To many of us, welfare reform is a story about numbers: How many are still on the rolls; how many have found work. To some, it's a story about politics or history, the latest chapter in an evolving social policy.
That's to be expected. The new rules governing the unemployed poor don't touch most of us personally. Numbers, politics and history are more readily grasped. Still, what happens over the next year in Congress and the legislature will touch hundreds, if not thousands, of Illinoisans' lives.
This also is a story about personal change, and courage. And now is a good time to remember those who really are on the front lines in this national revolution. "They got up before the sun and poured coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's," Curtis Lawrence writes in this issue.
"They found sitters for their kids and went off to unpack tractor parts in Peoria. Some even put down their needles and bottles and faced addictions head on. It hasn't been easy, but in the past four years these Illinoisans made the transition from welfare to work."
We asked Lawrence to take stock of the progress of this transition and to consider some of the hurdles that might lie ahead. His report begins on page 16. So far so good, he writes, but now the truly hard work begins.
Some 36,000 of the Illinois families who remain on the welfare rolls will have to find jobs within the next year. But, Lawrence reports, they present social workers with some of the toughest cases — severe drug dependency, myriad health problems and patterns of unemployment that have been entrenched for generations.
So policy-makers, too, will have their work cut out for them. In fact, this next phase of welfare reform will go to the core question: what to do with those who can't or won't work. State human services officials say they don't as yet have an estimate of how many unemployables there will be, but everyone agrees these families will require the most creative solutions.
How did we get here? Five years ago last month, the nation scrapped its 60-year-old social safety net. The idea was was that public dollars should be used to provide short-term help for the poor, not a permanent way of life. So Congress and the states gave most aid recipients a deadline to find jobs and get off welfare. The clock started ticking in 1997 and runs out this coming summer. That's when an unknown number of people will be kicked off public assistance for good.
Welfare watchers in this state will get their first hard look this fall at how Illinois' unemployed poor are faring in finding and keeping work. Lawmakers are due to get the second, and more detailed, phase of a six-year tracking study in November. Then state and federal policy-makers must begin to decide whether to reauthorize welfare reform or write another chapter in an evolving social policy.
In short, lawmakers will face some tough calls as they assess Illinois' numbers in the coming months. But now is a good time to remember, too, the personal challenges that go into changing a way of life, the courage required to stare down an uncertain economy and stretch a minimum wage check over the rising costs of food and housing.
Illinois Issues, September 2001
