Welfare Reform Policies Research Articles

The Colonization of (M)Others in Welfare-to-Work Education

This article argues that welfare reform policies colonize poor mothers. Using ethnographic data of a welfare-to-work educational program, the article analyzes how colonizing public and governmental discourses about welfare mothers infiltrate the program's educational policy and everyday practices. Using postcolonial theory that establishes an epistemological foundation of colonization, it is demonstrated that poor mothers are defined in public discourse and in the classroom as irreconcilable others whom colonizers have a moral obligation to colonize through efficient administration. As a form of welfare administration, welfare-to-work education neither fully colonizes nor fully educates, but rather produces a resistant student.

Case Study of Organizational and Community Health Changes Under New Jersey State Welfare Reform

Nursing research has predominantly examined the environment at the micro level; however, nurse scholars are increasingly calling for studies that examine macro-level environmental factors on population health. This comparative case study examined changes made by health-related organizations and in community health during the 1st years of New Jersey welfare reform policy implementation (1992-1998). The boundaries of these case descriptions were directed by Milio's ecological framework for policy studies. Throughout these years, county welfare agencies made organizational changes that shifted their focus from supporting family well-being to encouraging work as a means to achieving independence from welfare. Health care provider organizations are just now beginning to make organizational changes in response to the ripple effects of welfare reform. Beyond providing insight into the possible health consequences of welfare reform policy, this study may prove useful as a methodological guide for nurse researchers confronting the challenges inherent in process-oriented policy research.

Labor and Housing Markets as Public Spaces: ‘Personal Responsibility’ and the Contradictions of Welfare-Reform Policies

Recent US welfare-form initiatives affecting employment and housing assistance have promoted more flexible applications of assistance as well as devolving the responsibility of care for the poor from federal levels to the individual. Implicit in these policy changes is the assumption that individuals enter labor and housing markets where open access is the norm and a ‘level playing field’ exists. In this paper, we use the analogy of seeing labor and housing markets as public spaces to analyze how the ideals of democratic capitalism in labor and housing markets exist normatively, but are always violated in practice. We argue that the influence of neoliberalism, and the devolution of welfare responsibility to the individual in particular, have led to policy changes that neglect issues of unequal access connected to hierarchies of race and gender and their spatial manifestations. Welfare reform in the specific areas of employment and housing assistance has promoted the primacy of private markets as essential components to ensuring social welfare. These reforms have super-ficially opened more options to recipients of public assistance while simultaneously allowing to continue the instruments, institutions, and structural forces that constrain practical access to the full range of jobs and housing. We argue that efforts to maintain these markets have not been distributed to measures ensuring fair play of participants. As a consequence, some problematic contradictions between policy and practice call into question the suitability of the private market as a strategy of providing welfare for the poor.

Party Change and Policy Reform: Welfare Programs in the American States

This paper examines the effects of party control (Republican or Democrat) on state welfare policies after congressional passage of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1996. Interviews and surveys of legislative actors suggest that the adoption process in many states was highly partisan, but there was no relationship between party measures and welfare policy content for all states. Policy makers reported that welfare policy choices were influenced by the re-election context in a state. States that adopted more generous TANF policies had: competitive party systems, liberal ideologies, or previously high rankings on AFDC expenditures. Party positions redefined the welfare policy problem and set the parameters for welfare reform choices, but those choices were modified by contextual variables in some states. A few Republican governors accomplished comprehensive welfare policy reform.

Food Banks and Food Security: Welfare Reform, Human Rights and Social Policy. Lessons from Canada?

In the past twenty years food banks have established themselves as one of the fastest–growing charitable industries in first world societies. As institutionalized centres or clearing houses for the redistribution of donated and surplus food they have emerged as a key frontline response to the growing problem of food poverty and inequality. As welfare states have been restructured and cut back and basic entitlements have been denied, food banks have become secondary extensions of weakened social safety nets. This paper explores the growth of food banking in Canada and analyses its role in terms of advancing the human right to food, its effectiveness in achieving food security and the extent to which it contributes to, and/or counters the increasing emphasis by governments on welfare reform policies informed by neo–conservative ideology. Food banks are examined from the perspective of their origins and purposes, institutionalization, usage, food distributed and effectiveness. The rise of food banks in Canada is concrete evidence both of the breakdown of the social safety net and the commodification of social assistance. As such, they undermine the state’s obligation, as ratified in international conventions, to respect, protect and fulfil the human right to food. They enable governments to look the other way and neglect food poverty and nutritional health and well–being. A possible future role for food banks in countries where they are already established lies in public education and advocacy, but their institutionalization makes this seem an unlikely course. In countries where they are in their infancy, the question of whether to support their development should be a matter of urgent public debate.

Simulating the Behavioural Effects of Welfare Reforms Among Sole Parents in Australia

This paper derives and estimates an econometric model of labour supply among sole parents in Australia, using modelling techniques which treat the labour supply decision as a utility maximising choice between a given number of discrete states. The model is then used to look at the likely effects of actual and hypothetical welfare policy reforms. Model estimates are based upon net incomes generated by the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator (MITTS), developed at the Melbourne Institute in collaboration with the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS).

Emotions Matter: Making the Case for the Role of Young Children's Emotional Development for Early School Readiness

This Social Policy Report considers the importance of young children’s emotional development for their school readiness, suggesting that social scientists can provide policy makers with concrete ways to conceptualize, measure and target young children’s emotional adjustment in early educational and child care settings. This Report then reviews a recent and persuasive body of rigorous research, to determine whether children’s emotional adjustment can be significantly affected by interventions implemented in the preschool and early school years. Results of this review suggest that family early educational, and clinical interventions offer policy makers a wide array of choices in ways that they can make sound investments in young children’s emotional development and school readiness. This research suggests that, while young children’s emotional and behavioral problems are costly to their chances of school success, these problems are identifiable early, are amenable to change, and can be reduced over time. What kinds of investments should policy makers be advised to make, at what point in young children’s development, and in what settings? While modest investments in low-cost interventions initially may seem appealing, this report suggests that there are few bargains to be had when investing in young children’s emotional adjustment. With this caveat in mind, the findings of this report suggest that policy makers should broaden early elementary educational mandates for school readiness to include children’s emotional and behavioral adjustments as key programmatic goals. Policy makers should consider targeting young children’s emotional adjustment prior to school entry, in diverse settings such as Head Start, child care settings, as well as in the first few years of school. Finally, young children’s emotional adjustment can serve as an important benchmark of programmatic success in other policy arenas focusing on child welfare, family support, and economic self-sufficiency, as well as in education.

Unknow Title Article ID 2178

The end of the millennium marked a major change in U.S. treatment of its low-income parents and children. In 1996, the U.S. implemented a massive welfare reform program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This program replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), eliminated the welfare safety net, and mandated that progressively larger and larger proportions of the population of low-income parents receiving public assistance work at least 30 hours per week. We have monitored the effects of these changes by conducting repeated in-depth interviews with 150 women from across Wisconsin who have been affected by these changes. The State of Wisconsin was a leader in implementing welfare reform. In the 1990's, Wisconsin implemented a massive welfare reform program called Wisconsin Works (W-2), a program that became the model for what later became the federal TANF program. Wisconsin had a long history of nationally significant innovation in social policy, beginning with such Progressive Era reforms as workers' compensation and unemployment compensation. 2 Wisconsin's 1990's governor, Tommy Thompson, established himself as a leading figure in the national welfare reform debate and became the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2001. [End Page 759] Wisconsin applied the new welfare reform policies earlier, more radically, and more aggressively than any other state—the 30 hour work rule was applied to all low income parents receiving assistance who were not officially designated as disabled and whose children were older than 12 weeks. The speed and magnitude of this change were incredible, instantaneously forcing tens of thousands of people into the low-wage labor market, something thought to be nearly incomprehensible by major policy advisors only a few years before. 3 This change provided a new population of low wage workers to businesses and non-profit organizations and and no doubt contributed to the fact that Wisconsin's per capita income fell below the national average during this time period. 4 The emphasis of welfare programs instantly changed from providing services to those who required help to mandating that parents must work first before their families could become eligible for aid. Some argue that work was valued with little regard to whether or not the children left behind received adequate care or to what is needed to parent successfully. Because the changes which occurred quickly in Wisconsin are occurring more gradually in other states, Wisconsin can be considered a laboratory for the entire TANF program. 5 The experiences of the families in Wisconsin affected by W-2 and TANF are documented by our longitudinal qualitative research and provide insights into what families affected by TANF are experiencing nationally. These experiences vary according to the personal and family resources available to each woman. For the vast majority, welfare reform brought with it continued poverty and economic instability. A significant minority also experienced severe deprivation that included hunger, homelessness, and deteriorating health. The experiences of women facing welfare reform in the U.S. are in many ways parallel to the experiences of women in countries affected by the structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Parallels are most striking in the consequences of both sets of policies for the lives of women and children in the areas of nutrition, health, education, and child welfare. Both structural adjustment and U.S. welfare reform have resulted in reductions in health care and nutrition. Structural adjustment policies require that governments reduce spending, and this requirement has resulted in profound cuts in health care and food subsidies. 6 Since most of those dependent upon these programs were women and children, they were hurt the most by these cuts. 7 8 The increase in hunger and homelessness, 9 the increase in poverty; 10 11 and the decrease in health care expenditures resulted in an increase in the infant mortality rate. 12 [End Page...

IMPLEMENTING WELFARE REFORM IN MICHIGAN: THE ROLE OF STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRATS[1

ABSTRACT This study examines the implementation of welfare reform policies enacted by the state of Michigan. In particular, it focuses on how welfare policy is altered as it devolves from state policy makers to street-level bureaucrats in three local welfare agencies in Michigan. The analysis reveals that street-level bureaucrats in local welfare offices are in a position to interpret broadly stated goals handed down from officials, and, in some cases, to manage and greatly influence the delivery of services when messages are mixed. The study also suggests that the actual policies or services delivered by front-line workers in welfare offices do not completely correspond with the policy directives issued by state officials.

Ensuring the stability of welfare-to-work exits: the importance of recipient knowledge about work incentives.

Welfare reform policies assume that recipients will increase work efforts if they are offered improved income and support services incentives. Yet, based on personal interviews with 60 welfare recipients, this study found that recipients often do not understand the incentives provided. This results both from a lack of knowledge about existing incentives and from confusion about eligibility rules and benefit calculations. Such knowledge deficits do not appear to be the result of lack of interest in working, but rather stem from the complexity of incentives. To improve recipient responsiveness and well-being, work incentives need to be simplified and strategies developed for better dissemination of information to recipients. Caseworkers must play a vital role in such efforts, because they often are the key to ensuring that recipients gain access to available benefits.

Organizational and community health changes under welfare reform.

This article comments on changes made by health-related organizations and in community health during the first years of New Jersey's welfare reform policy implementation in Camden, Essex, and Hudson counties (1992-1998). Throughout these years, county welfare agencies made organizational changes that shifted their focus from supporting family well-being to encouraging work. Health care provider organizations now are beginning to make organizational changes in response to the ripple effects of welfare reform policy. Specific actions to initiate and influence healthy welfare policy reformulation are presented.

The Effects of Welfare Reform Policies on Children

The Effects of Welfare Reform Policies on Children

Welfare Reform and Housing: Assessing the Impact to Substance Abusers

The addiction disability (Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Income program for drug abuse and alcoholism) was terminated by Congress in December 1996 as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). Discussions about welfare reform policies in the latter 20th century have centered on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) receipt by the general population. Far less attention has been paid to programs such as the addiction disability that were also affected by the PRWORA. Our purpose is to study the effect of this policy change on the housing status of former addiction disability recipients and to also explore whether and how disruptions in living situations increased risks for drug and alcohol use, criminal participation and victimization. We utilize insights from two major sociological theories of housing or homelessness, i.e., individualistic and structural, to guide our exploration of the policy's impact on housing. A qualitative analysis, featuring in-depth interviews with 101, nonrandomly selected former recipients revealed that disability benefits promoted housing autonomy, successful cohabitation, and overall housing stability. The termination of benefits, at a time of diminishing social services (e.g., cash and housing assistance) and a housing market explosion, increased various types of homelessness for respondents and dependency on family and friends. Such negative living outcomes, in turn, further escalated the risk of drug and alcohol use, criminal participation, and victimization. Individual-level factors also complicated the matter. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Teen Mothers and Welfare Reform: Challenging the Boundaries of Risk

A major component of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) included policies directed to encouraging marriage while discouraging nonmarital births. Teen mothers were of particular concern as policymakers argued that there is a link between teenage childbearing and welfare receipt. This paper seeks to reframe the concept of “at-risk” teen mothers by looking to the socially construction of boundaries—an imagery that brings to the forefront the complex relations between young mothers and welfare reform policy. From this standpoint, we discuss how welfare reform might address the multiple issues facing teen mothers including housing, education and training, child care, transportation, health, healthy relationships and parenting skills.

Welfare reform in Indiana: The political economy of restricting access to education and training

This article interrogates welfare reform policies that restrict welfare reliant mothers' access to education and training. It focuses on how these policies have been implemented through the Indiana Manpower Placement and Comprehensive Training Program (IMPACT), Indiana's “work first” response to women's growing experience of poverty. Using methods of inquiry inspired by Dorothy E. Smith's articulation of “institutional ethnography,” a case study is developed to investigate the critical disjuncture that arises when welfare reliant mothers attempt to navigate these policies in the context of Indiana's extended political economy. It is argued that through these restrictive policies, welfare reliant mothers are forced into Indiana's unrelenting low-wage labor market, increasing the pervasiveness of poverty and further perpetuating the reproduction of inequality.

A synthesis of welfare reform policy and its impact on substance users

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to provide an overview of welfare reform and its impact on the substance-abusing recipient. Methods: The data for this paper were derived from sources including the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Results: The number of individuals on public assistance has decreased in the years following implementation of welfare reform legislation. Factors relevant to transitioning welfare recipients into the workplace, such as transportation and childcare, have special ramifications for the drug-using population. Additionally, these individuals require treatment for their addictions in order to become employable. The issue of concern is that recipients may be deterred from seeking benefits by various provisions of welfare reform legislation and turn instead to other sources (including illicit activities) for sustenance. Conclusions: Welfare caseloads have been dropping over the past two years. However, the number of substance abusers continues to rise. It is not known in what ways welfare reform will affect substance abusers who are welfare recipients. Important policy issues arise from this nexus; it is argued that these issues will require careful investigation.

Welfare or Work: Which Is Better for Canadian Children?

This study examined whether the employment status of parents in poor families is a predictor of child development by comparing the verbal development of preschool children in working poor and welfare-dependent families. Findings show that verbal development scores of both groups of children were below the norm, regardless of parents' source of income. Findings also indicated that children from working poor families had slightly higher levels of verbal development than children from welfare-dependent families and that these developmental differences were only partially attributable to differences in home and family characteristics of the two groups. The study has a number of important implications for welfare reform policy and research in Canada.

Child development and public policy: toward a dynamic systems perspective.

Little theoretical work exists that proposes general mechanisms for how public policies may influence child development. This article argues that dynamic systems theories may be useful in illuminating such processes, as well as highlighting gaps in current research at the intersection of public policy analysis and developmental science. A brief review of dynamic systems theories as they are currently utilized in other areas of developmental science is provided, as well as a statement of why they may help advance research in public policy and child development. Five principles of dynamic systems theories are presented and discussed using examples from research that address the question, "How do current antipoverty and welfare reform policies affect children?" Also presented are examples of hypotheses and research questions that each principle may generate for future work. The concluding section presents challenges that each principle poses for research methodology, and potential uses of the dynamic systems approach for developing and integrating policy and program initiatives.

Using African American Narratives to Analyze Social Policy

This paper explores how African American literature can enrich the analysis of social policy in social work graduate courses. The historic debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois about black progress, and its reflection in subsequent works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Shelby Steele, and Cornel West, illustrate that the debate remains present in contemporary affirmative action and welfare reform policies. Using ethnic narratives can expand adult students' ability to analyze the purposes, consequences, and values underlying social policies and help social workers formulate, document and buttress new policy positions. Such abilities are especially critical for social policies in which race remains a critical influence.

POLICY FOR THE‘DESERVING,’BUT POLITICALLY WEAK: THE 1996 WELFARE REFORM ACT AND BATTERED WOMEN

ABSTRACTThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law #104–193) is perhaps the most visible national legislation since the sweeping Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. For social policy so well entrenched into the American social fabric, the rapidity with which reforms swept through the welfare system was unprecedented and confound conventional theoretical pronouncements on bureaucracy and policy change. The swiftness of reform, and the political rhetoric that surrounded the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, have prompted criticism that reformers responded more to the social construction of welfare recipients than they did to the dictates of sound public policy (Magusson and Dunham, 1996). This article discusses the ramifications of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act for battered women and concludes that battered women's social construction as deserving of public assistance, but politically weak, precipitated welfare reform policy, targeted to battered women, that has been largely rhetorical rather than substantive.