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From welfare to work
Social Work professors help officials make informed decisions about welfare reform
By Ann Allen
allen@cviog.uga.edu

Moving individuals from welfare to work has become a major policy activity for state officials since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act significantly overhauled the nation’s welfare system in 1996. The most recent paper in the Carl Vinson Institute’s Public Policy Research Series, The Impact of Welfare Reform’s TANF Program in Georgia: Criteria for Exemption from Its Work Requirements and Time Limits, presents a descriptive profile of the remaining TANF recipients to help officials make more informed decisions in this complex policy arena.
The authors--Ed Risler, Larry Nackerud, Christopher Larrison and Rebecca Rdesinski--are affiliated with the Georgia Welfare Reform Research Project in UGA’s School of Social Work. Columns recently talked with Ed Risler and Larry Nackerud about the relevance of their work to welfare policy.

Columns: What did the 1996 welfare legislation mean to the states?
Risler: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was the most profound legislation since the passage of the Social Security Act. Programmatically, the responsibility for the management of cash assistance for people living in poverty was shifted from the federal government to the states. They are responsible for the implementation of their own cash assistance programs as well as compliance with federal guidelines. That means the states now face the challenge of developing policies and programs that meet the complex needs of people living in poverty.

Columns: What is TANF?
Nackerud: Welfare assistance can take many forms, such as food stamps and Medicaid. The new welfare law impacted cash assistance--or, as it was then called, AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children--more than anything else. Cash assistance is now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and it has three major provisions that make it significantly different from the old program.
First, the receipt of cash assistance is no longer an entitlement and there are lifetime limits for an individual to receive benefits. Individuals are eligible to receive benefits for up to five years. Interestingly, the federal guidelines allow states to impose stricter limits on the receipt of benefits; Georgia for example has a four-year lifetime benefit limit.
Secondly, to be eligible for cash assistance, an individual must comply with a personal responsibility work plan. An adult who is also receiving a benefit with their child must be actively involved in work or a work activity. An adolescent with a child must attend school to be eligible for cash assistance. Finally, the new TANF program includes a strong family cap. The cash assistance amount is determined by the number of children they have when they first apply.
AFDC was designed to help children and widowed mothers living in poverty. The emphasis in TANF has shifted to adults and moving them into the workforce.

Columns: Were states required to conduct an analysis of welfare reform activity?
Risler: While there were reporting and accounting requirements, the new law did not require states to rigorously evaluate the reform efforts. At the time the law was passed, we were fortunate that Michael Thurmond was the director of the state’s Division of Family and Children Services. He had already implemented “work first” in Georgia, which essentially provided the framework to meet the provisions for the federal legislation.

Columns: Why was the Georgia Welfare Reform Research Project initiated?
Nackerud: The project, now in its third year, is comprised of a research consortium assembled by the leadership of the Department of Family and Children Services. It includes researchers from Georgia State University, and from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, the College of Family and Consumer Sciences and the School of Social Work here at UGA. The general goal was to develop a profile of the remaining TANF recipients through an in-depth analysis of the impacts of welfare reform on client expectations, attitudes and behaviors associated with the successful movement towards independence and self-reliance. The investigation placed particular attention on factors or barriers that contributed to welfare dependency. The results of the project are of significance to state legislators and policy makers who have to make important decisions without accurate information pertaining to the issue.

Columns: What were your major findings?
Risler: A significant number of people have left TANF. Since the new program was implemented, there has been more than a 50 percent drop in Georgia’s cash assistance caseload. So clearly we are now getting down to those individuals who have significant barriers in their lives and who are truly needy. The most prominent finding of this research is a concern about health issues which do not rise to the level of a federal disability but impact a person’s ability to participate in the workforce.

Columns: Will the School of Social Work have a continuing role in evaluating welfare reform?
Nackerud: We certainly hope so. We believe that we have established a data set that is a representative sample of people living in poverty in Georgia that will provide us with an opportunity to continue to track the social and economic impacts in their lives longitudinally.
We have submitted a proposal to the Department of Labor to conduct a similar study that would evaluate those former recipients who are now in the workforce. The proposed project would focus on employment retention and job enhancement. This would be important to understand the dynamics associated with an individual’s ability to remain off welfare.
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