to receiving your copy of the report. On the same day, June 7, that you wrote to me, I had sent a letter to you regarding the unacceptability of this proposed modification of our Title V functions. Our position on the matter as detailed in my June 7 letter still applies. I wish to say that the amendment does not add anything of a positive contributing nature to our goal of moving Welfare clients off the relief rolls. Title V, as presently constituted, is not an administrative hybrid. Our agency, even prior to Title V, had been oriented to the inextricable task of both strengthening family life and conditioning Welfare recipients for employment through use of every available resource. It was Title V of the Economic Opportunity Act, however, which gave us the real names to begin to realize in some measure these constituted aims. In only one year of operation under Title V, we have already clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of this blend of activities if given the means and full administrative authority in tailoring training programs for our recipients. We have done in one year what long-established other training agencies have yet to demonstrate their ability to do. Remember, our Title V program is a tailored program for a unique group of people who now constitute, in large measure, the real hard-core residual element of the employables. The number and types of trainees handled by M.D.T.A. and Title V are not directly comparable. The For We feel that coordination will be made more difficult rather than strengthened. For the particular clientele involved, we have demonstrated in record breaking time our ability to marshal most effectively the best suitable employment training for Welfare clients without duplicating another agency's efforts. amendment committee's conclusions are drawn on questionable premises. example, the same legislative rationale that has permitted Vocational Rehabilitation Administration training to exist and expand in spite of the existence of other manpower expertise, holds equally valid for Title V's existence under H.E.W. In fact, we would like to see amendments which would provide our agency with even greater flexibility and authority as regards Title V activities. The various agencies engaged in providing some sort of training, such as the Labor Department and Vocational Rehabilitation, and Title V, for the most part, are servicing clientele of markedly different training circumstances. The amendment effectively divides responsibility without providing unity of command between two already complex Federal agencies. It can only serve to hinder timely and suitable programming for our clients. It would only further frustrate servicing the very people who need our help the most to return to a satisfying productive role in society. Your support is needed to defeat this proposed amendment to our successfully operating Title V program. Sincerely, BERNARD SHAPIRO, Commissioner. HIGH NOON, CARPE DIEM FRATERNITY HOUSE, Hon. THOMAS J. DODD, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR DODD: A group of concerned Negro males in this community. who are known as members of "High Noon," have as their purpose, "the concerns with the future of all of the citizens of Greater Hartford." The membership is composed of a complete economic cross section of the Negro community. We meet weekly at noon on Tuesdays, to discuss community problems, and to devise effective techniques to correct the inequities as we see them. We have had guest speakers who represent the authorities in the fields of our concerns, come in for "off-the-record give and take sessions." Some of these meetings have been very successful in correcting some of the conditions which effect us significantly as Negroes. The reason for our appeal letter to you at this time, is to request that you not support the "Transfer of the State Welfare Department's Title V Work Experience and Training Program to the Department of Labor." It has been a matter of record that this program's first year of operation has realized a savings of $3,000,000 to the state's tax payers. We believe that this program has demonstrated its' effectiveness in being able to return to the mainstream of productive life, the poor, who until this program had been tax users. There is much more that we would like to discuss with you, and would be pleased if you would grant us an appointment to visit with you in Washington or your Hartford office as soon as you find it possible to do so. May we hear from you concerning this matter? Sincerely, Re proposed amendment of title V, work experience and training programs, Economic Opportunity Act. Hon. ABRAHAM A. RIBICOFF, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR RIBICOFF: Enclosed is a copy of a five-page American Public Welfare Association memorandum dated May 27, 1966, which contains excerpts from the transcript of the Education and Labor Committee hearings on the Economic Opportunity amendments. I find it necessary to re-emphasize our position on this matter and strongly urge your support to defeat any bill proposing amendments advocating joint sponsorship, which in effect would devitalize Title V's demonstrated effectiveness. By attempting to parcel out various essential functions to other agencies under the guise of efficient joint operation, the net result will be something decidedly less than what now is being efficiently and effectively accomplished under Title V as administered by H.E.W. As it is, we presently fully utilize all community resources including M.D.T.A. We have demonstrated expertise in reaching the neediest of the poor and in providing qualified tailored training for those rejected by other resources, within the framework of the whole family unit involved. We have been able to meet the needs of these people quickly with a minimum of delaying red tape. Our total TADC caseload (Aid to Dependent Children of Unemployed Parents) in Connecticut has been further reduced to 426 cases, the lowest in its four year history! Ordinarily, the TADC caseload would range from 1,800 to 2,500 cases. We currently have over 590 women in training. Even this regular State ADC caseload has been reduced! Cumulative, over 1,800 people have become involved in training designed to increase the participants' employability. As of last week, there were over 900 active trainees. Welfare applicants who feasibly are employable are confronted right at intake with Title V's job-oriented programs. In the first year of operation, the program has realized savings of $3 million of taxpayers' money. To remove from Title V under H.E.W. the existing basic functions, including manpower training and placement, on the promise of better things to come, ignores the realities of the present situation. Hope, at times, is the result of confusing the desire that something should take place with the probability that it will. The amendment bill echoes such a false hope. The proposed amendment clearly gets no further than the mere surface aspects of the problem. Traditional "expertise" ways of training, job finding, and adult basic education unmistakably have not and are not in large measure suitable in meeting the needs of the highly disadvantaged. This obvious state of affairs was apparent at the outset to us who deal so intimately with the poor and their multifactor problems. Our ability under Title V to gear training in every way to meet the multiple interrelated needs of these people has in fact demonstrated a degree of expertise in this training area for these people that the traditional agencies of training have yet to demonstrate. Indeed, it is seriously questioned that these agencies could effectively reach these people. Title V, as presently constituted, has substance and dimension. Its training and work experience programs, geared to serve the disadvantaged, have been built into the structure of their social milieu-the very fabric of their daily living. We have, under Title V, seen how much can be accomplished. To honor expertise only on the score of an agency's traditional functional authority is fallacious. The crucial test is: has it performed for the "hard-core" needy; does it really have the added knowledge and experience necessary to effectively serve these people? Title V has demonstrated precisely such expertise. To emasculate the one effective training program (which justifiably is untouched by the majority of the controversy and criticism aimed at the other poverty programs) seems most inadvisable. Title V without question serves the needy and minority groups. It successfully emphasizes individualized training and job placement. It has reduced the Welfare rolls and clearly marks a new era in Welfare programming. Only as presently constituted is Title V uniquely suited to reach the hard-core Welfare cases. It gives recognition to needs and is able to provide adjustment of training curriculum at all levels to meet the emotional, social, intellectual, and phyhical needs of these people. These needs must be intimately and constantly related to every aspect of the training. Training programs designed for the hard-core Welfare case, which ignore these other needs, are destined for the most part to failure and, of course, the traditional attitude which skirts accountability will continue to prevail by judging these trainees as not trainable! These failings, often attributed by other traditional agencies as "drop-outs", are in most cases really pushed or pulled out— due to the near impossibility for traditional training agencies to have the necessary grasp and understanding of the associated pressing needs of the trainees. As needed, Title V instructors are fully and directly accountable to gear the training to the clients served and to play a supportive personal role, thus helping to keep the trainees' disaffection to a minimum. We have trained the rejects of other programs. We have found jobs for those long and actively registered for work. In short, of the hard-core Welfare case, we are training the "“untrainable" and finding jobs for the "unemployable"! For once, the Welfare Department has been given the needed means to bend every effort to return people to satisfying self-support. Remarkable degrees of success are being realized on many who from all appearances had even given up hope for themselves. A total trainee-orientation approach, in contrast to the usual pedantic academic or production-oriented approach, is used. Title V activities have been oriented toward the most real and significant dimensions of needed training. It is this family centered and "wholistic" emphasis upon the interrelationships in the total problem that has made a significant degree of success possible for these hard-core cases. This approach obviously is not transferable in part or whole. There is a body of research to support this approach as opposed to the segmental approach being suggested by amendment proposals to Title V. The amendment proposes, in effect, an atomization of the basic problems which clearly can only result in watering down the impact we have already effected on Welfare caseloads by our total approach. The whole becomes actually something more than the sum of its parts. I have no doubt that committee members who drafted the proposed amendments were moved by the best of intentions. We, in fact, applauded the planned liberalization of M.D.T.A. courses as indicated in the Manpower Administration's national planning guide for fiscal year 1967. To assume this, or the amendment, would suffice to do the job that Connecticut's Title V program is doing for the hard-core Welfare client is fundamentally fallacious and at best naive. It is too often a settled habit to give ear to whatever is caressingly comforting-even though, unfortunately, it may not be borne out by experience. The compromised amendment seems to fall within this category. It would be a misfortune, due to lack of discernment, to cast a favorable vote for the amendment. The amendment goes beyond what the evidence warrants. Enclosed is additional material detailing aspects of our program. Your support is necessary to defeat the proposed amendment which would in effect divide the existing Title V program between the Departments of Labor and H.E.W. Sincerely, BERNARD SHAPIRO, Commissioner. Memorandum W-1. AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION, To: State public welfare administrators. From: Harold Hagen, Washington representative. Chicago, Ill., May 27, 1966. Subject: Proposed amendment of title V, work experience and training programs, Economic Opportunity Act. The House Committee on Education and Labor has reported out its recommended amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act, introduced as H.R. 15111 (Gibbons-D, Fla.). The bill will probably be taken upon the House floor about the middle of June, although the time has not been scheduled. The Committee report on the bill is not yet available, but is expected to be ready by next week. It is understood that the Senate will not not hold hearings on this bill until it has passed the House. Of special interest to the field of public welfare is a provision to amend title V, which would result in substantial changes in the Work Experience and Training Program. A mimeographed copy of the pertinent sections is enclosed. A major feature of the proposed amendments is that it would divide the program between the Departments of Labor and HEW. Projects would be required to meet the criteria set forth in the Manpower Development and Training Act as amended by part D (see attached excerpt of the bill). Participants would be selected pursuant to procedures and criteria jointly prescribed by the Secretaries of Labor and HEW. Under the present bill the scope of the program would also be reduced. In fiscal 1966 the program was sustained at the level of about $162 million, including $37 million obligated but unexpended in 1965. H.R. 15111 calls for an authorization of $119 million for 1967, with not much carryover. These amendments would constitute a move in the direction of transferring this program to the Department of Labor. The following excerpts from the Education and Labor Committee Hearings on the Economic Opportunity amendments will provide additional background on this point. "Mr. CAREY. Title V, work experience program, is administered by the Welfare Service, Public Assistance and Welfare Services. You mentioned title V only briefly in your statement, I believe, at page 12. "Could you give me a comment on whether you think that this might be better administered, better handled, if the adult experience title, title V, were incorporated in the programs of your Department rather than HEW, and therefore, not part of the welfare line? Secretary WIRTZ. This should be. There can only be a frank, candid answer to that. This is a specific point which as I have indicated in my statement is still considered open. In the discussions between the agencies, I have taken the position reflecting exactly your suggestion, and have felt that in the long run, that is the way it should be administered. "There has been a consideration of this on an interagency basis. The situation is not one of a conflict of ultimate views about it. I think it is perfectly fair to say that we still don't have as much experience as we need in connection with the administration of these public service employment programs. But in short, I have taken the position that I think eventually that should be incorporated as part of the manpower program, administered by the Department of Labor. "I respect very fully the different views and just say to you quite fairly that this is a matter of current, I think healthy, I think completely constructive, interagency consideration. (pp. 395-6) "Chairman POWELL. Now I want to know one thing from you, Mr. Secretary, or your associates: Do you view the work experience program primarily as a job-training program or job-placement program? "Secretary GARDNER. I believe we regard it as both, but first of all job training. "Chairman POWELL. Do you think, Mr. Secretary, that it would be better to have this phase of OEO in the Department of Labor? "Secretary GARDNER. I don't have a judgment on that. It seems to me that it is very, very directly related to our programs. The people that are served by these programs are people who have traditionally been neglected by the employ ment agencies of all kinds and by all of the normal channels through which people enter the job market. We are reaching them, and reaching them effectively, because that is our business. "Dr. WINSTON. May I comment on that question, too, Mr. Chairman, because this is a subject, of course, to which we have given a great deal of attention. "Actually, what happens in the work experience program is that we are dealing with 'the bottom of the barrel'-the people who do not have education, who do not have work skills, who have serious family problems, often health problems. They need a wide range of services in order to have any opportunity, really, for coming into the job market. So, one of the distinctive features of this program besides the range of services which is offered is that it is basically a familycentered program. "You can operate a family-centered program within a welfare setting as you would not have the same resources in other types of settings that are directly work training and employment oriented. (p. 430). * "Mr. QUIE. Thank you. Now one last question I would like to ask in regard to Secretary of Labor Wirtz' testimony this morning. "Somebody asked him the question of whether the title V program ought to be in the Department of Labor instead of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. "I understand that the Secretary's answer is that this is being discussed right now, that there is considerable merit, generally the people feel, the administration, they should have all training programs under the same Department. "He got into the statement, however, that at least on the local level they ought to be handled by the same organization. So this is really two parts to it. Could this title V program be transferred over to the Department of Labor who handles work training programs? "Mr. CAREY. Before the answer, I directed those questions to the Secretary of Labor when I was in the chair. I would like to make it very clear the Secretary did not say there was merit in the present program of any transfer or did not address himself to the merit of the present situation or the future situation. "He said it was under discussion in interagency relationships as we have always wanted these things to be under discussio.n But he did not say this was going to occur. "Mr. QUIE. I hope I did not give any impression that it was going to occur. "Mr. CAREY. I want to make it clear that the Secretary's position was not identified this morning as in favor of the transfer one way or the other. "Mr. QUIE. I did not say it was. But I did want to know, No. 1, what von think of the transfer to the Department of Labor and; No. 2, about handling this and other work training programs by the same agency on a local level? "Before you answer that again I would like to get understanding with my colleague from New York that the Secretary of Labor did feel that they ought to be pinpointed through the same agency on a local level. "Mr. CAREY. I had the same impression of the Secretary's attitude. "Mr. QUIE. Now I would like to hear from Mr. Gardner. "Mr. COHEN. It is correct that we have been discussing with Secretary Wirtz and his staff people and with the OEO people for quite some time now just exactly how title V might be administered with a number of different alternatives. But as of this moment I think our judgment is that for this year it ought to remain the way it is because we have a momentum going in the relationships with the welfare department and we think that it is going very successfully. "We think we have overcome a great deal of inertia. So while these discussions with the Secretary and OEO are going on we do feel for the time being that it would be best for the program to be administered in its present way. "Mr. QUIE. How about the relationship on a local level with community action agencies? Some communities are doing quite an effective job? "Mr. COHEN. There is always room for experimentation and innovation if in a particular locality they have developed something unusual but as both the Secretary and the Commissioner of Welfare have indicated, these welfare cases that we are talking about now are people who have at least so far not been touched generally by any of the existing facilities, either the Employment Service or even up to now by the community action program. "So that they are the people, as Dr. Winston said, who are at the bottom of the barrel. I would like to see more experience really under this program and to |