1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation ...also known as The Welfare Reform Act shut everybody up.
Those who believed people were driving around in pink Cadillacs living the life of Donald Trump got their lust for punitive measures satiated.
Those who liberally believed everyone needs to have a job, we just have to help a little, had their little golden souls appeased by the efforts to put those less fortunate in the workforce.
Lobbyists were out in full force for this juicy morsel of legislation. Money allocated for education and support totaled 16.5 billion dollars. That money in the form of block grants is given to the states to allocate it how they wish. Most allocate the dollars in grants of minimal assistance, for example Florida provides 240.00 a month to individuals with one children, and requires at least 20 work or volunteer hours weekly to continue receiving the monthly income.
Most states contracted with other agencies to implement the program. Many of the programs contracted with are concerned with one set of numbers.
The amount of time a client is engaged in activity for a month.
States require 20 hours per week for single parents with children under age six.
Many private programs require 35 hours a week regardless of a child's age.
In addition, it doesn't matter how those hours are allocated-volunteer work, schooling, work experience and job search. The rules set by the state and the managing agency implement and enforce the documented hours. Women who do not comply are sanctioned by the managing agency personnel.
Without providing an entire lesson on the Welfare Transition Program, (read the Act) a few events occurred which made this program look very successful. For awhile an abundance of minimum wage jobs existed. Clients moved on and off the welfare programs depending on the low wage job availability. Clients were hired at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's with little effort. In fact, prior job and criminal histories mattered little. Educational levels were ignored.
Poor women with children weren't seen or heard from, voila! the program considered a success.
The unemployment picture today reveals a different picture.
1. Poor women can't get those fast food jobs anymore. They are turned away and told they need a high school education, or their criminal record makes them ineligible.
Internet applications don't give them a chance to get in the door. One look at their record and the application is often kicked out of the system.
2. The Welfare Transition Program is perceived as the bottom rung of social welfare thus the people hired to counsel, guide and draw from resources and community expertise are often making little more than a living wage. Many are hired from career /human resource fields and consider any behavior not associated with the quest for employment irrelevant and ignore the needsof the clientele-single mothers with little or no support systems, impoverished, uneducated and not prepared for the competitiveness of the marketplace0
in fact, not only unprepared but torn between the message that you work no matter what and the needs of the children.
3. The majority of the women who remain on the welfare rolls the full four years are ones who cannot obtain employment because of a criminal record. Many of these crimes are not serious, or a one time event, or years past-but they cannot obtain employment.
These women are ignored by the system. It is the dirty little secret of welfare reform. There is no reform set up for these women. They cycle in and out.
4. Keeping working women poor
The women are pushed into training programs which will still keep them at poverty level. Schooling and training classes offered are at service level-nurses aides, phlebotomy class certificates(no license), home health aide, clerical or data entry classes. The colleges run fully funded welfare programs to train poor women to work low wage jobs and tell them it is only a "start" they can go on with the education as they work"
5. Bad Bad fit
Women are referred to these classes and when completed find out they cannot even take the state licensing test because they either do not have a GED or have a criminal record. The women are not informed of this.
6. Child Care. The fallacy of childcare. Women are forced to place children in state paid childcare. The rest of the world tells them they are getting a great gift. Their children get to go to "school" 40 hours a week while mom builds skills. The message? You are poor, you have children out of wedlock, you are in dependant circumstances, you don't have a choice about your children. You want this little bit of money?
Put your kids in daycare. Get a low paying job or volunteer fulltime.
Parenting is not as important as showing the state you are "productive" Parenting is not considered a productive activity. Women have no choice if they want to survive.
Our culture has changed over the past ten years. Many will say, "It's their choice."
"They don't deserve to be supported by the rest of us taxpayers""Lazy welfare moms"
The fact is most of the women on welfare rolls are unmarried black women, with little education. Why haven't we addressed this plight before the road to welfare?
Black males have the highest unemployment rates in the country. Black males have had the highest unemployment rates in this country long before the 13% unemployment rate.
Most women applying for financial assistance in todays climate of unemployment, hostility and finger pointing express great shame at their perceived inability to move beyond their situation.
Sadly, with the poorly funded , uneducated workers, high turnover rates and misdirected counsel of clients, poor black women are doomed because we doom them.
Following the rules will not provide them with a decent paying job, it will only move them off cash assistance, where they lose food stamps and Medicaid for their children -to work low paying jobs until the next catatsrophe propels them back into the system.
