Welfare Reform in California: CalWORKs Facts
The welfare reform bill signed in 1997 eliminated the federal entitlement program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and created instead the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program (strong emphasis on the word "temporary"). TANF is a federally funded block grant program for states that provides time-limited cash assistance.
California entitled its state program California Work Opportunities and Responsibilities to Kids (CalWORKs). Under CalWORKs, new recipients (cases after January 1998) are limited to 18 months on welfare while continuing recipients (cases prior to January 1998) are limited to 24 months on aid. There is a overall lifetime limit of 60 cumulative months of benefits.
The California philosophy is "work first" which sometimes conflicts with the recipient's philosophy of "education first.". To attend college, CalWORKs recipients fall into two catagories:
Self-Initiated Participant (SIP) - SIPs are those recipients who were already enrolled in a college program at the time of their appraisal, hence the title "self-initiated." A SIP's program can be approved in the welfare-to-work plan if the program leads to a degree or a certificate, if the program leads to employment; and if the student is making satisfactory academic progress. SIPs have a thirty-two (32) hour per week activity requirement which can include class time, lab time, work-study, approved volunteer or meeting time, internships, and outside employment. No study time hours can be counted toward the 32 hour requirement. There are currently 11,000 SIPs in California. Many of them are coming up to their 24 month limit in June of 2000.
Post-Assessment - Post-assessment recipients are those recipients who were not in college at the time of appraisal. These individuals have fewer rights and options. They are required to go through four weeks of job search. If, at the end of the search, they have not secured employment, they undergo an initial assessment. The assessment forms the basis of the welfare-to-work plan. The assessment needs to indicate that further education is needed for employment. Usually post-assessment recipients are placed into short-term training programs. At this time there are 26, 000 post-assessment recipients in California.
If a recipient does not abide by or follow these requirements, she will be sanctioned which means that her portion of cash aid will be eliminated. The recipient's children will continue to receive cash assistance. There are 30,000 recipients who are presently sanctioned for non-compliance in California.
Many former recipients have left welfare and have joined the ranks of the working poor. Fifty-five percent (55%) of households headed by women with children under the age of six are living in poverty. They are working full-time for an averaged wage of $6.61 per hour, which for a family of three, still falls below the federal poverty line. Even in the booming economy that the U.S. is enjoying at this time, the key to higher earnings is higher skills which generally require post-secondary education. If recipients continue to be pressured to "work first," we will continue to see increases in the numbers of working poor.
-
Carol Lasquade
-
April 2000