RICHMOND — By the time Patricia Brown reached her lifetime limit on federal welfare benefits in August, at least 544 other recipients in Virginia this year had maxed out before her.

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A year before that, 1,050 recipients ran out their 60-month clocks, and a year before that, 918.

All in all, in the last five and half years, about 4,300 people in Virginia hit their lifetime limits. The roll, now at its lowest point since welfare reform went into effect in 1997, is about 27,000 cases. People come off and on, some with greater needs than others, though the trajectory is steadily downward.

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Those who were able-bodied and had been enrolled in the welfare-to-work program generally found low-skilled, low-wage jobs, the kind of work that requires two jobs to support a family or ongoing public assistance through food stamps, subsidized housing and health insurance. How many kept that work is unknown, as is what happened to those pushed off the rolls without a job waiting.

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“I wish we had more data on what happens to people after they leave. Do they stay stagnant? Do they slowly progress? Does the challenge become too great for them?” says Mark Golden, manager of Economic Assistance and Employment for the Virginia Department of Social Services.

The goal is to see that welfare recipients never hit the lifetime limit, and that they leave the rolls prepared for work, banking time they don’t need should harder days return. This is one reason Virginia structures its welfare-to-work program as it does: two years on assistance, two years off, two years on, two years off, one year on. It’s one of the few states to set up an intermittent clock with mandated breaks.

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“It creates a sense of urgency for the participants and for staff working with that client, as well, knowing you have two years before you’re pushed off the rolls,” Golden says. “Most people cycle through very quickly. They’re on for six months and then they find a job.”

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But this is one of those policies that Jamison Manion, director of Richmond’s Center for Workforce Innovation, finds more harmful than helpful when it comes to finding decent-paying jobs for people who have little education. “Two years is just not enough of an on-ramp for people,” Manion says.

Manion has added the two-year clock to his list of short-sighted federal and state policies. It sits alongside his exposition earlier this week on the nature of federal policies that are quick to penalize those walking the tightrope from public assistance to self-reliance.

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He is not alone in his ire.

“If you really want to grow people out of poverty, you can’t cut their lifelines off,” says city councilwoman Ellen Robertson, a leader in Richmond’s massive effort to reduce its poverty (of which the workforce innovation is the centerpiece). “We need to move them to sustainability with lifeline services, and then we can start talking about how to get them beyond that. And we need to get beyond the myth that people of poverty want to be poor because it’s an easy way to live.”

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So, who, generally speaking, are those who reach the 60-month limit and why? In the lingo of welfare reform, they are often called the “hard to serve.” Fair warning, when LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says the answer is “really depressing,” it’s really depressing.

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Pavetti was lead author of a 2006 paper that looked at the results of a project in Ramsey County, Minn., that offered intensive, individual help to welfare recipients zeroing in the last months of their cash public assistance. It included diagnostic tests, home visits and extensive interviews.

“What they found were many more mental health issues, cognitive issues and disabilities than they had anticipated and that they had missed for five years,” Pavetti says.

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Some findings from the 2006 study: “Unable to perform simple, one-column multiplication and division. Unable to recognize and name any printed number from 1-12. Unable to differentiate between numeric values. Unable to state the day of week or month, or tell time.”

Also common: Anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress — sometimes related to domestic violence or sexual abuse — undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, language barriers and bodies worn out by years of physical labor.

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Obviously, this is a subset of those who live in poverty. Still, it underscores the magnitude of the challenge Richmond has undertaken — and the limits to what it can do within the confines of federal and state policies that determine who gets what social supports and for how long.

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Brown suffered from undiagnosed depression and anxiety, but she is treating it now. She scored high on the workforce center’s reading and writing tests. The cleaning company that just hired last week gave her more hours. Her monthly paycheck will be more than triple her welfare benefit.