Pitfalls of American Public Welfare Reform Since 1988

The institution of public welfare in the United States has undergone significant reforms in the past twenty years. Literature on public welfare reform since 1988 offers mixed views on the success of these administrative reforms (Chi-Fang et al., 2006; Lurie, 2006; New, 2008; Ridzi, 2004; Rodgers et al., 2008; Sullivan et al., 2009). This paper will primarily focus on the pitfalls of public welfare reform in the United States since 1988 and its impacts on the implementing organizations and their public welfare workers.

Analysis of the implementation of the 1988 Family Support Act (P.L. 100-485) illustrated potential pitfalls in public welfare reform (Ridzi, 2004). In 1988 when the Family Support Act (FSA) instituted new work and caseload reduction requirements, it did not significantly change the original problem that brought about the reform in the first place (Ridzi, 2004). FSA neither provided an adequate increase in funding nor effectively transformed administrative culture of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). In addition, FSA added new responsibilities for front-line workers without providing relief from old ones, and efforts to cultivate change among front-line workers were inadequate (Ridzi, 2004).

As Burton (1991) argues, organizational restructuring and task assignment are critical aspects in changing welfare employees' behavior. Since many of the social workers assigned to implement the FSA had already been through many prior reform attempts that were relatively transient and largely symbolic, and there was insufficient reorganization or oversight to motivate the many implementing actors, the FSA was unable to catalyze significant change in workplace behavior among welfare employees (Ridzi, 2004). In addition, career social work employees were likely to sympathize with clients, most of whom were resistant to the welfare rearrangements (Ridzi, 2004). Forcing clients to change their behavior to comply with reform activities can disrupt and undermine clients' survival strategies, and working against client resistance puts employees in conflict with clientele (Ridzi, 2004). This forces welfare employees to make the difficult choice between their concern for the poor and buying into the policy changes (Ridzi, 2004). Despite the fact that it represented the culmination of ten years of reform efforts, the FSA failed at the front lines because it placed crucial implementation actors-the front-line public welfare employees-in a predicament: "Faced with a choice to significantly change established work routines in order to meet standards, or to reinterpret the standards so that they would be easier to meet, employees selected the latter" (Ridzi, 2004, p. 30).

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PROWRA) welfare reform legislation into law (Chi-Fang et al., 2006; Lurie, 2006; New, 2008; Ridzi, 2004; Rodgers et al., 2008; Sullivan et al., 2009). This welfare reform legislation permanently ended the entitlement status of AFDC and replaced it with a time-limited assistance and work requirement program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), with the apparent intent of effectively reorganizing and reengineering a large sector of public welfare (Chi-Fang et al., 2006; Lurie, 2006; New, 2008; Ridzi, 2004; Rodgers et al., 2008; Sullivan et al., 2009).

PROWRA not only changed the rules of welfare, it gave states more control over welfare policy and explicitly encouraged the transformation of local welfare bureaucracies (Lurie, 2006; New, 2008; Ridzi, 2004). The result was a surge of new ways to provide public assistance, including the use of charitable, religious, and private organizations, and reconfiguration of worker roles within the welfare bureaucracy (Lurie, 2006). The state plans resulting from PROWRA have fundamentally transformed the American welfare system (Rodgers, et al, 2008). Some states have designed and adopted comprehensive welfare reform policies to help their low-income citizens transition into the job market and are spending rather generously on TANF and its support programs, while others states have done the bare minimum, maintaining only the required spending despite persistent high poverty rates and the availability of federal and state funds with which to combat the problem (Rodgers et al., 2008). The Urban Institutes' Welfare Rules database shows that between 1996 and 2003 "states have engaged in some tweaking of rules, but no state has made a significant change in their basic approach to reform in terms of spending or design" (Rodgers et al., 2008). As Soss, Condon, Holleque, and Wichowsky (2006) conclude: "Federal reform generated a wave of state activity, and then policy innovation slowed to a crawl as states tinkered at the edges of their new creations" (p. 804).

Condrey, Facer, and Hamilton (2005) studied the impact of welfare reform on organizational functioning at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) between 1999 and 2000. During this one year period the agency experienced a change in leadership and contended with the evolving requirements associated with PRWORA (Condra et al., 2005). Their findings indicated that a trusted leadership and an organizational climate that fosters effective communication can improve the likelihood of successfully implementing a large-scale organizational change like that created by PRWORA (Condrey et al., 2005).

The organizational changes resulting from the implementation of welfare reform first impact public employees (Condrey et al, 2005). Changes in mission, goals, policies, procedures, management, and personnel affect the work environment, thus potentially altering how employees perceive their own personal role within the organization (Condrey et al, 2005). During the debates preceding PRWORA, public assistance caseworkers were considered critical in communicating clients of the new expectations and support services (Anderson et al., 2002).. Yet PRWORA "did nothing to assure that caseworker qualifications and standards meshed with these more substantial case management roles" (Anderson et al., 2002, p. 160).

Implementation studies have discovered significant deviations from intended policies as welfare employees struggle with new rules, expectations, and staffing needs (Anderson et al., 2002). The wide variety of new roles for welfare administrators and workers is clear when considering the wide array of new titles they had to assume: employment advisors, job developers, job coaches, and employment coordinators (Anderson et al., 2002). Employees at the Philadelphia County Assistance Offices (CAO) who had been benefits administrators prior to PROWRA were expected to quickly become work-program specialists without new training or appropriate educational backgrounds (Anderson, Halter, & Gryzlak, 2002). In Georgia, negative perceptions of the effects of organizational change were reflected in the perceptions of public welfare employees regarding management recognition of their work, salary, and job classification (Congrey et al., 2005). 84.3% of the employees reported that their pay had not been adequately increased to keep pace with their job responsibilities. In addition, 64.4% of employees reported that they did not believe that producing higher quality work increased their chances for higher pay and only 35.6% reported that high-quality work was related to salary increases (Condrey et al., 2005). By 2000, 92.5% of the employees reported that their pay had not increased to keep pace with their changing job responsibilities (Condrey et al., 2005). In a California study performed by Austin, Johnson, Chun-Chung Chow, De Marco, and Ketch (2009), 73% of public welfare employees perceived that there were not enough staff members with sufficient knowledge about the welfare-to-work services required under PROWRA, and 70% perceived that there had been an insufficient amount of staff training. Every group of respondents reported a significant need to gain more knowledge in counseling and case management skills, knowledge of barriers faced by disadvantaged groups, identification and utilization of community services and resources, and the role of education and employment requirements (Austin et al., 2009).

Changes in employee job responsibilities and job expectations make the jobs of public welfare employees more demanding (Condrey et al., 2005). In their study, Condrey and the other researchers asked public welfare employees to assess the impact of the PROWRA welfare reform on a variety of factors typically related to job performance (2005). 68.3% of employees reported that organizational changes made their work more challenging and 66.5% reported that the changes had increased the quantity of their work (Condrey et al., 2005). Approximately half of employees also reported that the organizational changes had increasedtheir opportunities to be innovative and the effectiveness of their work (Condrey et al., 2005). However, a majority of workers reported no positive increase in the quality of work (Condrey et al., 2005).

California welfare employees reported that they devoted a considerable amount of effort to most tasks in all three domains of welfare-to-work services: orientation and appraisal, assessment/employment planning and support services, and post-employment service (Austin et al., 2009). Half of the employees and staff specialists perceived that sufficient effortwas being given to the three service domains and half thought that more attention was needed (Austin et al., 2009). Welfare staff perceived more than half of the tasks in two of the areas needed more attention, but staff specialists thought that not enough attention was given to half or more of the tasks in all three areas (Austin et al., 2009). Supervisors had a different perception of the service domains, with the majority perceiving that sufficient attention was given to most of the tasks in the orientation and appraisal domain and the post-employment services domain (Austin et al., 2009). However, they thought that about half of the tasks in the areas of assessmentand employment, employment planning, and support services required more attention (Austin et al., 2009).

Riccucci (2005) finds that eligibility determination continues to dominate the work of frontline workers and that management strategies have minimal impact on their behavior. The massive volume of information, rules, and forms have forced workers to devote most of their time to these routine tasks and have generated an enormous amount of paperwork (Riccucci, 2005). Lurie (2006) asserts that "[w]orkers may be talking about work and work mandates, but the way they are talking is often more reminiscent of the eligibility-compliance culture of the past than the culture of work promised by welfare reform" (Lurie, 2006).

Riccucci notes that there is a disjuncture between public welfare workers' attitudes and behavior; "[w]hile staff training, supervision, open communication, and participatory management significantly influence the workers' endorsement of management emphasis of any of the three goals of eligibility, employment, or diversion, they have hardly any effect on their actual behavior" (2005, p. ???). Riccucci attributes the gap to the dominance of professional norms, work customs, and ethics in shaping street-level work (2005).

Organizational changes frequently add new elements to a job, yet proponents of the change may not reallocate tasks or even recognize the increased load, and problems of employees in implementing the change are often ignored (Iversen, 2000). New staff role requirements resulting from PROWRA confused workers (Iversen, 2000; Lurie, 2006; Ridzi, 2005). This difficulty with role clarity could jeopardize the trust and mutuality necessary in the client-worker relationship (Iversen, 2000). For example, family agency staff members were called "Job Coaches," but felt uncertain about the exact meaning of the title (Iversen, 2000). Welfare employees expanded their examination of structural barriers to program success and found they needed much more knowledge about welfare legislation and benefit qualifications as well (Iversen, 2000). One staff member said, "I've turned from a social worker to a benefits specialist" (Iversen, 2000, p. 154). Iversen discovered that even staff members trained in professional social work were unable to accurately assess program appropriateness for many welfare recipients (2000). The de-skilling of caseworkers plagues public welfare bureaucracies, and with the restricted and time-limited program environment of PROWRA, the consequences of poor performance have grown (Anderson et al., 2002).

Public policies are put into place by laws, and these laws are often vague and give little to no guidance on how to implement the policies (Andersen et al., 2002; Kettl & Fessler, 2009). Since reengineering focuses on processes more than structure, and on improving those processes, the administrative reforms resulting from PROWRA cannot be uniformly labeled. Each state created their own programs, with some states focusing on administrative reform more than others. The law provided the structure, but each state was in charge of addressing the processes, and the results varied considerably.

On a national level, the organizational changes from PROWRA might initially appear to fit into the reengineering theory of reform, since one system was completely replaced by another very different approach to public welfare, which would seem to require a complete overhaul of the administration and a "fundamental and radical redesign of work processes" as in Kettl and Fessler's description of reengineering (2009, p. 122). With such sweeping changes across policy, administration, processes, and workers, public welfare organizations after PROWRA certainly moved beyond incremental improvements, and, as in the reengineering definition, undertook a "fundamental reexamination of [their] policies" (Kettl & Fessler, 2009, p. 121). However, the federal law included no guidelines for improving the actual processes that would translate the law from print into behavior, and improved processes and improved performance of employees never manifested in many states.

There were many implementation problems with PROWRA, as illustrated in the previous pages. Problems in performance of implementation include practical uncertainty, inadequate resources, organizational problems, and uneven leadership (Kettl & Fessler, 2009), all of which were reported by state public welfare organizations after PROWRA went into effect. The first step toward improved performance of policy implementation is for Congress, the president, operating agencies, and the research community to actively pursue improvements in policy implementation (Kettl & Fessler, 2009).

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