From D.C. to Des Moines--the Progress of Welfare Reform.

• Author: Tweedie, Jack
• Position: Statistical Data Included

What states have already done has been successful. Now it's time to address the harder challenges posed by those who can't leave the rolls.

Tommy Thompson, the new U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, knows how welfare reform works. As a former state legislator and governor, Thompson's leadership made the Wisconsin Works (or W-2) program a model for state innovation. He knows firsthand the responsibility that states took on and the effectiveness of their responses.

Thompson says that Wisconsin asked welfare mothers what they needed to get off public assistance and then set out to design a program to make it possible. "W2 provides the support necessary for individuals to enter the workforce," he says. "For those who still need aid, we provide financial and employment planners, transportation assistance, job access loans, child care assistance and access to health care. I have always said--as loudly and publicly as I can--that for welfare reform to be successful you have to make an investment up front. It can't be done on the cheap."

Now, Thompson says, it's time to consider the next steps in the reform process. And that is to meet head-on the challenges faced by those still receiving direct benefits--those with significant health problems or people struggling with substance abuse. "We must make a concerted effort to reach these people and provide compassionate, caring assistance," he says. "And we also have a duty to those families who have successfully moved into the workforce. We must do every thing in our power to help them continue to move up the ladder of economic success."

REAUTHORIZING TANF

Secretary Thompson will play a central role in the debates over the reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant that will occur in the next two years. And he knows the transformation of welfare policy did not start with the federal law in 1996. Nor did it stop after the law was passed. States started experimenting in the early 1990s with aggressive changes focused on work: participation requirements, allowances for increased earnings, strong sanctions and time limits. Those state initiatives and their effects shaped the federal welfare debate that produced increased flexibility and block grant financing. This, in turn, made it possible for states to go even further.

States have increased work requirements for recipients, as well as expanded child care and transportation assistance so parents can work. The states have used welfare money to help families avoid going on welfare altogether, conduct home visits to new parents, extend Head Start to 3-year-olds, fund family resource centers and offer after-school programs to teens to improve their academic achievement and help them avoid crime and sexual activity.

As we anticipate the revived federal debate, it is time to review the state stories--where they are in their reforms and what issues they are addressing. And states' reforms and their effects no doubt will be at the center of federal debates about continuing the TANF program.

FIFTY-ONE STATE PROGRAMS

There is no single story to welfare reform. Indeed, one of the wrong notes sounded at many meetings is an attitude that we have a single national program. States and the District of Columbia have adopted such a variety of initiatives that TANF is not a single program, but 51 different programs. They all seek to move welfare recipients into jobs, but do it in different ways. They also seek to reach a variety of other goals--improve school readiness, reduce teen pregnancy, promote marriage, support working families, reduce poverty, help noncustodial parents, reduce child abuse and a host of other things. (Even that statement doesn't account for states such as Colorado, California and Ohio that give broad discretion to counties to develop their own programs.)

States' No. 1 focus has been to help recipients get jobs. Now many are trying to help those held back by substance abuse, learning disabilities and limited work experience. Arizona, for one, expanded substance abuse treatment for TANF recipients and child welfare cases. The program also helps with parenting skills and work training. Utah has social workers who help case managers in...