Welfare Reform in New York City - Essay Example

1.0 Introduction Welfare in New York is an issue affecting and penetrating many people's lives in the New York is called the 'mother of welfare'. This is because the city accounts for about eight percent of all the welfare recipients in the United States. Besides this, close to ten percent of individuals in New York got benefits from AFDC in '96. This was the highest percentage in the country because other cities had only five percent on benefits. In the year 1996, it was also found that almost fifty percent of homes having single mothers were living in poverty. (Duerr-Berrick, 1999) In the nineteen fifties, the city's welfare system was characterized by its liberalism. It stretched from accommodating few natives to a large influx of immigrants from Latin America and other parts of the world. The city had not come up with a long term strategy to include all these new members. So the welfare system was overburdened and after some years (forty years), it started becoming inefficient. In the nineties, employees working for the welfare system in the City felt unsafe and started reinforcing their offices to protect themselves. Clients on welfare had to waste most of their day waiting for welfare workers who could not even deliver upon meeting the clients. Client files started getting lost; welfare workers did not complete cases and kept jumping from client to client so there was no case of continuity. This made most clients angry and they vented out their frustrations on social workers forcing security guards to intervene. This meant that people on welfare could not make time for other productive activities because they spent most of their time trying to chase for benefits and looking for child care. 'Mass confusion' are the perhaps the most appropriate words to use when describing the city's welfare prior to 1995. The New York welfare system underwent a rapid change between 1995 and 2001 or we could say that reforms were introduced. These reforms occurred during Rudolph Giuliani's term as New York mayor. Some of the changes that the welfare system saw were the decline in number of people on welfare; from one point one million to about six hundred. The welfare system's method of approach also changed. Instead of giving checks to clients, they were given jobs; it became employment based instead of issuing handouts. However, there is another side to this reform. Jobs were not just dished out from all directions. Welfare clients had to prove that they were compliant. This implied that the so called 'difficult clients' were not considered this included drug addicts and the like. Besides, this there were problems in system management and all these will be looked at in the subsequent sections in detail. Welfare reforms were not 'the knight on a white horse' for the residents of the City of New York. (Mead, 1992) 2.0 Literature review There are a number of changes that were observed during Giuliani's regime. There is no doubt that the general approach was work oriented. From the 1995 to 1999, most of the policies imposed sanctions and mainly dealt with work requirements. Clients were required to meet a certain criteria and if they were did not comply, then they were met by sanctions. During this time, New York saw the rejection of about a large number of adults. Cases of sanctioning increased from eight percent to fourteen percent. Besides these, the system was characterized by compulsory workfare jobs. This implied that there were a number of adults that were involved in work experience program jobs. These were more of assignments than actual jobs. However in the last years of Giuliani's regime (99-01) emphasis on workfare started diminishing and some emphasis was now being placed on training for jobs. This involved the three plus two model. Welfare adults were required to attend three days of workfare and they were also supposed to dedicate the remaining two days of the week to a training program such as education or job readiness service. There were also a number of programs that focused on special groups. These were people with their own special needs. Some of them included; pregnant mothers, people with mental health, students in college or mothers with newborns. In addition, these people were also supposed to be on workfare component. (Hagen, 1999) Welfare reform also saw a lot of changes in the management system- Human Resources Administration (HRA). First, welfare offices were changed from offices to employment centers. This was evident in the fact that priorities changed in administration. Welfare offices changed their names and staff members' titles were changed to become job opportunity related. There were clear rules on what rules were to be followed in order to allocate jobs. There was also creation of thirty job centers by the end of Giuliani's term. Here welfare recipients were supposed to visit these centers after which they were allocated to job contractors. So the city of New York worked hand in hand with external contractors to help recipients get employment instead of using its own staff. There were around fifteen contracted services that dealt either with job placement and assessment of skills. (Gueron, 2001) Lastly, there was also assessment of all the stakeholders involved in the reform system. This involved job centers, HRA, employment contractors, and programs. It also had benchmarks set for achievement of goals in employment and case progress 3.0 Justification of study There are a number of issues that illustrate the ineffectiveness of the welfare reform system. These aspects of the reforms are as follows: 3.1 Reliability of reports on the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Program (JOBS) The main aim of this program was to reduce the number of people relying on welfare and to provide them with a means of supporting themselves. The Social Services Department assessed their success by quoting the amount of public finances saved by job placements. This was a very unreliable way of assessing effectiveness because it did not measure results in terms of the amount of money earned by the welfare system. This implied that even if a recipient worked for one day, they were included in their report. Some were counted twice f they did two jobs at any one time. It is therefore safe to say that any reported success is untrue because achievement of goals was ineffectively measured. 3.2 Caseload reductions The New York welfare reforms have been praised for reducing the number of caseloads. But the problem with this assumption is that the number of job placements, sanctions and eligibility measures do not match these caseload reductions. In addition, caseload reductions imply that there are a number of people who have been rejected and have to be redirected to another program. These people do not just disappear. This means that such people are denied a chance to receive assistance yet some of them are in the situation they are in due to economic reasons. Besides there were few income alternatives given to these people who were rejected. (Greenberg, 1996) These rejections are rather harsh because the criterion used to reject such people is too high to be attained by most people who need welfare. 3.3 Effectiveness of activities related to work The reforms are such that most of the work related activities offered result in jobs temporary jobs. Most of the jobs which recipients got were mostly temporary. They were paid on an hourly basis and it was quite rare to find a job placement that lasted for a period longer than six months or spun into long term stable employment. Most workers were not retained and it is difficult for those ones who were not retained to find jobs by themselves. Lastly, some people kept returning to welfare payrolls, implying that there is something very wrong with the system. 3.4 Sanctions The system of using sanctions was done in order to make recipients compliant to work requirements. This meant that if a recipient could not comply then they would be dismissed from the welfare payrolls and placed more strain on the public system. Vouchers were used as a form of a sanction rather than giving recipients money. 3.5 Effectiveness of poverty reduction It has been found that despite transfer of recipients from welfare to jobs, the rate of poverty was still more or less what it was before job placement. The number of people who have risen above the poverty line has not increased dramatically and besides living standards are affected by more than just earnings. 4.0 Methodological Discussion There are a number of scientific methods that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a social policy. Some of the methods that l shall use are: Experimental designs Process evaluation Analyzing data 4.1 Experimental designs In this method of assessment, a comparison is done between outcomes and the program to determine the effectiveness of a particular program. For example when examining whether sanctions affect recipient behavior; two groups were created, the first was a control group that continued earning the same amount they were earning. Then there is another group that is sanctioned say to a third of their initial amount. Then the earnings of these two groups are compared for five years. It was found that the families of those who were sanctioned increased by twenty percent. However, this method involves selecting randomly and errors may occur when the random group does not represent behavior of the entire group. (Friedlander, (2001) 4.2 Process evaluation In this method, the actual program is examined. It is checked against the background of the initial intentions. For example to evaluate whether job centers were effective, questions to clients were asked on the client treatment and other services. It was found that most of the workers at job centers considered their work repetitive and did not perform it to their maximum. (Collins, 1998) 4.3 Analyzing data In this method, there is use of data to establish a trend in a reform program. This method involves collecting data on a number of topics and then an analysis is done. For example, data was collected on the following: number of people on welfare rolls, number of people in homeless shelter, amount of money reimbursed for welfare needs. Afterwards, an analysis was done by comparing the amount of people on welfare after five years and hence the effectiveness of the policy determined. 5.0 Conclusion From the latter two methods of research, it can be seen that the policy was not effective because the number of people on welfare was found to still be high. However, the first method indicated opposite views. The argument for that could be that the method of evaluation did not consider other factors that affect the family. This method only focuses one outcome yet there are other issues that must be considered. These include poverty levels in those homes-they still remained low. Two out of the three methods showed that the reform methods have failed. The New York City should look for other methods pf addressing welfare management. References Collins, A. (1998): Children and welfare reform: a journal by Columbia University School of Public Health. Duerr-Berrick, J. (1999): Faces of poverty. New York; Oxford University Press Friedlander, D. (2001): Five years after: The long-term effects of welfare-to-work programs. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, Greenberg, M. (1996): A brief summary of key provisions of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; a report for Centre for Law and Social Policy Gueron, J. (2001): From welfare to work. New York; Russell Sage Foundation Hagen, I. (1999): Implementing JOBS: Progress and promise; a journal for State University of New York Mead, L.M. (1992): The new politics of poverty: The nonworking poor in America; New York: Basic Books Publishers Read More