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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens Described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the Earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey. Hello everyone welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. This is kind of a special show for me because I'm going to be talking to a gentleman who has been part of the history of the Sonoma County government for the

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past couple of decades actually. And he's also been a very good friend. Uh as a matter of fact, I think I took his picture about the first day he came to work for the county of Sonoma. My guest on this edition of the program is paul

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M. Allen Jr and he is the, has been the director of social services for the past two decades plus. And paul, it's two things. First of all, it's a pleasure to have. It always is sorry to see that you're departing that little vale of tears over

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there because you've been very much a part of that department. Well, the time comes, I think when all of us have to walk away from it. Okay, Well you certainly spent a lot of time. How long have you spent in the field of social services, a

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little over 38 years altogether. That's almost four decades. That's almost four decades. Well, Alright, how about, let's just go back in and talk about you a little bit. Where do you, where do you hail from? And where did you start out in this field? I started

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out in the neighboring County Solano County on November one of 1951 and had just gotten out of the service was looking for work. I knew nothing about public welfare at the time. They said they thought they were hiring out there. I went out, was interviewed, was

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hired, hadn't planned to make it my career, but once I got into it, it interested me tied in with my major, which was psychology and school. And so I just stayed with it. I've never regretted having spent a little over 38 years in public welfare. I

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found it to be a very challenging profession. Um Where did you, where were you educated paul? In California? Yes, I went to uh at that time it was known as san Jose State, I guess it's the University of san Jose now or it's going to college

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then it was san Jose State teachers College when I went there. They had something like 8000 students. Yeah, she wasn't, but I understand I graduated there too and I understand it's about 30,000 now. It's in that neighborhood. All right. You were born raised, were not born.

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You were raised pretty much in Vallejo, weren't you? Right. We came out here just before the war started in 1941. I was a sophomore in high school. And so I consider myself almost in native California. Where were you from? I was born in saint joseph Missouri

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but spent most of my early life in Kansas. Oh, I see. So you have been out here since you were in high school like you said? Yeah. Likewise. All right. What you said, it kind of tied in with your major which was psychology. No. Yes. Psychology.

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All right. Um, what division of social services did you go into and let me ask you a question. There weren't too many men in the department in those days. Well, the point I'd like to make is when I went into welfare in Solano County, there were

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39 employees, 38 of which were women. I was the only male employee at that time in the department. The women were quite mad at me because they had to share a single bathroom and I had one all to myself. But uh, and also likewise, it was

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a district experience. The only vacancy they had was in aid to families with dependent Children and I was the first man that they had ever hired into that program. And so the lady that hired me was quite concerned about all the temptations that I would face

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with all the loose women out there and everything while I was carrying my caseload About 14 years later when she retired I told her the one regret was I never saw any of those temptations. But it was an interesting experience back then to think that they

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just couldn't see putting a man into that that type of occasion. But that's the only vacancy they had. Well you know today we're all uh very much in favor of and we're all uh sometimes amazed that we see women moving into the male dominated occupations at

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least male dominated in the past. And we see women moving in there and being very very successful. Looks like you did the same thing about almost 40 years ago. Right. It was predominantly a female profession at that time. There were very few men going into it.

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Um Well I had the pleasure of spending 2.5 years and here in Sonoma County years many years ago. And at that time there were I think there were four or five of us uh males and about 30 females at the time. But it was even at

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that time more and more men were moving into the field and that was in the early fifties too here in Sonoma County uh paul what did you do? And you would say A A. F. D. C. It's called. It was a D. C. At that time

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dependent Children. What kind of work? Well, primarily at that time. As you know, we didn't have the separation we do now of the income maintenance function and the social services. So we were hired as social workers and we had the obligation of both determining eligibility and

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amount of grant as well as trying to do some form of social work to get make people independent, restore them to self sufficiency and things like that. It was very difficult because after three days of orientation, which consisted of reading the manual, I was given my

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case load of 150 cases. So it was very difficult to accomplish much of anything back then other than just to try to see that the people were kept eligible. But I, I was hired as a, as a social worker. And, and from there I worked my

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way up through the various levels of administration in Solano County. Uh, first as a, as a first line supervisor. I supervised the intake unit there And I supervised the adult programs. At that time. We had old age security aid, the blind and disabled. And I supervised

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those programs. And that's the position I held when I took my first direction. How long you were in a county? How long I was there a little over 14 years. And then you were made. Then you were hired as the director for another county. Where was

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that? I went to Kings County. That's very small county southwest of Fresno. About 30 miles down the San Joaquin Valley And that was my first director's job almost 25 years ago. My goodness. You stayed there then. What about five years? A little over four years. And

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what now? You, I know you became our welfare director in 1969 here because I remember taking your picture I think the same year and the former director, David Sweeney, What prompted you to make the move up? It was, it was a greater opportunity in my chosen

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career. It was a career change, A lot more responsibility. I was still young enough to to welcome challenge. It presented a challenge to me and all those things combined led me to compete for the job. As you know, all of these jobs are competitive. You do

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have to take an oral exam, a written exam and then be interviewed by the board of supervisors. And I was fortunate enough to had been selected by the board and was appointed november 1st of 19 69/2 decades ago, paul, going back to november 1969. What was

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Sonoma County like? What was the social service department like at that time? Well, it it was much smaller than obviously it is. Now what really sticks in my mind. However, is I had come up here in september to meet with Dave Sweeney, the former director and

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kind of get acquainted with the management staff and get the layout of the, of the department like that. Beautiful building? I was really impressed with the building that the welfare department located in Then, as we all know, October one, the big tremor hit. And when I

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came up here November one I couldn't recognize the building. The elevator shaft was off at one side, the stairs were shored up with timbers and it was almost a total wreck. So it wasn't what I thought I was coming into and we spent about nine months

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uh rebuilding the social service building while all of us still had to occupy it. So it was quite an interesting experience, earthquake on the first or whatever it was, was about a 5.6 or six point it was, I think in the neighborhood of six point yeah.

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And uh, but the building did, what it was supposed to do, didn't it basically didn't kind of divide, like it was, it did a lot of dividing, there was question raised at the time about why our buildings sustained such major damage when other buildings in the

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county complex did not, So they brought in a couple of structural firms to take a look at it to see if it was built up to code and everything like that. What they found is our buildings sitting right on a major earthquake fault. Right, right, right,

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right, right. So when it was a shake at all, it was right there. All right. How many people were involved? And what was the type of programs that were offered in? There was a little over 200 people at that time. And we were just in the

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midst of dividing out the income maintenance and social services. About two years before I came up here, the state had decided to split that that function. Uh Well, it it meant that you would have workers, social workers specializing in doing uh services, social services primarily and

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you would have eligibility technicians known as eligibility workers that would have the responsibility for computing grants, determining eligibility certifying eligible and that sort of thing. So the two major functions that I previously had to carry on a caseload were split between those two classes. Um And

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that was true was that that was true of both both the A. F. D. C. And the old age security. Is that true? No, it's only eight to families with dependent Children. It was only in that, yeah. What about 00 A. S as we used to

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call it? Old age security. That was very much still, was that still a part of you? It was still a part when I came up here january 1st of 1970 for HR one which was a federal law went into effect and in effect, what it did

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was federalized the adult income maintenance programs and and handed them over to the Social Security administration and they've administered those three programs ever since in California. They're known as the Ss I slash SSP programs now. Okay. Um and those, those right now you came back to

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the income maintenance and incidentally, gentlemen, in case we've lost any of your years ago when I worked with social service for a couple of years and when paul was starting that social worker did pretty much everything you would, you would be assigned the case and you

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would do the annual renewal, you would do the budget changes, you would do all the fiscal changes made in there. Plus trying to do the social work that is, talking to people about the social issues, trying to help them through their lives, so to speak. It

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became an entirely different Ballgame when they separated all the fiscal or all the monetary deal from the actual social services, didn't it? Yes. I for one thing it gave the social workers an opportunity to really zero in on major problems of families experienced and try to

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overcome those problems when they first separated. In fact, the federal government for funding purposes even set a caseload size if you'll remember At that time it was wonderful. We had 60 cases to one worker and five workers to one supervisor. But it didn't take long for

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the federal state government decided that was, that was too rich as far as funding was concerned. And so they did away with Caseload standards and this was all, this was all back at the time you were starting here. Right, right now, talk about some of the,

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in the first few years you were here, what were some of the major programs that started or some of the major problems you face other than getting your building back together? Well, most of the major pro programs that we administer were already in place, they were

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put into place during the 1960s. Um I guess one of the major programs that we did face implementing was SB 14, which put an entirely different uh look on child protective services, child welfare services and And what it was attempting to do was to keep Children

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from being lost in the foster care system. And it made us really keep better records and closer tabs on where the Children were. Our major emphasis under SB 14 now is in fact family maintenance and this is difficult for a lot of people to understand, particularly

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when it's alleged the child is being abused or neglected. Uh They think our first act ought to be to go out and separate the child from the parents and put them in foster homes and then try to restore them. But practice is showing that it's much

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easier to maintain the child in his own home if in fact he's not uh in jeopardy of serious physical or emotional or sexual abuse than to remove him and then try to get him back into the family. So, efforts statewide. now under S. P 14 is

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primarily family maintenance. Uh, if you can't do that and you do take the child out, then you have what we call family reunification were given by law now up to 18 months in which to try to place Children back in their own home. We're gonna come

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back to that point right afterwards. First we're gonna pause and bring the audience public service announcement after with paul and Alan Junior and I will return to talk more about social services in Sonoma County. Wake up teachers, time to teach a new way what you have

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to say. The power of teaching. No, The power to wake up young minds, the power to wake up the world teachers have that power reach for the power teach. I'm Edward James Olmos and we're recruiting new teachers call 1 845 teach sooner

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or later everyone quit smoking one way or another for your health. From the American Medical Association, Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. It might even be a program for the nostalgia channel. Today we're talking to paul M. Allen Jr and he

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has been the director of social services for Sonoma County for the past 20.5 years a little more and he has also been in the field of social services director, King County and a member of the department in Solano for a total of 38 years. The man

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is really a knowledgeable and and I can assure you he's a highly respected figure in the social service field throughout the state and that leads me into this, you've spent time going through the so called chairs of the county welfare Directors Association of California. I guess

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that there's someone from every county in that isn't. That's right. It's a it's a statewide organization that all of the directors of the 58 counties belong to as executive members and then staff can also belong as just regular staff members. Yeah. Um and I've been very

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active there ever since I got into public welfare because it's the one uh way in which social policy can be changed at the state level. And it's been very active in the legislative field. I've been very active in the legislative field. I've chosen to chair the

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C. W. D. A. The county welfare Director association legislative committee for a number of times uh two years at a time. Uh And I've testified before a number of legislative committees on public welfare on social services because I I think that's where the real action is.

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We have to administer the laws, rules regulations at the local level given to us by the state legislature, but we can be very active at that level in changing those that that we don't necessarily agree with. Um One thing I'm exceedingly proud about is I'm one

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of about seven directors That was chosen by their peers to serve twice as the State President Association. Right? And I was state president in 1974 and again in 1982. That's, that's quite an honor to have you worked now and have you worked or intermingled with the

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federal level? People write in any point in time, Not as much. We're just now starting to move into that area this year, the County Welfare Director Association decided we needed some presence on the federal scene. And so we've contracted with a lobbyist if you will back

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there to represent us on limited numbers of, of interest areas. But certainly we were now developing a voice at the Washington scene as well Back. Oh, let's see, what are we talking about? That's about 16, 20 years ago. Ronald Reagan was governor of California. They came

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up with a thing called time for chain. Some kind of a major social services revival are not revival, but direction for the future, changing it. What I can't think of the word I want to use right now. But what did that do basically? Well, it got

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widespread distribution. It did go back to Congress and to the federal officials at that time and was well received. Uh, basically it, uh, I, I think a lot of the progress we're seeing now is patterned after that, particularly the employment programs. Uh, it indicated that to

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break the, you know, to break the trend of, of poverty that you had to train people to become self sufficient, had trained people to be competitive out in the open labor market again, and now we're seeing jobs, of course, at the federal level and we've seen

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gain for about three years, greater avenues for independence, which is the state workfare program, if you will. In my 38 years, I've administered a number of work programs and in my opinion, gain is the only one I've seen that stands a chance of success. What I

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was saying a moment ago when, back in 2025 years ago, it was Governor Reagan revision is what I was trying to welfare reform. Governor. Reagan came up with welfare reform for the state of California. And one of the things that concerned us somewhat was when he

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was elected president, he took a former state Director of social services back there to make this a national program. What concerned us was so many of the things that were implemented at that time were proven subsequently to be illegal through the courts and courts suits that.

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We spent probably a good five or six years after the governor left the state undoing the things that he had done through his welfare reform program to the welfare reform program. Didn't work out quite so. Alright, paul. Uh we're back now to the 1989 90 year.

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You're, you're departing over here. What is the social services picture look like today. Uh money wise, program wise, you said gains a good program. It's it's yeah, it's it's in serious problems as so many local programs are. Again, we're faced with the federal state mandates with

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inadequate funding. As far as to implement, those mandates are concerned and more and more of the financial burden is being shifted off onto the counties and they're reaching the breaking point. They just, they just can't take it. When I first came in, our our programs were

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what we called entitlement programs. That means anybody that walked through the door that met a list of criteria was eligible, got the aid that they were eligible to That still exists today. So we don't pick and choose or reduce our caseloads by simply saying, we can't

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take anymore. We have to take all comers. In the meantime, about 10 years ago, the federal state government decided to attempt to balance their budgets by close ending the allocation for administration. So what we have is an open ended entitlement program that we have to administer.

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But we're limited in terms of the manpower and financial resources we have to administer them with. And so as a result of that, counties are more and more getting into serious financial difficulty. Well, let's pause right here and then take another break for a moment and

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let the station bring the audience a message or two. But paul is one thing I want to talk to you about in the last segment of our program and that is the Valium Children center. We'll be back, paul Allen. And I, in just one moment you've

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taught your Children to be polite and friendly, but have you taught them when not to be high there? Do you live around here? Uh huh. You're going to school? Yes. Well, I could give you a ride last year. 50,000 Children disappeared. Many of them from nice

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safe neighborhoods. Okay, come on. Talk to your Children about not talking to strangers and do it today. A message for your child safety from the american Medical Association, from the McGraw Files. The philadelphia story in certain parts of philadelphia, things were rough areas were run down

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crime and drugs were out of hand and honest folks felt like prisoners in their own homes. People decided to work with police to turn things around weekly meetings, led the cleanup projects that folks working together. Soon the neighbors had their neighborhood back. That's what happens when

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people and police work together, write this down and I'll show you how you can help take a bite out of crime. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties Very special edition for me. I'm talking to an old friend Gentleman I worked with

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for the past couple of decades paul Allen Jr, he's been the social services director for Sonoma County since 1969. We've gone back over his background of 38 years in the social services field and we're talking about the present paul. Uh Let's take a look at 89.

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What is this? Noma County social services department like now? How many people, how many programs? That sort of thing we have going into next year's budget? We're proposing 415 staff And a budget of right close to $61 million. So it has it has grown double at

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least since you've taken over, isn't it? Yeah. What other programs are you involved in gain is one gain is the employment program. One thing that the general public is not aware that we administer. They look on welfare as being, you know the income maintenance, the aid

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to families with dependent Children, food stamps, medic al general assistance. But we also are responsible for child protective services. And that is under my jurisdiction as well. And generally when I'm out speaking to public, they people are shocked when they say you have Cps because they've

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never tied that in with welfare. But yes we do child protective services. Okay now that leads me into where I wanted to go. Uh We have a unit out on highway 12. It's called Lost Focus in the past. It's now referred used to be called are

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dependent unit is now the Valley of the Moon Children's Center. And that was placed about a year or so ago under your direction. What's that doing these days? What's that all about? Why was that change the board of supervisors had a citizens group study the options

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that they could do with this Valley of the Moon Children's home. And it was recommended that it come under my jurisdiction for a couple of reasons, primarily uh as being administered by me. It would bring in 50% state state reimbursement where up until then when it

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was operated by the probation department, it was 100% of the county general fund. So a million dollar operation we're looking at just to transfer to my department, bring in something in the neighborhood of $500,000 state state monies. But I think more importantly to us to the,

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to the general public is this committee saw a continuum continuum of the services to these Children because we already, since 1971 had the so called dependence of the court that was after they went through the children's home and was in foster homes. We were responsible for

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their placement for their care and feeding and the whole works. It just seemed to make sense to move that last element of the Children dependency system over to my jurisdiction. I think the other piece that convinced the board members is these Children have not committed a

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crime. Uh huh. And they felt that they ought to be tied more closely into social services then with probation where you have the delinquent kids and and this sort of background. So it it and it's worked out very well. We took over jointly with probation july

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one of 88 then we took full responsibility september one of 88. We're down to about two moments left Paul. It's been a real pleasure for me from my standpoint with public information, dealing with you over the last couple of decades. What are your thoughts as you

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leave here in the last 90 seconds? I feel like I'm giving up an awful lot. I've invested an awful lot in 38 years into public welfare and I've made a lot of friends. You being one of the major ones. Um, I'm kind of looking forward, but

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it's a little scary to it's, it's a major change. Its the uncertainty of what's out there. But I think at this point in life I'm, I'm starting to look forward to it and see what that change will bring about. I don't plan on, you know, going

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out to pasture and just totally retiring. But I hope to look around and find some things that are of interest to me that I can continue to do. I've served on two advisory boards here in the years. I've been here and at their request, I'm going

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to continue serving on those boards that Salvation Army and Goodwill advisory board. So I will continue to serve with them. Well, uh, in conclusion, let me say this, that I have no worry about you at all or any doubts about you at all because knowing you

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and knowing what makes you tick. And I think I do moderately well. Uh, and your background and many years associate with my late wife jane. You're not about to sit back and do nothing. It's just not like you On behalf of the county of Sonoma and

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everybody else that uh you've been involved with over the years. I want to thank you for two decades of devoted service. We should have best of good luck. And I expect to be seeing a lot more ladies and gentlemen, our guest is retiring welfare director Paul

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M. Allen, jr. Gentlemen who has spent 38 years in the social services field and done an amazingly wonderful job in all those years. My name is rich McGlinchey, the program Sonoma County in the 90s. I'll be back next week with another member of the county government

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family. Until then. Good night, good luck, good health to each and every one of you.