LIKE ALL OTHER welfare programs, WIN is largely a voluntary program (only AFDC fathers--who are few--are required by law to participate). An additional stipend of $30 a month beyond the regular welfare check has been allotted to each client with the hope that it would offer incentive to stay with the program.

Statistically, Massachusetts WIN has 3000 "slots" or training openings per year--1400 are in Boston--although a slot may be used more than once a year. For example, if a client is involved in a five month long school, the slot is re-opened to a second client at the end of the first's training.

But a complex recruiting system, plus the problems familiar to other welfare projects, have caused the program to fall short of its predicted success.

Although the WIN teams have been working since October of last year, only 964 welfare recipients have enrolled, and a bare 174 have been placed in jobs.

Critics of the program, which include the National Welfare Rights Organization, feel the main problem lies in the recruiting system. The actual communication with AFDC clients is done by the Department of Public Welfare social workers, after which a recipient is referred to WIN.

The state must rely solely on the social workers to bring attention to the program. Since there have been only 1955 referrals since October--which would fill only two-thirds of the available slots--the workers have obviously failed.

Thus the program suffers a loss from the very beginning because of the reliance on an outside agency for recruitment.

Part of the blame might be laid with the possible apathy of the recipients themselves. Because of the program's voluntary nature the state has no way of forcing anyone but unemployed fathers to participate.

Clients' apathy is a problem basic to WIN's ideology. As Evelyn Smith, assistant state supervisor for WIN, puts it, "Although the program ocers preparation for a new way of life, we're working with people who are not even interested in jobs."

Coupled with this are the fundamental problems of other rehabilitation efforts, such as their inability to overcome a primary level education in such a short period of training.

ALTHOUGH WIN's aim is to stimulate work incentive through education, even in the maximum of a year of training it is difficult to provide more than basic 'mechanical" skills.

A comparatively trivial, but surprisingly substantial drawback has been the lack of adequate child care facilities. Again, the Department of Public Welfare is to make arrangements for either day care or baby-sitters. As yet, no centers exist for AFDC use, and the red tape in paying baby-sitters often involves a lengthy delay in just getting funds appropriated.

A third drawback is found in the main focus of the program. Designed to let a client chose a job that will offer incentive, the WIN counsellors consider the supply and demand for the job as secondary.

Although WIN will pay to move a client and his dependents to another city if an opening is not available in the home city, it seems to be a rather costly and possibly psychologically damaging play to train someone to do a job for which there is little demand in the original locality.

Thus the low number of participants, the inefficient means of recruiting, the difficulty in developing more than mechanical skills and even the lack of child care facilities may lead to the collapse of the most highly developed rehabilitation program yet.

Bureacracy and inter-agency dependency have bogged down the first welfare program that has made a sincere ecort to work on a one-to-one basis, that has actually tried to do what rehabilitation has talked about since its conception.

But the great danger is that the trend of the pilot WIN programs in Boston and Massachusetts may become nationwide. The most flexible welfare program in history may be chalked off as unsuccessful due to the inefficiency of its brother parts.

If this should happen it would be a great loss to both welfare recipients and taxpayers--for only through job placement are the welfare rolls going to decrease' and only when the poor are given stimulus or an incentive to work are they going to forfeit 'gift' aid for a full time occupation.