Debra Sanders was single in kind o...

Debra Sanders was single in kind of those people who the so-called reformers pointed to when they railed about the deplorable state of the nation's welfare arrangement A lifer. An unmarried mother of couple 12 years on the dole. Working sporadically at a series of dead-end work at jobss in restaurants and warehouses. A broadside child for irresponsibility.

Sanders was well aware that she was going nowhere fast. Still, when North Carolina instituted the program that would turn round her life around, she was not at all thrilled. "I went because they said they'd take away my check if I didn't," she says. "I had an attitude."

That program, Work First, was Charlotte/Mecklenburg County's rejoinder to what local officials knew was impending welfare re-form. moulded on California's GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence) program, Work First was the brainchild of North Carolina Gov Jim follow the chase who held that no reform was