Welfare to Work Midterm Essay Example for Free

Welfare to Work Midterm Essay 1. President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) P.L. 104-193 on August 22, 1996. What are the basis and implications of this law? On August 22, 1996, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (P.L. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105) into law, thus fulfilling his campaign promise to end welfare as we know it. The PRWORA changed both the substance and administration of the national welfare system. The act eliminated the prior welfare system, which had been attacked for decades by policy-makers, the press, and the public for increasing government spending while making the poor dependent on government charity. The stated purposes of the PRWORA were to reduce welfare dependency and out-of-wedlock births and to encourage the formation of two-parent families. In line with these goals, the PRWORA required welfare recipients to work within two years of receiving assistance, and it put a five-year lifetime limit on the receipt of benefits. It also ended the entitlement status of welfare benefits. In addition, the act made other, less publicized changes to several social welfare programs, both restricting the availability of benefits (making it harder for disabled children to qualify for assistance, limiting eligibility for food stamps, denying welfare benefits to most legal immigrants) and strengthening programs that aid children (reorganizing and increasing funding for child care, toughening the enforcement of rules for child support). In addition to the acts primary emphasis on putting welfare recipients to work, the PRWORA also radically altered the way government delivers welfare benefits in three important ways: (1) Increased role of states. To fund welfare the PRWORA provided the states with fixed block grants called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) to fund welfare, totaling $16.5 billion annually over six years. Congress also included a provision in the act that would result in TANF funding cuts if the states failed to move a required percentage of recipients into the workforce and off welfare. Nevertheless, TANF gave states extensive discretion to design and operate their own programs. This transfer of authority from the federal government to the states is called devolution. Under devolution, states have many choices to make in shaping their welfare policiesncluding being more stringent than federal law requires. For instance, some states have chosen to limit the receipt of benefits to less than five years, to cut benefits to families with truant children, or to mandate that parents take parenting classes. (2) Increased role of local entities. The PRWORA allowed states to devolve their authority even further to counties, local governments, or even private entities. The private entities involved in welfare administration include a wide range of for-profit companies, nonprofit companies, and religious groups. As a result, welfare programs vary widely not only from state to state but also within local jurisdictions. This transfer of authority to private providers, an approach called privatization, has raised questions about accountability. In other words, some critics argue that PWROWA has made it more difficult for the government to oversee programs so as to ensure quality service to recipients. The accountability of for-profit entities is of particular concern, because the incentive to earn profits can lessen the quality of services provided. Critics also charge that privatization may cause private providers to lose their independent character as they become increasingly bureaucratic and reliant on government funding. In addition, there has been sharp debate over whether religious groups should receive government funding for delivering social services. Opponents charge that this violates the separation between church and state. Proponents hold that a spiritual approach to the delivery of social services is more effective than secular approaches. (3) Changes in the role of welfare workers. The work-first emphasis of the PRWORA has dramatically changed the role of front-line workers, those low-level welfare office workers who interact directly with welfare clients. Before the PRWORA, front-line workers focused on two tasks: (1) verifying whether applicants met objective criteria to become eligible for assistance, and (2) issuing checks in a timely manner. By contrast, under the PRWORA these front-line workers must perform a variety of tasks, including evaluation and counseling, designed to put people to work. As a result, they have a much bigger say in decisions affecting applicants than they had previously 2. What is the relationship between Aide to Families with Dependent Children AFDC) and Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Program (JOBS)? 3. What is the difference, if any, between Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Welfare-to-Work Grant Programs? Explain in detail. PRWORA replaced AFDC with TANF and ended entitlement to cash assistance for low-income families, meaning that some families may be denied aid even if they are eligible. Under TANF, states have broad discretion to determine who is eligible for benefits and services. In general states must use funds to serve families with children, with the only exceptions related to efforts to reduce non-marital childbearing and promote marriage. States cannot use TANF funds to assist most legal immigrants until they have been in the country for at least 5 years. TANF sets forth the following work requirements in order to qualify for benefits: 1. Recipients (with few exceptions) must work as soon as they are job ready or no later than two years after coming on assistance. 2. Single parents are required to participate in work activities for at least 30 hours per week. Two-parent families must participate in work activities 35 or 55 hours a week, depending upon circumstances. 3. Failure to participate in work requirements can result in a reduction or termination of benefits to the family. 4. States, in fiscal year 2004, have to ensure that 50 percent of all families and 90 percent of two-parent families are participating in work activities. If a state meets these goals without restricting eligibility, it can receive a caseload reduction credit. This credit reduces the minimum participation rates the state must achieve to continue receiving federal funding. While states are given more flexibility in the design and implementation of public assistance, they must do so within various provisions of the law: 1. Provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives; 2. end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; 3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; 4. and encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Funding for TANF underwent several changes from its predecessor, AFDC. Under AFDC, states provided cash assistance to families with children, and the federal government paid half or more of all program costs. Federal spending was provided to states on an open-ended basis, meaning that funding was tied to the number of caseloads. Federal law mandated that states provide some level of cash assistance to eligible poor families but states had broad discretion in setting the benefit levels. Under TANF, states qualify for block grants. The funding for these block grants are fixed and the amount each state receives is based on the level of federal contributions to the state for the AFDC program in 1994. States are required to maintain their spending for wel fare programs at 80 percent of their 1994 spending levels, with a reduction to 75 percent if states meet other work-participation requirements. States have greater flexibility in deciding how they spend funds as long as they meet the provisions of TANF described above. Welfare recipients and certain non-custodial parents are going to work, gaining job skills, and receiving the temporary help they need to become economically independent through local initiatives supported by Welfare-to-Work grants from the U.S. Department of Labor. These outcomes have been a primary goal of Federal welfare policy since the enactment of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act which ended welfare as an entitlement and set lifetime limits on an individual’s benefits. Additional welfare reform legislation in 1997 authorized the Department of Labor to provide Welfare-to-Work grants to help the hardest-to-employ, long-term welfare recipients get education, training, work experience, and private-sector jobs. These grants to States and communities are intended to provide welfare recipients with training, transitional employ ment, job placement services, and support services. Local communities have the flexibility to design programs that fit their particular needs. Approximately three-fourths of the $3 billion authorized for Welfare-to-Work was allocated to States on the basis of their poverty populations; the States are required to spend $1 of non- Federal funding for every $2 in Federal funds. Nearly one-fourth of the total funds were awarded competitively to local governments, private industry councils, or community-based organizations; 1 percent of the funds was awarded to Indian tribes, and 0.8 percent was set aside for evaluation. The Welfare-to-Work Initiative evolves to meet society’s needs, even though virtually all of the grant funds had been distributed by the end of 1999. At least 70 percent of grant funds were required to be spent on services to long-term recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and non-custodial parents. The remainder could be spent on TANF recipients who have characteristics associated with long-term welfare dependency, youth who have received foster-care services, and custodial parents with incomes below the poverty line. Eligibility criteria were simplified under the Welfare-to-Work and Child Support Amendments of 1999. Under related programs, Work Opportunity and Welfare-to-Work tax credits provide 4. How are the Welfare-to-Work Programs being carried out in the State of Mississippi? Temporary Assistance for Needy Families provides cash benefits to families once they have been approved for the program. The benefits can be used for any legal personal reason, such as rent, food, child care or medical bills. The benefit amount is determined by a familys monthly income and the size. In Mississippi, if a familys income does not meet the standard of need used for eligibility, the state itself may supply benefits. In 2011, the maximum state allowance for needy families was $110 per month for the first person in the program, $36 for the second and $24 for every additional person. Time Limit The federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act imposed new time limits for TANF. No state can offer benefits for longer than the federal limit, although they may be extended under certain circumstances for a limited time. Mississippi uses the federal guideline for TANF benefits, although the time limit in some other states is shorter. TANF participants in Mississippi cannot receive help for more than 60 months, or five years. Eligibility Not all needy individuals qualify for TANF. Only families with children may apply, and the children must be deprived of one or both of their parents because of unemployment, absence or inability to perform their parental duties. In 2011, the family cannot exceed a maximum monthly income level or hold more than $2,000 in assets, such as real estate or cash. Mississippi rules also require that any parent or relative caretaker who takes TANF money because one or more of the parents are absent must assign support rights to the state and aid the state in obtaining child support payments from the absent parent, which may require legally establishing paternity. Work Requirements All adults who participate in Mississippis TANF program must meet the work requirements or lose their benefits. There are exceptions for women who are in their third trimester of pregnancy and have complications. You also do not have to meet the work requirements if you are the victim of domestic violence, in treatment for substance abuse, disabled, elderly or caring for a disabled household member or child under 12 months of age. Participants have 25 months to meet all work requirements before losing benefits. The program does help participants with skills assessments, developing an Employability Development Plan and job training. Vocational education, work experience programs, community service and job searches qualify as work activities for TANF. 5. â€Å"Promoting marriage and helping those with substance abuse were the secondary goals of the reform.† Referring to the US Welfare Reform in 1996, how was secondary goals achieved? In conjunction with supporting work, new policies deny assistance to people who do not work. The work requirements in TANF are stricter than those in AFDC, fewer recipients are exempted from them, and failure to comply with them can lead to financial sanctions. In addition, PRWORA limits nonworking able-bodied adults without dependents to three months of food stamps, and state General Assistance programs have declined. States have done less to achieve welfare reforms family structure goals—encouraging marriage, reducing the number of births outside of marriage, and keeping children in their own homes or the homes of relatives—than they have to promote work (chapter 3). Many states make TANF available on a fairly equal basis to families with single and with married parents, which reverses a longstanding bias in the welfare system against serving two-parent families and thereby possibly discouraging marriage. Twenty states have adopted family caps that deny additional benefits to adults who have children while they are on welfare. Another PRWORA provision strengthens the child support system, with the federal government developing a data registry to facilitate collections from working noncustodial parents, states being required to adopt new child support enforcement tools, and individual welfare recipients facing sanctions if they fail to cooperate with the child support system. 6. How successful was the 1996 Welfare Reform? Declining Welfare Demand In 1994, about 5.1 million families were receiving cash assistance from the government. Most beneficiaries have since been forced to leave the welfare rolls for low-paying jobs, following the 1996 welfare reforms. By 2006, USA Today estimates that 1 million more had been removed either because of failure to follow state rules, or they had depleted all the benefits allowed under time limits. At the 10th anniversary of the PRWORA, only about 1.9 million families were getting cash benefits: 38 percent were blacks, 33 percent were white and 24 percent were Hispanic. Between 1994 and 2004, the welfare caseload recorded an unprecedented decline of 60 percent. Working Single Mothers Of the families on welfare in 2006, unmarried women headed three out of four. However, statistics indicate earnings for the poorest 40 percent of single mother households doubled between 1996 and 2006. Statistics also revealed that about 60 percent of adults leaving welfare were employed at any given moment, according to the Brookings Institution, and that over several months, about 80 percent held at least one job. Rising Income Levels Between 1993 and 2000, the percentage of low-income single mothers with a job grew from 58 percent to nearly 75 percent, an increase of almost 30 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This was a direct result of welfare reforms. The overall income of low-income families increased by more than 25 percent over the period, and by 2006, child poverty fell significantly. According to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, welfare reforms have succeeded mainly because the presumption of government assistance as an entitlement has been reversed. The Knowledge Gap The University of Michigan argues that research on welfare reforms is too focused on poverty reduction rates, lower out-of-wedlock childbearing and greater family stability, while overlooking spousal abuse and child neglect. The university argues that poverty levels remain high among single mothers and their children and that welfare recipient faced impediments to stable employment. Similarly, the Employment Policies Institute suggests more research must be conducted in an effort to understand the relationship between minimum wages and welfare recipiency. The minimum wage research data is currently more focused on high school dropouts, with only limited attention paid to poor adults.