Samala Mason and Douglas "Squirt" Blake might seem a classic case of young people headed for poverty.
Sam, 18, unmarried and pregnant, product of a broken home, lived with her mother and sister in Freetown Village, a public housing complex in Anne Arundel County. Doug, 21, a high school dropout, unskilled and unemployed, lived with various relatives.
They wanted to get married but delayed their plans so Sam would qualify for Aid to Families with Dependent Children and medical benefits. It seemed the only option.
But they wanted the American dream. They talked about getting married, finding jobs and, "in five or six years," buying a house. They understood the dream but lacked the skills and resources to get it.
They were perfect for Edward R. Bloom's experiment.
Mr. Bloom, director of the county's social services, envisioned a program to help welfare applicants achieve self-sufficiency in just six months. He called it the Community-Directed Assistance Program (C-DAP).
The idea was to match dozens of families with churches and community groups that would help them find jobs, housing and transportation, using money the families would have received in monthly AFDC checks. He wanted to help the families "before they became caught up in the welfare cycle."
It is a bold step. Success could bring about a new way of looking at welfare. Reformers elsewhere agree the program sounds intriguing, but some question whether it can be duplicated or expanded to serve thousands of people applying for public assistance.
Social workers found fewer "motivated" candidates than they had hoped. Community sponsors were even harder to come by. More than two months into the project, only one had committed: Second Chance Ministry, a Christian community service organization.
Another month passed before Second Chance had a match -- Sam and Doug.
A team of seven, headed by the Rev. Hulan Marshall, signed on to guide them on the path to self-sufficiency. A grant of $4,400, the equivalent of a year's worth of AFDC payments, would be turned over to the sponsors in three installments to cover expenses.
"This is what we do," said Mr. Marshall, explaining Second Chance's mission. "We help people toward self-sufficiency. It's tremendous to have the government work with us as partners."
Within days, the team was combing classified ads for leads on apartments. Mr. Marshall called business contacts looking for job openings.
At the Department of Social Services' Learning Center on West Street, Annapolis, team members sat around a table, talking to Sam and Doug about keeping a budget, getting life insurance, looking for medical benefits, registering for parenting classes.
Since dropping out of high school five years ago, Doug had held a half-dozen jobs, mostly low-paying. Sam's life goals centered on having a baby and moving out of her mother's apartment by the time she was 18.
Until C-DAP came along, they'd been drifting, moving from one relative to another. Now, they were being asked to stay on course, to start -- in tangible ways -- working toward the American dream. Social workers, church leaders, parents, friends -- all had advice.
Sam and Doug were coping, each in their own way. Sam, petite, quiet and introverted, often sat expressionless, eyes downcast, during meetings. She seemed content to let Doug do the talking. And Doug, a big, good-natured guy is, if nothing else, a talker.
Sporting a shirt and tie and diamond earrings in both ears, he seemed to enjoy his newfound celebrity. The attention didn't bother him.
"I think this has given us more self-confidence," he said. "It's made us much more hopeful we're really going to achieve something."
At the request of his sponsors, Doug had prepared a list of estimates for repairs to his 1981 Cutlass Brougham. It needed a new engine, and he needed transportation if he found a job.
Samuel Hawkins, treasurer of Second Chance Ministry and charged with overseeing expenditures, scanned Doug's neatly written figures.
"You've done an excellent job with these estimates," he said. After weighing the options, the group decided on a rebuilt engine costing $704, including labor. Doug smiled.
But it wasn't the car that had him beaming.
He and Sam were getting married in 10 days.
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Ed Bloom is frustrated.
He's frustrated with government bureaucracy and social programs that don't work, infuriated by a welfare system that breaks up families.
"The current system is anti-family," he said. "Families come for help, and they're ineligible. They go away and come back a couple months later. The only difference is now the father's gone. Then they get benefits. We see it happen time and time again."
He wants to keep families together. Couples like Sam and Doug shouldn't have to separate to get help for their baby. They'd be better served as a family, working together to overcome poverty, he said.
Sam and Doug didn't hesitate when given the choice of C-DAP over traditional AFDC.
"We wanted to get married," Sam said. "I only wanted benefits to cover the baby."
On June 4, Sam graduated from Glen Burnie High School, wearing a cap and loose-fitting gown. Six weeks later, she was planning a wedding, signing up for parenting classes and entering a welfare reform experiment.
The couple's extended family, though lacking means, was supportive.
Sitting in her home, Geraldine Graham, who affectionately calls her son "Squirt" because he weighed 2 pounds at birth, talked about how the family was pitching in to give her son a wedding.
"All the family's involved," she said, ticking off the tasks that had to be completed.
At 4 p.m. July 29, family members gathered at the Robinwood Recreation Center in Annapolis to tape red and white streamers to chairs and doorways. Across town, Doug's uncle worked on Sam's two-piece wedding dress. His aunts gathered to cook the food. His second cousin baked the cake.
On Saturday evening, July 30, relatives and friends gathered at the "Jesus Saves The Family" church in Eastport. Siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews made up a bridal party numbering 18.
As the wedding march began, Sam appeared at the doorway on the arm of her father, who had traveled from Georgia to walk her down the aisle. The young bride, weeks from becoming a mother, began to sob.
The attention, Doug said later, had overwhelmed her.
As Sam took Doug's hand at the altar, she stopped crying, and Elder George Kelly began the ceremony. Speaking to the 60 relatives and friends in the small church, he asked them to speak only positive thoughts to the couple.
"Don't add pressure to their marriage," he told them. "They will have enough pressures that life will put on them."
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Miriam Stanicic and Remy Whaley, the social workers behind C-DAP, know Sam and Doug are under pressure. They want them to succeed. The future of the program may depend on it.
Eventually, the Department of Social Services will have little contact with participants after they are matched with sponsors. But as the program's first and only family, Doug and Sam are being watched closely. Social workers check in with their sponsors, sit in on meetings.
"Believe me," said Ms. Whaley, standing outside the church on the couple's wedding day, "Doug and Sam were screened very carefully. They're going to make it."
The question is: Will others?
Ms. Stanicic estimated it might work for 25 percent to 30 percent of the county's welfare recipients. Because it stresses fast results -- self-sufficiency in six months -- C-DAP probably wouldn't be an option for welfare recipients with complex, deep-rooted problems, she said.
Mr. Bloom was more optimistic.
"I think two-thirds of the people could be helped this way," he said.
But reminded of the slow pace of recruiting sponsors, the scarcity of jobs paying $8 to $12 an hour with benefits (a mandate he imposed on the program) and the high cost of day care and housing, he paused.
"I don't know for a fact this program will work. I think it will. We have to see," he said. "But even if it fails miserably, everyone who touches it will have learned something important about the process."
A. Sidney Johnson, executive director of the American Public Welfare Association in Washington, D.C., agreed.
"I do think this project and others like it are going to be very carefully watched," he said. "There is an unprecedented interest in local reform efforts, primarily because there is no one who advocates the current [federal] system."
Whether C-DAP becomes an important option in the welfare reform movement or a footnote in social policy journals remains to be seen.
But for Doug and Sam, right now, it's working.
He is more committed than ever to getting his GED and has a good lead on a job. She plans to start parenting classes next month and talks about some day getting a license to provide day care in her home.
They shop, attend meetings and go to job interviews together. She sits by Doug at the county's Learning Center as he reviews materials for the GED test. They hang out together at his father's house, where they are temporarily living.
They are a family.
FOLLOWING THROUGH
The Sun will follow Samala Mason and Douglas Blake through their six-month involvement with Anne Arundel County's welfare project. The project stresses keeping families intact and teaching self-reliance. With the help of their community sponsors, Second Chance Ministry of Annapolis, the couple will try to find jobs, permanent housing and transportation.