GODDARD PROGRAM TO AID SINGLE PARENTS
It's a cycle some single mothers know all too well:
A woman does not have the skills to get a decent-paying job, nor the savings to pay for training that would lead to a decent-paying job.
She has children to care for and her minimum-wage job often leaves her family less to live on than welfare does, especially when day-care costs are figured in.
It has been called the rut of poverty or the feminization of poverty.
And Goddard College is trying to put a dent in it.
This fall, the Plainfield school will launch a program that will enable a handful of single parents to live on campus with their children, maintain their welfare benefits and go to college.
Day care will be available for their children. Food stamps will go toward their cafeteria food. Their welfare grant -- Aid to Needy Families with Children -- will cover their on-campus housing costs. The students will pay for their tuition; but because they are low-income, scholarship and student loan money should cover those costs, Goddard officials said.
The program is small. This fall, eight women with children will be enrolled. In two years, Goddard expects to offer the program to 24 families.
But state and college officials are hopeful.
Social Welfare Commissioner Veronica Celani said the program will provide some women "a ladder out of poverty." Douglas North, director of development at Goddard, said it is a step toward solving an immense social problem."
"Single parents often can't afford to work. What they need is an education that will give them a good paying job." North said. "The ideological heart of the program is to launch a single parent into a career that has a salary that can get her out of the welfare system."
North thought up the program while talking to a Goddard graduate who is now a public health nurse. He asked her if she thought it would work; she said she did not know why it wouldn't. North got in touch with the Vermont Social Welfare Department; the department responded enthusiastically.
That was last August.
Now, the school has converted some dormitory rooms into two suites with kitchenettes and two bedrooms. More
suites will be created.
Six students have been accepted for the program.
The day-care center, which will be staffed primarily by college students, is being built.
The program is the first of its kind in Vermont, possibly in the country, North and state officials said. What makes it unique, according to both Goddard and the state, is its residential aspect and the way the program will cater to the needs of single parents.
Currently, any woman on public assistance can go to school if she can find the money or scholarships to pay for it, said Fred Koch, a program consultant for the Department of Social Welfare who has helped set up the project. But working out the arrangements can be difficult, and the programs are rarely shaped around a welfare mother's needs, he said.
Transportation and child care costs are often barriers for women attempting to get a job or an education, Celani added. A college program aimed at single mothers "makes life a whole lot easier for them," she said.
The program is being shaped for singe mothers in a number of ways, North and Koch said.
The academic program will stress areas of study that can lead directly to jobs -- business or education, for instance. Work study programs, where a woman will work on campus without her ANFC grant being reduced, will be offered.
The college will set up a support group for single parents, open to any student on campus, North said. It will allow the women and their children to live in their suites year-round, rather than just semester by semester, he said.
North and Koch said single parents are often the most motivated and serious students.
In a handout on the program, Goddard says single parents "tend to be uninterested in sororities and fraternities or in taking classes that seem like an extension of high school."
Because the single parents have already been coping with some of life's difficulties, they "don't put up with a lot of nonsense," North said. "To educators like ourselves, a highly motivated single parent makes an absolutely fantastic college student."
The program also goes hand in hand with a recent shift in the Social Welfare Department's philosophy, Koch said.
The federal government's Work Incentive Program, or WIN, for ANFC mothers stresses immediate occupation as its goal, he said. But the state is shifting the emphasis. The goal will still be employment, but training and education as intermediary steps will be allowable under the guidelines, he said.
In fact, the department this month renamed its WIN program Reach-Up.
Both Koch and North said they hope the program will strengthen a woman's sense of self-esteem and build understanding about different lifestyles on campus.
"Much of the welfare system historically has been a very humiliating and depowering process. We're just trying to turn that around," Koch said.
