Selling Welfare Reform

Selling Welfare Reform PDF

Author: Frank Ridzi

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2009-04

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0814775942

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The 1996 Welfare Reform Act promised to end welfare as we knew it. In Selling Welfare Reform, Frank Ridzi uses rich ethnographic detail to examine how new welfare-to-work policies, time limits, and citizenship documentation radically changed welfare, revealing what really goes on at the front lines of the reformed welfare system. Selling Welfare Reform chronicles how entrepreneurial efforts ranging from front-line caseworkers to high-level administrators set the pace for restructuring a resistant bureaucracy. At the heart of this remarkable institutional transformation is a market-centered approach to human services that re-framed the definition of success to include diversion from the present system, de-emphasis of legal protections and behavioral conditioning of poor parents to accommodate employers. Ridzi draws a compelling portrait of how welfare staff and their clients negotiate the complexities of the low wage labor market in an age of global competition, exposing the realities of how the new "common sense" of poverty is affecting the lives of poor and vulnerable Americans.

Buying and Selling the Poor

Buying and Selling the Poor PDF

Author: Siobhan O'Sullivan

Publisher: Sydney University Press

Published: 2021-12-01

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1743328362

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Buying and Selling the Poor ventures behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work system, offering new insights into how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. As the authors tell the story of four local employment offices, they paint a vivid picture of a critically important social service which many people are aware of but which few properly understand. They also reveal the wider impacts that processes of marketisation and welfare reform have had on these frontline services over decades, and how the work of frontline staff and service providers has been transformed. Buying and Selling the Poor looks closely at how these services operate, why some succeed where others fail, and what can be learned from the stories of staff and clients who have navigated the system. Three decades into this market experiment, how well are we doing in supporting our most vulnerable citizens to get back to work? 'This revealing, often heart-wrenching work will prove enlightening for not only those within the policy field, but also anyone with an interest in or experience dealing with a system that often feels like a race to the bottom.' - Kim Thomson, Books+Publishing

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform PDF

Author: Jeffrey Grogger

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2005-10-30

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0674018915

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In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform PDF

Author: Alan Weil

Publisher: The Urban Insitute

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780877667100

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A dozen essays interpret case study research on the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Weil and Finegold (Assessing the New Federalism project, Urban Institute, Washington, DC) overview the history of welfare reform and policy implications of the latest act. While the value of supporting low-income working families has been demonstrated, Act II requires meeting diverse recipients' needs through all economic phases. Appends notes on case studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Policy Creation and Evaluation

Policy Creation and Evaluation PDF

Author: Richard Hoefer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0199735190

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Although practitioners do not often identify an explicit focus on social welfare policy, the analysis (what it is) and evaluation (what it does) of policy is basic to social work practice. This unique pocket guide presents a case study on one of the most important domestic policy decisions in the post-WWII era, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. This law ended welfare as we knew it by creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program and closing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.Examining the law through three decision-making models assists readers in understanding TANF's historical antecedents, its political and power implications, and the way in which it meets social and economic goals. Individual chapters demonstrate how programs such as TANF are evaluated and the methods that can be used, such as primarily qualitative, primarily quantitative, and mixed methods evaluation techniques. Illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each approach for evaluation, Hoefer makes use of the numerous studies undertaken in the thirteen years since welfare reform and its 2006 reauthorization. Part history text, readers will also learn about the details of the TANF legislation creation and evaluation, but will finish with a greater understanding of the policy creation and evaluation processes.This pocket guide will be useful to researchers and students of advanced social policy who seek to understand the two stages of policy-making, to develop policy, or to describe the impact of social policy on social problems.

Welfare Reform and Beyond

Welfare Reform and Beyond PDF

Author: Isabel V. Sawhill

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and a number of related programs that were created or dramatically altered by the 1996 landmark welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-oriented whole. This capstone collection gathers twenty brief essays (published between January 2001 and February 2002) that focus on assessing the record of welfare reform, specific issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, and a broader set of policy options for low-income families. It is a reader-friendly volume that will provide policymakers, the press, and the interested public with a comprehensive guide to the numerous issues that must be addressed as Congress considers the future of the nation's antipoverty policies. The collection covers the following topics and features a new introduction from the editors: - An Overview of Effects to Date - Welfare Reform Reauthorization: An Overview of Problems and Issues - A Tax Proposal for Working Families with Children - Welfare Reform and Poverty - Reducing Non-Marital Births - Which Welfare Reforms are Best for Children? - Welfare and the Economy - What Can Be Done to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Out-of-Wedlock Births? - Changing Welfare Offices - State Programs - Welfare Reform and Employment - Fragile Families, Welfare Reform, and Marriage - Health Insurance, Welfare, and Work - Helping the Hard-to-Employ - Sanctions and Welfare Reform - Child Care and Welfare Reform - Job Retention and Advancement in Welfare Reform - Housing and Welfare Reform - Non-Citizens - Block Grant Structure - Food Stamps - Work Support System - Possible Welfare Reform in the Cities

Families, Poverty, and Welfare Reform

Families, Poverty, and Welfare Reform PDF

Author: Lawrence B. Joseph

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780962675553

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This volume combines essays by public policy scholars with comments by social project directors who speak from their experiences in the field. Essays include critical assessments of policies to reduce dependency on welfare and a discussion of the effects of poverty on women and children, as well as a look at welfare reform in Illinois.

Both Hands Tied

Both Hands Tied PDF

Author: Jane L. Collins

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-05-15

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0226114074

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Both Hands Tied studies the working poor in the United States, focusing in particular on the relation between welfare and low-wage earnings among working mothers. Grounded in the experience of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin, it tells the story of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules—and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid. Jane L. Collins and Victoria Mayer here examine the situations of these women in light of the 1996 national Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and other like-minded reforms—laws that ended the entitlement to welfare for those in need and provided an incentive for them to return to work. Arguing that this reform came at a time of gendered change in the labor force and profound shifts in the responsibilities of family, firms, and the state, Both Hands Tied provides a stark but poignant portrait of how welfare reform afflicted poor, single-parent families, ultimately eroding the participants’ economic rights and affecting their ability to care for themselves and their children.