Workfare For HIV Positives?
Once addicted to drugs and on welfare, Olivia Brown now works full time and goes to school. Though the mother of two tests positive for the virus that causes AIDS, she doesn't consider herself to be disabled, CBS News Correspondent Jacqueline Adams reports.
"I want to excel. I want to be what I should have been 10 years ago," says Brown.
And that's why, starting next year, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wants people like Brown to go to work. An estimated 15,000 able-bodied welfare recipients who are HIV positive or have full-blown AIDS would be affected.
"It's a win for the individual because they can not only continue working or re-enter the workforce, but it also gives them an opportunity to give something back in exchange for the public dollars they are receiving," says Debra Sproles, N.Y. Human Resources Administration.
Not so fast, cry AIDS advocates. HIV positive welfare recipients can succeed, as Brown did, only if they work in clean, supportive environments.
"They're going to have medical appointments they can't miss. They're going to have fatigue, diarrhea," explains Brown.
Brown can't imagine anyone with a weakened immune system doing the jobs most Workfare clients are forced into: sweeping and mopping. Yet, there's no denying Workfare's success. In four-and-a-half years, more than 500,000 New Yorkers have left the welfare rolls, and the city has saved some $113 million.
Some days, Bunny Coleman barely has enough energy to take her 30 pills. Though she loved being a legal secretary, Coleman now has full-blown AIDS. Being forced back to work, she fears, might strip her of the disability benefits she relies on.
"Are they telling me now that because you get this money, now you have to do as we say?" asks Coleman.
Congress has just eased those fears, passing a bill which guarantees medical coverage for anyone on disability who goes back to work. The bill's author, though, thinks New York City is wrong to force someone who's HIV positive into the job market.
"There is a positive alternative, and that is to tell people they can voluntarily enter the workforce and still keep their healthcare benefits," says Rep. Rick Lazio, R-NY.
Despite Workfare's success, Lazio doubts the federal government will ever follow New York's lead -- pushing HIV positive welfare recipients back to work.