The total public assistance benefit she got for the children - $286 a month - barely covered Ronald's day care fees.

The constitutional challenge cannot be answered by an argument that public assistance benefits are "a 'privilege,' and not a 'right.'"

After completing training, graduates continue to receive public assistance benefits for a year while they get their businesses on a firm footing.

This includes salary, public assistance benefits, social security payments, pensions, unemployment compensation and the like.

He noted that a homeless person living in a shelter is eligible for $45 a month in public assistance benefits.

"But when people speak about public assistance benefits being higher in New York, they forget that the cost of living here is also higher."

During the 1930s the imposition of the household means test on those drawing public assistance benefits led to greater reluctance to take in elderly relatives.

"Let's face it," said Ms. Barris, who still collects some public assistance benefits while working part time.

At the other end of the economic scale, public assistance benefit levels in New York City have lagged far behind inflation.

But why not utilize these people as often as needed, and pay them public assistance benefits monetarily equivalent to the minimum wage?

Citibank said yesterday that it was leading a team to develop and operate a program to issue food stamps and public assistance benefits electronically.

The New Jersey Legislature eliminated public assistance benefits to illegal immigrants and appears to be moving swiftly to deny them the right to a driver's license.

States cannot choose which poor people will receive aid, she said, ruling that the law "discriminates against many legal immigrants and places vital public assistance benefits beyond their reach."

In 1970 the Supreme Court held that the consitutional guarantee of due process required that people denied public assistance benefits be given a fair hearing to contest the decision.

- A statewide community-based navigator program to assist individuals applying for certain public assistance benefits online through TIERS or any other electronic eligibility system.

Many of the public assistance benefits available to birth parents and foster families are not available to kinship caregivers even if the child was receiving assistance in the parent's home.

Darcy Barris, a divorced mother of four children, said that when she lived in California she saw her public assistance benefits cut soon after she took a low-paying job as a telemarketer.

The city instituted the verification policy, known as the Eligibility Verification Review, in 1995 as a way to insure that only qualified people receive all types of public assistance benefits.

To the Editor: George Soros's plea for the Government to restore public assistance benefits for legal immigrants (Op-Ed, Aug. 22) failed to make mention of yet another contract.

"There were fears that high public assistance benefits could induce migration to high-benefit states like New York and inhibit the migration of those already on public assistance," the Planning Department said.

New York City and the two counties on Long Island have erected illegal barriers to securing public assistance benefits for people who do not speak English, according to an investigation by the Federal Government.

He offers a convincing argument for immediate relief through an increase in public assistance benefits at the state level and putting a stop to the city's practice of "churning" truly needy, legitimately eligible families off the welfare rolls.

As public assistance benefits have dried up under time limits for federal welfare payments, Professor Wattenberg said, Indians and their children who were living in cities have begun to return in significant numbers to their reservations.

For those expected to work, their strategy was to create jobs - not because requiring people to work for their public assistance benefits was necessary to correct shortcomings in the recipient population, but to preserve their dignity.

Both women's stories follow President Clinton's decision announced in August 1996 to "end welfare as we know it" and a Federal law passed that December to limit public assistance benefits for most welfare recipients to five years.