(January 2000)

FOCUS ON WELFARE is a series of articles from the Welfare Reform Task Force of the NYC Chapter of NASW. The series, edited by Mimi Abramovitz and Judy Fenster, aims to inform social workers of the range of issues related to current trends in welfare reform and mobilize them to act on behalf of their clients, themselves and their agencies.

The column this month is from a speech by Ann Withorn based the findings of the study she directed for the Kellog Foundation: " Worrying about Welfare Reform: Community Based Agencies Respond." We thoughts NASW members would be interested in this report, especially since NASW is planning a study on the Impact of Welfare Reform on Social Service Agencies in the NY area.

This report summarizes and contextualizes the responses of senior staff within 42 non-profit agencies, from 18 states and Washington DC, regarding how their programs, staff and constituents have engaged with the new welfare laws. It is the result of telephone inquiries, conducted in the Fall of 1998, into how welfare reform was being experienced by community based organizations previously funded by the W.K. Kellog Foundation for their innovative work with families and neighborhoods.

The goals of the project were to: learn how key informants within community based agencies are responding to new welfare laws; understand more fully the process by which grassroots agencies engage with changes made by policymakers; and suggest how national foundations might support community based organizations.

This study is a qualitative analysis of how community agency staff members:

1. describe changes in their agencies due to the new laws
2. worry about the current and potential effects of welfare reform upon their agencies, constituencies, and communities;
3. speculate about what might happen in the future and
4. voice needs and concerns that could be addressed by the foundation world and/or in new collaborations with other agencies and advocacy groups.

The study found that, although the agency representatives interviewed believe that the welfare system needed to change, they also feel that needed structural supports are not in place to help people deal with the transition, and that community based agencies are willing, but not necessarily ready, to help as more people lose cash assistance and move into an unstable workforce. They express fears that real opportunities for sustainable employment are absent and that people have no time nor means to change their essential "marketability" as workers. Agency staff interviewed believe that their constituencies need practical assistance and support in order to make a successful transition to employment, and they are apprehensive that their agencies might not be prepared or able to provide this support.

Some of the major findings are that:

• Whether constituents are employed, briefly employed or unemployed, agency staff see changing and increasing demands that threaten their agencies' ability to operate effectively and maintain the agency mission.
• Agency staff recognize that changes in constituents' needs and options mean that their operation, staffing and programs must change, even though they are not always sure how.
• Agencies are experiencing internal and external tensions created by welfare reforms that negatively affect agency functioning.
• Tensions with local welfare agencies are especially strong and have troublesome implications for service delivery and future planning.
• Agencies do not receive timely or adequate information about welfare laws and policies.
• Community based agencies expect to play an important role in distributing information to communities and worry that they are unable to perform this role.
• Community-based agencies are not often engaging in organizing activities around welfare laws but most think it should be done and that collaborations offer hope.
• Increased support from the foundation world will help agencies make needed changes.

The study identifies and examines several continuums of concern around which agencies can be grouped: the depths of their concern about welfare reform; the range of available information and perception of information needs; the relationships with local and state welfare departments; fears for the future; and, organizing agendas.

Worrying about Welfare Reform concludes with six recommendations aimed at helping national and local foundations better support agencies and at suggesting how agencies can help themselves more effectively:

1. Community based agencies should be recognized as offering a crucial voice to identify problems stemming from welfare reform and therefore need to be meaningfully included in discussions and decisions relating to the implementation of new welfare laws.
2. Most agencies need assistance in order to respond effectively to changing constituency needs and to new policy mandates. Some need technical assistance with documentation of welfare reform effects; others need help developing new staffing patterns and more flexibility in hours and definitions of eligibility; still others need assistance developing collaborations with broader community groups and with developing organizing and leadership building approaches.
3. Agencies need assistance in coming to understand and respond to the increase in "working poverty" that is occurring within their constituency.
4. Agencies need to be willing to serve people who have lost any income support and are still unable to find secure employment.
5. Agencies need assistance in fighting their own isolation and developing ways to stay connected to other community based organizations.
6. Researchers and foundations need to support agencies by funding organizing and outreach and by making information easily available about how to monitor impacts of new welfare laws and about successful models for maintaining resident leadership.

For more information call Ann Withorn at 617-287-7365 or e-mail withorn@umbsky.cc.umb.edu.