Working Without A Net: The most difficult challenges lie ahead

They got up before the sun and poured coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s in downtown Chicago. 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. 

They were on the front lines of a national movement. When Congress and the states abolished the country’s 60-year-old social safety net, replacing it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the idea was that government aid should provide only short-term help, not a permanent way of life. And Illinois’ social services program, funded through an annual $585 million federal block grant and state funds of $430 million, seems to be working. Since 1997, this state has trimmed more than 104,000 people from its welfare rolls. And most observers agree — even those who were skeptical about welfare reform from the start — Illinois has made great and compassionate strides. 

But with less than a year left before the clock runs out on a five-year deadline for the unemployed to go to work or to identify a barrier that stops the clock, the state’s most difficult challenges lie ahead. The remaining 36,000 families subject to time limits on public assistance 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. Beyond that, there are many unanswered questions about those who have left the rolls. Some are simply unaccounted for. And even those who have landed minimum wage jobs work at the whim of an uncertain economy. 

Some of those questions will be answered in the second phase of a six-year tracking study, due to state lawmakers in November. For the first time this fall, welfare watchers will get a hard look at how the unemployed have fared in getting — and keeping — jobs. Yet, next summer is when the toughest phase of the nation’s welfare-to-work experiment will begin. In Illinois, depending on who is asked, hundreds of people are expected to run out of time and get kicked off welfare for good. Officials in the Illinois Department of Human Services estimate that fewer than 100 people will exit welfare permanently in July, the first month of the five-year deadline. Each month after that, the number exiting is expected to be the same. Advocates for welfare recipients think the number could be much higher.

Whichever calculation proves most correct, it’s clear that welfare reform has and will change many Illinoisans’ lives. And in the months leading up to reauthorization of the federal welfare regulations next summer, politicians, activists and recipients will be trying to weigh the extent of that change. They’ll review reams of studies and reports filled with public testimony as they assess the first phase of the reform movement and attempt to chart the course ahead.

So far, the results of those studies and reports have been mixed. Dan A. Lewis, a Northwestern University professor of education and social policy who is tracking welfare recipients for the state, and John Bouman, the National Center on Poverty Law’s deputy director for advocacy, both say Illinois has taken the high road to welfare reform. Indeed, this state’s policies have evolved. A decade ago, in the early days of his administration, former Gov. Jim Edgar began by cutting off aid to unemployed men. In more recent years, the state has been praised for its progressive policies, especially when compared to other states. Those policies, which include allowing recipients to keep some pay without jeopardizing public aid, were initiated, too, by Edgar’s administration.

“When Congress gets to the reauthorization bill, Illinois will be a leader in the Work Pays approach,” says Lewis. He’s the lead investigator for the University Consortium on Welfare Reform, which is comprised of Northwestern, Northern Illinois University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Chicago Urban League and the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center. “Rather than being punitive, there are supports built into the Illinois approach,” Lewis says.

Illinois’ Work Pays program, one of the first of its kind in the nation, allows recipients to keep $2 of each $3 earned and provides continued medical coverage, child care support and food stamps. Most important, the welfare clock is stopped while a recipient is working.

Because of this strategy, Illinois’ rolls remained full early in the welfare experiment, while other states were lopping off high numbers of people. But Illinois has been catching up. 

Individuals on welfare in this state must work or take part in a training program for 30 hours a week. Two-parent families must work a total of 35 hours a week. Recipients must also keep appointments with their caseworkers and stay clear of trouble with the law. The first snapshot of Lewis’ research, released late last year, showed that the majority of the study group — 53 percent — was employed. Of those who were employed, 38 percent had full-time jobs. Most recipients worked about 33 hours and the median hourly wage for the group was $7 an hour. 

Nevertheless, the study revealed some gaps in the system. Of those who had left welfare, 42 percent said they found jobs or that their earnings became too high to qualify. But another 27 percent said they lost their benefits because they missed appointments or failed to file paperwork. As many as 41 percent of the recipients in the study became ineligible for Food Stamps or Medicaid at some point.

The second round of interviews for Lewis’ study was completed in late July, and his second report will be ready in November. These results, which will provide more targeted demographic information than the first study, are expected to help the state fine-tune problems, especially for the most troubled recipients.

Meanwhile, another study released by the state a little more than a year ago revealed some problems as well. That study reviewed 137,000 cases that were closed between July 1997 and December 1998. It was prepared by the Institute for Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield in collaboration with the School of Social Work at the univer-sity’s Urbana-Champaign campus. The results of the review were mixed. About a third of the cases were closed because families increased their incomes, another third were closed because families didn’t cooperate with the human services department, and another 14 percent were closed for other reasons. No reasons for termination were given for 21 percent of the cases.

At the same time, recipients reported a number of obstacles to joining the workforce. While the state has been given high marks for child care, 40 percent of those surveyed by the University of Illinois reported trouble finding baby sitters. Lack of transportation and difficulty finding jobs close to home also were cited. Further, only 37 percent of those surveyed had worked continuously in the six to eight months after leaving welfare, while 48 percent worked inconsistently.

Those findings raise concerns about recipients who drift in and out of employment. “There is going to have to be a set of services and supports to keep people in the labor market,” Lewis says. “You don’t want an accident or a family health emergency to cause someone to tumble out of the labor market and fall back into the welfare cycle.”

There are other issues, too. Many of those who are keeping steady work are in service industry jobs with little chance of promotion, says state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat. “I think there is a concern that many of the people on welfare are people whose skill levels tend to be low,” says Currie. “I think we have not done so well on the job training front and certainly not done anything on the job creation front.”

Despite progress, Bouman of the National Center on Poverty Law says the jury is still out on Illinois’ reform efforts. “In a couple of areas, I think Illinois has done very well and is a leader nationally,” says Bouman, whose organization is not known for heaping praise on governmental institutions. “Illinois has done an immense amount to reward, support, and [provide incentives for] work activity.” 

He gives Illinois high marks for reforming its child care system in the early days of welfare reform. According to the human services department, state spending for child care has skyrocketed from $263 million in fiscal year 1997 to a projected $681 million for fiscal year 2002. But Bouman is less kind toward the state’s Work First strategy, which he and other critics say encourages caseworkers and their supervisors to push the single-minded goal of getting people into the first available job. Those who don’t comply are met with sanctions and face losing part or all of their cash benefits and possibly their food stamps.

Bouman says one of the recipients he works with, Margaret Ferguson, is a perfect example of why a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Ferguson first came into the world of welfare shortly after her son, Conlan, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was 2, a condition that impairs muscular power and coordination. Conlan, now 15, also suffers from autism, a disorder of the brain that affects physical, social and language skills. His health problems cause him to miss an average of 40 days of school each year, which makes it nearly impossible for Ferguson to hold down a steady job. Nonetheless, she says her caseworkers had insisted she work 30 hours a week to keep her benefits.

“Welfare reform cannot be achieved by suiting legislation to a utopian ideal that the disabled, caretakers of the disabled or other needy parties will somehow disappear from society,” she says.

Recently, the department agreed. The agency adopted a new provision that allows caregivers who must stay home to care for spouses or children to stop their clock and continue to receive benefits. Similar waivers may have to be made in other cases. 

More difficult problems may lie ahead. State Sen. Barack Obama, a Chicago Democrat who also says it’s far too soon to get high hopes about the welfare-to-work program, worries for instance about a worsening economy. “I think that for a number of states the numbers look good on first viewing simply because the economy has been so wonderful,” says Obama, who co-sponsored legislation to track the success of those leaving the welfare rolls. He says he wants to see more of those statistics before he credits the program as a success. “There’s a significant number of people who are counted as being kicked off welfare rolls, but those folks are no better off in terms of finding jobs.”

Policy-makers are likely to face a number of tough calls over the coming months. Indeed, the next phase of welfare reform will cut to the core question: what to do with those who can’t or won’t work? State officials say they do not as yet have an estimate of how many unemployables there will be, but these families will require the most creative solutions, says Toby Herr, director of Project Match on Chicago’s near West Side.

Since 1985, Herr’s program has served some of the city’s hardest-to-place workers, many of whom live in public housing. Unlike some, she doesn’t favor increasing the number of people exempt from work requirements. “A lot of advocates say just exempt people,” Herr says. “I would say that nobody should be exempt from some obligation.” But Herr says that obligation must be fine-tuned to meet the needs of this special population. And, she adds, some hard realities will have to be addressed. “Right now there’s no middle ground,” she says. “You either work or you don’t, and everybody is not going to work the first time around.”

As an alternative to working right away, Herr favors tough requirements that track parents’ progress in getting their children to medical appointments and after-school events such as scouting or tutoring. Attendance would be monitored and verified, similar to a work or training program. Herr’s thought is that once parents find they can get organized around a schedule for their children, they can translate these skills to a work environment.

State Sen. Dave Syverson, a Rockford Republican who chairs the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee, also thinks of welfare reform as “tough love.” He says ultimately there will be two groups left on the welfare rolls. One will be those who are disabled and cannot work and whom we have a moral obligation to support. “There are some, however, [for whom] the opportunity was there and albeit difficult, [who] chose not to fully take advantage of it,” Syverson says. “I don’t believe we should treat both of those populations the same.”

Human services Secretary Linda Reneé Baker says the state plans to continue the support programs that have earned praise from welfare watchers, including a provision that stops the clock for teen parents as long as they stay in school and the newly enacted regulation that allows caretakers to keep benefits while caring for children or spouses.“I think it’s a matter of making certain we have the right kind of policies working with TANF families as we drill down into the case load,” says Baker. “The test for us will be how we manage these existing cases and making sure they have the right kind of support.”

The sources

Studies and resources cited in this article are available on the Internet.
• For information from the University Consortium on Welfare Reform, go to
www.jcpr.org/wpfiles/IFS summaryreport.pdf.
(See pdf file) 
• For information on the study by the University of Illinois, go to
http://ipa.uis.edu/publications/ tanf_finalrpt_execsummary.pdf.(See pdf file)
• The National Center on Poverty Law is located at
http://www.povertylaw.org.

Curtis Lawrence is a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who writes about housing and urban issues.

Illinois Issues, September 2001