its 1,200 member hospitals and care systems.”This really is right in keeping with our mission to transform society as well as to encourage good practices”in health-care delivery, said Julie Trocchio, an association representative in Washington.
Catholic Charities USA and its local affiliates are lending a hand with an eye toward pairing two kinds of clients: low-income women who need gainful work and elderly people who need home care. Already, the Vatican has named the initiative one of the”100 Plus Projects of the Holy Father”designated in preparation of the year 2000.
The mission, primarily, is to create companies in the image of Cooperative Home Care Associates, an unusual enterprise in New York. Since 1985, the employee-owned firm has moved African American and Latino women from welfare to work, while netting profits each of the past 12 years. It has 500 employees in Bronx and Harlem, with smaller affiliates in Boston and Philadelphia.
The five-year plan also calls for starting day care cooperatives in the likeness of Childspace, a separate company in Philadelphia where low-income women work and also bring their children. Both ventures have received grants and loans from the Catholic Campaign’s annual fund.
Quality Care Partners in Manchester is an early offspring of the church initiative. Though conceived independently of the welfare-to-work project, it has sprung to reality with the help of $100,000 in grants and loans from the Catholic Campaign. Its sponsors include the local Catholic Charities and the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund.
Vitillo’s team is also studying the feasibility of a larger home care operation in Los Angeles; other sites have yet to be selected. He envisions the creation of several hundred jobs.
Here in this solidly working-class city, Quality Care Partners is up and running with eight employees and another seven in training. Like other home care”aids,”they dispense non-nursing care to elderly and disabled patients.
On the first of her rounds one morning in early May, Guyotte checked in on Jim Moriarty, who cheerfully characterizes himself as a”constant patient.” Strewn over end tables and shelves in his disorderly living room were newspapers and small boxes of insulin with syringes, for his diabetes, and other medication. That day, Guyotte cleared up the apartment clutter and made sure he had enough groceries on hand.
The 63-year-old retired teacher, who lives alone, gave friendly advice to her on pursuing higher education, perhaps as a registered nurse. He also shared a memory of his deceased wife. Guyotte said later,”Some of (the patients) don’t have any family, and they like someone to just come and talk to them. They like the companionship.” Once her company begins turning a profit, Guyotte will have the option of becoming a part owner. Soon, she will also meet Vitillo, who is planning to visit the cooperative’s downtown offices here. Most of the aids are, like Guyotte, ex-welfare recipients.
The priest is praying for more jobs like Guyotte’s.”It’s not enough to say people have to come off public assistance. We have to give them alternatives in the community,”he said, sounding the theme of this joint venture in faith and work.”They need jobs that pay a living wage and bring a sense of dignity and autonomy to their lives.”
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