Many times the question is asked has the welfare reform act been successful? If the goal of welfare reform was to move people off the welfare rolls, then yes, it has been an overwhelming success. However, if the question is asked, are those who moved off welfare better off than they were before, the answer is no. The people who moved off welfare did not move into the middle class. They are still poor, often time desperately poor.

The Greater Erie Community Action Committee and the network of nearly 1000 Community Action Agencies across America believe that everyone who can work should work. Millions of families have been caught for generations in the cycle of poverty. The move from dependency on government assistance to gainful employment is an important step in the development of self worth and independence for these families. This sense of self worth and independence, if encouraged and supported, will enable poor families to continue toward self-sufficiency.

Welfare Reform has taken the first step of moving many families from welfare to work. However, welfare reform caused the average income of poor single-mother families to drop and halted progress in reducing child poverty according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The poorest single parent families, those at 55% of the federal poverty level, experienced an income loss, even with the income of all others in the household accounted for.

Many former welfare clients have gone into minimum wage jobs with no benefits. These jobs do not pay a living wage that would allow them to support their families in dignity and decency. These people are often faced with the very real choices between paying their rent and feeding their families. There is no coincidence between the soaring demand at food banks nationwide and the decline of the welfare rolls. A recent GAO report strongly suggests that the basis for the dramatic decline in Food Stamps participation is, in large part, due to the movement of poor families from welfare to work and their belief that they are no longer eligible for Food Stamps. Likewise, the uncoupling of welfare and Medicaid has led to a decline in Medicaid participants and has placed an increasing number of poor children at risk due to lack of health care.

Many former welfare clients are faced with multiple barriers to work. These include lack of education, limited job history, inadequate transportation, no childcare, substance abuse, poor parenting skills, mental health issues, inadequate health care, motivation and lack of multi-generational support. Many former welfare clients have critical immediate needs such as food, housing, clothing and serious family debt. There is often a need for family counseling, problem solving, motivation, sensitivity, stress management, life skills, budget counseling, social relations, self concept development and nutrition education.

It is the presence of these barriers that prevent former welfare clients from moving into better employment without some form of support. Often these barriers make it impossible to even hold a minimum wage job over the long term. The work first strategy has doomed multitudes to a cycle of employment, unemployment and re-employment--all at the minimum wage. This cycle will only last as long as the economy is booming. As long as former welfare clients cannot overcome their employment barriers, they will not be able to move to the next rung of the employment ladder. When the economy slows, as it inevitably will, these former welfare clients will be the first to become unemployed. It is at this point that the clients will either return to welfare in large numbers or they will be faced with welfare's built in eligibility time clock and find they are not eligible for benefits. Even in today's good economy, of those welfare clients who have found employment 19 to 30 percent return to welfare within 15 months, another 20 percent have no job and are not living with anyone who has a job.

A new study by the Urban Institute (UI) prepared for the Labor Department shows that welfare recipients who are required to work should receive ongoing education and training. UI's study found that:

· The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) provides strong incentives for local officials to implement post employment services which include individual work requirements, mandated participant rates for state caseloads and the five-year lifetime limit on individuals.

· Few recipients qualify for stable, good paying jobs with advancement potential. The study noted that many have fairly low reading and mathematics ability and lack strong education and occupational credentials. Many also have personal and family problems that can interfere with work. Thus they tend to find low-wage, low skill jobs, have difficulty keeping those jobs, and remain stuck at the low end of the labor market.

· Labor market trends suggest that without further education and training many welfare recipients may be trapped in low wage, low skill jobs. Manufacturing jobs that once offered good pay to poorly educated workers have largely vanished replaced by service sector jobs. Today's high -paying jobs require technical skills.

Solutions

The Greater Erie Community Action Committee has been involved in anti-poverty movement for more than thirty-five years. During that time some overriding principles have become evident.

1. Local flexibility to design programs to fit local needs is critical.

2. In-home case management over the long term is critical to the client's success.

3. A gradual reduction of benefits is necessary to help former welfare clients' transition from welfare to work.

4. Transportation is a critical need that needs to be addressed.

The welfare reform tenet of work first has been interpreted in many states to mean "work exclusively." The initial charge of welfare reform was to move welfare recipients into jobs, and in many cases, any job would do. TANF and various Welfare to Work programs from the State and Federal level have sought to provide short-term services for clients to get them to work. Little has been done to address the long-term barriers that held clients on the welfare rolls. When programs have been developed to look at retention or job enhancement, rules and restrictions have limited their usefulness. Large surpluses of TANF dollars at the State level do not mean that there is a lack of need. These surpluses are emblematic of the restrictive nature of program eligibility, which ultimately constrict clients' participation.

Research shows that the most successful programs combine work first and education or training. Most programs to aid welfare clients are not locally designed. While statewide programs now have greater flexibility to design programs that meet their own needs; they must also meet several federal requirements designed to emphasize the importance of work and the temporary nature of TANF aid. These programs do not take local needs into account. The result is that programs are overly prescriptive of who can be served and how they can be served. Consequently, client needs are not being met as dollars meant to help them go unspent.

One such state-designed program is intended to support people as they move into the work force. There are five (5) different categories of people who can be served and five different funding streams to pay for the services. For example five persons who are TANF can be served and six persons who receive food stamps only and eleven able-bodied persons and seven persons who are post 24 month and eleven who are stand alone can be served. If there are too many clients from one category and not enough from another, clients in need go unserved and dollars intended to help go unspent. This eligibility and accounting structure makes the program needlessly difficult to operate.

The Work Activities Expansion Stand Alone Design program is funded at $1.2 million for Erie County. So far this year because of restrictive eligibility only two clients have been found in Erie County for this program; neither was interested in participating. This program could have provided over $6000 each for 200 families to participate in education and job training helping to make their transition from welfare to work a little easier.

With final TANF rules broadening the range of services for which states can use TANF and State Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funding, and with the majority of states having substantial amounts of unspent TANF funds, the time is right to expand the purpose of welfare reform beyond caseload reduction. The role of welfare reform must now be broadened to include the assurance that families leaving welfare are equipped to advance along the continuum toward self-sufficiency. All of us--government, community action and business share in the responsibility of ensuring that families who leave the welfare rolls for work are able to earn money they need to provide for them selves and their families and obtain jobs which offer health care benefits.

GECAC has long believed in the value of in-home case management. In-home case management is designed to provide intensive outreach into the community to find clients and intensive home-based case management to help people move from welfare to work. In-home case management acts as both a recruitment and support service. It is a long-term program that can stay with the client throughout the transition from dependency to self-sufficiency. It is designed to help families carry out long term strategies beyond the first job (i.e., secondary education or employer supported on-the-job training.)

In-home case managers go to the client; the client does not come to them. The in-home case managers provide families with whatever level of service they require, empowering them and promoting self-sufficiency. The in-home case managers assess the family with the head of household's help. An agreement of mutual responsibility is developed between the in-home case manager and the family. Some family agreements will only consist of strategies to connect them to the world of work. Other family agreements will include child and family needs.

The goal of the case-management staff is to coordinate all services being provided to the family. The in-home case managers use an ongoing assessment of families to determine needs. One of the results is to help families overcome the small problems that occur almost daily and become a true deterrent to self-sufficiency. Families in these situations long ago stopped functioning at the level needed to solve small problems before they become major issues. One of the major goals is to teach families to identify these problems early and develop and use both personal and professional support systems that keep them on the road to self-sufficiency.

Many welfare families are receiving services from multiple service providers to meet their various complex needs and to overcome their barriers to self-sufficiency. Families can become fragmented by service providers' competing requirements. It is the role of the in-home case manager to be the coordinator for all services. The in-home case manager will facilitate staffing among and between agencies to develop a coordinated plan to move the family from welfare to self-sufficiency.

GECAC has found that clients are most at risk the first day they begin work. For many welfare clients the world of work is a new experience filled with pit falls. Long developed patterns of behavior must be altered and new patterns substituted. New skills must be used for the first time. The former client must find childcare and transportation. They need to get up and out of the house and deal with coworkers and supervisory personnel. This is the time they need the most support, and it is the very same time, many, if not all welfare to work programs, declare success and terminate the client from the program. Not only is the client's support system terminated; as soon as they get a job, both monetary and other benefits are removed.

Support systems need to be maintained until the client has stabilized in his or her new situation. Using a 50-cent on the dollar reduction in welfare benefits as clients get their first job is a disincentive to work. Clients are often not making enough money to secure childcare and transportation. Work must pay. Many times the former client is worse off than before due to the new expenses. This is especially true if medical benefits are removed before the new worker can find a job with benefits.

Transportation is another critical area of concern for families transitioning from welfare to work. The County Board of Assistance (CAO) provides allowances of up to $750 for the purchase of and up to $400 for the repair of a vehicle. This is a positive, important aid to employment. However, the reliability of $750 cars is less than stellar. The $400 repair allowance can very quickly be expended. The CAO also provides $36 per month for gas or a bus pass until work is secured. The CAO provides an unlimited ride bus pass for those individuals who do not have a vehicle but only until they get a job. A major problem is the times the busses run and the extent of their routes. The busses in Erie run between 6:00 AM and 10:00 PM. This is not a problem if someone is working a first or early second shift job. If they work a typical second shift, usually 3:00 PM--11:00 PM or 4:00 PM--12:00 AM, they face relying on someone for a ride home or calling a taxi. If they work a third shift, they would have to arrive at work an hour or more before their scheduled start time.

Increasingly, the Erie Mass Transit Authority (EMTA) offers limited routes. EMTA has decreased or eliminated less profitable routes over the years. There are major employers, i.e., Bush Industries and several motels, that are located beyond the bus routes. Several of these employers report that they have difficulty finding and retaining employees for various reasons, including the lack of reliable transportation.

Private industry has seen the need for transportation. Some of the temporary agencies in the county either own or lease busses or vans to transport clients to and from work. Workers pay for rides to work; however once a worker becomes a permanent employee they are on their own to find transportation. There must be a better-coordinated way to get workers from the inner city to the jobs in the outlying areas of the county.

As a result of the new flexibility in federal regulations and guidance, TANF funds and State Maintenance of Effort funds may be used for an array of initiatives to help low income working families meet work expenses, meet basic needs, and participate in education or training to advance in the workforce. These changes enable states to provide services and benefits outside of the basic welfare program and help low income families with income above the welfare eligibility whether or not they ever actually received welfare.

Yet many states continue to view TANF as a program of basic cash assistance and a set of initiatives to help families enter the workforce. They have been unsure about what was allowed under federal guidelines, or concerned that proposed regulations presented significant difficulties in using TANF or MOE funds for new initiatives to address the needs of low income working families. Final TANF regulations contain a narrow definition of ATANF assistance." Work subsidies, support services (child care and transportation), refundable earned income tax credits, contributions to and distributions from Individual Development Accounts, services such as counseling, case management, peer support, child care information and referral, job retention, job advancement and other employment related services are not included in the definition. Thus, states may use TANF or MOE monies to fund these benefits.

Before the concept of self-sufficiency became a part of the rhetoric of human services and welfare reform, the mission of Community Action was to move families from poverty to self-sufficiency. In our 35-year history, we have provided thousands of families with a hand up, not a hand out to maintain them in poverty. Community Action Agencies in general and GECAC in particular stand ready to partner with federal, state and local governments to ensure that those families that welfare reform has weaned from dependency on public assistance do not remain in the ranks of the working poor.

GECAC and its more than 1000 Community Action partners believe in a simple philosophy that can be summarized as:

Everyone who can work should work. Those who do work should earn sufficient income to provide for their families' basic needs. Those who are unable to work or who work but do not earn enough to provide for their families should be assisted by policies and programs to meet their basic needs and secure safe and decent housing.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you and we welcome the opportunity to help.