and some reduction in the 3013, I would have to say that the second way is the better way to do it, because while you are cutting into the bonus, it is the bonus that is being cut into, and so far as what families can bring home to buy their food, shelter and clothing, you approach a better equity between those families.

You never get perfect equity. You can't. There is no system that can, that attempts to treat people as groups rather than as individuals, and we are not capable of doing perfect equity. The most we can do is to provide the most equitable systems we can manage. Mr. RANGEL. Thank you. Miss Blong.

Mr. CORMAN. I wonder if we ought to have some time limit on subsidizing a job? In a real sense, the Federal Government is paying a portion of the salary to a person employed full-time. Wouldn't he be better off if he leaves the substandard job and goes back into the welfare system?

If he hasn't gotten to the point where he can get off welfare in a reasonable period of time on that job, then there is something wrong with the job.

Ms. BLONG. I would agree with that. I think any approach that considers both welfare and paid employment as part of a package also has to consider the deficiencies of the minimum wage, and the other problems in the work situation that are not fully taken into account.

I am not certain whether or not you can pick a length of time for subsidization, if you also recognize that different families will need different amounts because of family size, and that even if you just look at assistance costs, it might be better in the long run to subsidize families for 2 or 3 years when that job will eventually lead to employment someplace up the economic ladder. It sort of is part of what we do in education and everything-it is an investment in the future. It enhances that family's potential for its own independence. Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Gradison?

Mr. GRADISON. No questions.
Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Tucker?
Mr. TUCKER. No questions.
Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Bafalis?

Mr. BAFALIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just have on question. If you were sitting here and you were to design a new welfare program, welfare reform, what would you tell this committee to do?

Mr. CORMAN. Within the current budget?

Mr. BAFALIS. I am not talking about budgets, Mr. Chairman. Ms. BLONG. I smiled because before I left the house this morning my husband said, "Why don't you start off by telling the committee. that you have nine principles of welfare reform."

Mr. RANGEL. Would you yield?

You can't be serious with your question, because I have to break at 1 o'clock.

Mr. BAFALIS. I only have 5 minutes, but I have been disturbed. by many of the comments I have heard from this witness. We do have budget problems, and I would like this committee to know, when someone is involved in welfare, how would she design a welfare program. I speak of the Congress as a whole.

MS. BLONG. Well, I will try to go over just a couple of very basic points. I think the first question is the scope of coverage. I think one of the greatest inequities and one of the greatest reasons, possibly, for our inability to have any impact on the problem of poverty is categorical programs.

When you admit that there are people in poverty and in need. and you try to divide them up in terms of which ones you will help by terms of family characteristics and age, I think it is almost given that you have a program that ends up failing. You have to deal with people differently as they move through different stages of their lives.

A 63-year-old person with no income is no different from anyone who is 66, except she is 3 years younger. I think one obvious step forward would have to be a comprehensive program that would recognize that the problem of poverty is a lack of money and, therefore, deal with that problem.

I also think that there has to be a national standard or a national program possibly, but at least national standards, because under our current tax system I should think that the main focus of tax moneys is the Federal Government, and that resources to support that program are truly available only at the Federal level.

I also think that uniformity of benefit levels across the country as a whole or at least a uniformity that will deal with the worst inadequacies that exist is necessary. We have States in the United States right now, in the mainland United States, that pay $60 a month to a family of four.

Now, again, you talk about those figures in a program that is supposed to deal with poverty, and you know you have a program that can't succeed. You can't do anything with that kind of money.

I guess without beginning to go into all the details, I would certainly see those two as key issues to any welfare program, comprehensive coverage and adequate benefit levels, because you have to provide money, not just to sustain people in poverty, but to provide a means for their getting out of poverty, and that relates to even the very basic level.

You can't talk about children getting educated and going to school and growing up to be dependent if you don't provide those children or their families with the money to buy them clothing, to buy them shoes so that they can and will go to school, with the money to buy them food so that when they go to school they can stay awake.

I may be a capitalist at heart, because I think essentially the whole problem gets back to money, and money is the medium by which we purchase what is basic to our daily lives, and it is the same necessary medium that poor people need to move into the mainstream of American life.

Mr. BAFALIS. How would you tie in the incentive to work, or would you make a work requirement part of your welfare program? MS. BLONG. No, I would not, because I do not believe people need to be compelled to work. I have no personal evidence, certainly, of that being a factor, and I have never seen any studies which indicate that it is. I have seen many studies to the contrary. Because of that fact

Mr. BAFALIS. Let me interrupt you. You say you don't think there should be a requirement for people to work. Do you think, then, that there should be a requirement for taxpayers to take care of them if they don't want to work?

Ms. BLONG. No, I said I don't believe people have to be compelled to work, and that is why I wouldn't have a work requirement, because I don't think it is necessary. I would not support a system that establishes requirements in which some people have to judge other people.

I think, again, if we look just to our general systems, it is clear that at any time where there are a set of requirements and some of us sit to judge whether or not other people meet those requirements, we are bound to come up with some arbitrary decisions that are going to be very harmful and very incorrect. Therefore, I don't think unless you know in the beginning there is a need for such a system that you create one, and I don't believe there is any evidence that there is a need for it.

Mr. BAFALIS. Don't you think that if one group of people is paying the bills, that they have a right to set requirements?

Ms. BLONG. Pardon?

Mr. BAFALIS. Don't you think if one group of the citizens is paying the bill, they have a right to set requirements?

Ms. BLONG. NO. I think they have a right to expect that the people who are receiving the benefits will do the maximum to achieve independence, and I think they will find that expectation proven by the program. We have a right to expect many things out of our fellow citizens, but we don't start very often by first imposing a mandatory requirement that you do it.

We wait until there is some evidence that it is not being done. I don't you know, I have a right not to expect my neighbor to beat on the walls, but I don't move in and go next door and tell him not to beat on the walls. I wait to see if he is going to do it.

Mr. BAFALIS. I don't have any more time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CORMAN. I am with you on the first three, Mrs. Blong. On the fourth one, I am troubled.

Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Brodhead?
Mr. BRODHEAD. No questions.

Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Vander Jagt?

Mr. VANDER JAGT. No questions.

Mr. CORMAN. There are other questions?

Counsel?

Mr. JENSEN. No questions.

Mr. CORMAN. The next witness is Jane Knitzer, Children's Defense Fund. Welcome to the subcommittee.

STATEMENT OF JANE KNITZER ON BEHALF OF THE CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND OF THE WASHINGTON RESEARCH PROJECT, ACCOMPANIED BY MARY LEE ALLEN OF THE CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND

Ms. KNITZER. My name is Jane Knitzer. I represent the Children's Defense Fund of the Washington Research Project.

With me is Mary Lee Allen, also of the Children's Defense Fund. The Children's Defense Fund is a national, nonprofit, publicinterest child advocacy organization created in 1973 to gather evidence about, and address systematically, the conditions and needs of American children. We have issued a number of reports on specific problems faced by large numbers of children in this country and will issue several more in 1977. We seek to correct problems uncovered by our research through Federal and State administrative policy changes monitoring and litigation. In fact, a good deal of our litigation efforts have successfully challenged the placement of large numbers of children in inadequate, inappropriate institutions.

For the past 2 years I have been codirector of the CDF project to study public responsibility to children out of their own homes and in foster care. The study involved an examination of the relevant policies and practices in seven States: Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, and South Dakota. It also involved an analysis of the Federal role in relation to children at risk of removal from their homes, children in out-ofhome care and the families of both groups.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today to share some of the findings that have relevance for the title IV-B program. As a context for my remarks, let me first summarize the major highlights from our study. We have three major conclusions.

The first is that in every State, seven States, and in almost every county we visited, we visited 27, we found that either official policies or local practices or both reflect what we have come to think of as an antifamily bias toward these children who are at risk of removal, or in placement.

What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that by the action and inaction of those with public responsibility to these children and their families, family ties are severed. The children are cut off from a sense of belonging to their parents, and the parents, strangely enough, are often prevented by the action of these systems from carrying out their responsibility to the children.

This happens in a number of ways. First of all, it happens when children are removed from their homes without reason, unnecessarily. For example, it happens when a mother is overwhelmed by the demands of a handicapped little child, and there is absolutely no respite care available to her in the community. There is no way she can get any relief. The child is removed.

During our visits to the States in this very cold winter, we found that removal happened very frequently when furnaces broke down. Because there was no money available to fix the furnace, children were separated, sometimes four or five children, and put into foster care, at great public expense.

In one case in which we gave assistance, a 2-year-old child was placed in foster care after his mother and father separated. The mother was looking for a job. She could not get on welfare for 6 months, so that this 2-year-old and his four older siblings were all placed in foster care, over the mother's protests, I might add.

The mother eventually remarried, and the four older children were returned to her, but the 2-year-old, who had by then developed

what was called "emotional difficulties," was not returned. The State felt that the child, who had these difficulties, would be better off away from his mother and family, for some strange reason.

The child remained in care 8 years. By then he had been placed in two foster homes and three institutions, two of them out of his own State, and far, far away.

We have no question that some children need to be in foster care, but what we find over and over and over again is that children many end up in foster care because there are simply no alternatives. The money for preventive services is not there. Money for out-of-home

care is.

Let me give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem as we saw it in these 27 counties. Los Angeles, for example-had a program at the time of our visit-of 61 homemakers who were trained in a special program to prevent the removal of children-61 homemakers in a county with a population of 7 million.

Most of the other counties that we visited had one or two homemakers at the most, and these were responsible for services to the elderly as well as children.

If you can send a homemaker into the home, then you don't have to split up all the children and put them in separate foster care placements, each of which costs a great deal of money.

But let me say as well that this antifamily bias that we saw doesn't stop with the unnecessary removal of children. We found that public officials rarely turn to willing relatives who could care for children. Instead, they place the children with strangers. We also found that there is very little effort to help the parents and the children remain in contact with one another. In fact, very often poor parents simply cannot visit their children because they don't have funds for transportation, and child welfare will not provide the funds.

The other thing that we found is that the possibility of a child knowing that his family cares is even further reduced by the fact that children are placed far distances from their own homes. We did a special survey and were astonished to learn that something like 10,000 children are placed not only out of their own county, but out of their own State, at far distances from home. This virtually eliminates any possibility that the child and the family can remain in contact.

Overall, I might add, we estimate that there are between a half to three-quarters of 1 million children who are in foster care out of their own homes.

The antifamily bias, of course, and the lack of alternatives to foster care has tremendous implications for title IV-B.

Let me very quickly go through the other two findings.

The first one is that children are often not only cut off from their families, but they are abandoned, virtually, by the public systems that has responsibility for them, that are paying great amounts of money for them.

For example, we learned about one county in Ohio where, instead of having case records on the children, they had a list, a yellow legal pad, with the list of names of the children in foster care. This is how they took care of the children in foster care.

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