LAURA ELLERTSO
When it comes to giving welfare assistance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints subscribes to the theory that people are best helped when they learn to help themselves.
'No true Latter-day Saint, while physically or emotionally able, will shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else,' reads the LDS 'Welfare Services Handbook'.
The Prophet Spencer W. Kimball taught that welfare services require more cooperation from members of the Church than many other programs.
'It is cooperation and mutual concern that determines the overall success of the storehouse resource system,' he said.
According to President Kimball, Welfare Services is not a program, but 'the essence of the gospel.'
The Church Welfare Program, which provides needed employment and commodities, was announced in 1936 by President Heber J. Grant.
The program emerged from scriptural principles found in the Doctrine and Covenants 42:30 which reminds members to 'remember the poor, and consecrate properties for support.'
Currently the Welfare Services Department consists of the Employment Services Division, Deseret Industries (designed to employ disadvantaged members of the Church) and a Production/Distribution Division.
All Church members are encouraged to give their time and resources wherever possible. For many Latter-day Saints, this might mean volunteering on Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, the most complete facility in the Church Welfare system.
The mission of Welfare Square is to produce and deliver food to those in need in the Salt Lake area, as well as to supply and coordinate welfare efforts of the Church in other areas.
A fact sheet produced by the Church Public Affairs Department mentions that the average length of assistance is about four months per family. Most of the recipients of Church Welfare are low income or elderly Church members, but there is also a transient service center which offers temporary assistance to the homeless of all faiths.
Current welfare services offered include: employment rehabilitation, employment placement, commodity assistance, adoption or foster care placement, clinical therapy and education.
In 1995, Church Employment placed more than 36,000 people in jobs according to the Church Public Affairs Department.
Currently the church runs 99 storehouses (supermarkets), 78 canneries, 94 employment centers, 44 Deseret Industries stores, 62 LDS Social Services offices, and 107 farms and other production facilities in the United States and Canada.
The Church believes that welfare should be administered by someone who is close to the people, who knows their needs and is in a good position to determine what assistance they may benefit from.
David S. Workman, bishop of the Park 11th Ward in Orem, feels that this is one of the advantages the Church welfare program has over state welfare programs.
Workman said that anyone who seeks help will be offered something, but it may not be in terms of money. A man or woman may receive assistance finding a job or simply in building a resume.
'The Church is here to act as a support resource,' Workman said. 'We want to help members get in a condition where they can be self-sustaining and maintain self-respect.'
However, those who receive Church welfare are not expected to ever repay the exact amount they borrowed.
In Workman's ward, only three to five percent benefit from Church welfare. Workman stressed that qualifications for welfare are at the discretion of the bishop.
The decision of whether or not someone should receive welfare hinges on the willingness of the needy individual to work where possible and how active the individual is in keeping the commandments, Workman said.
If a family or individual is destitute, an analysis form which will assess the immediate needs of a family is completed by a member of the Relief Society Presidency or Elder's Quorum Presidency.
A bishop will then give the needy a commodities order form to be filled at the nearest bishop's storehouse. The ward fast offering fund is then billed for whatever supplies were 'purchased' at the storehouse.
According to the 'Encyclopedia of Mormonism', the first structures built on Welfare Square, built in 1938, were a bishop's storehouse, a root cellar and a cannery. In 1941 a milk-processing plant and a 300,000 bushel grain elevator followed.
Dorothy Holt, former counselor in the Young Women's General Presidency, recalls her husband and several priesthood holders rotating on 24 hour shifts to mix cement and help build the wheat grainery.
Once it had been built, the grainery was stocked with grain sent by Relief Society sisters scattered throughout the Church so that flour, bread and cereal could be made.
Holt remembers a barber shop on Welfare Square where temporary employees and needy Church members could get their hair cut.
Since that time, a new milk-processing plant has replaced the old one and a new cannery was built in 1963. A larger bishop's storehouse was set up in 1976 and a bakery was added in 1986.
Welfare Square is also the home to a Deseret Industries plant and store as well as offices for LDS Social Services.
Holt volunteered two days each week for one year teaching English to temporary employees on Welfare Square who came from South America, Peru and Central America.
The purpose, Holt said, was to prepare the individuals to seek permanent employment in the marketplace.
'It certainly is a wonderful thing for people who come here to start out,' Holt said of Welfare Services programs.
Welfare programs of the Church are financed by fast offerings. The money members give each month as fast offerings is kept at a local ward level to administer to the poor and needy under the direction of the bishop.
Although the bishop is the only individual authorized to administer funds to the needy, he may seek the counsel of the stake president.