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Ohio’s welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996 is being touted as a success by many public officials who report that the number of people on public assistance is down.
According to the Hamilton County Department of Human Services (HCDHS), there were 48,966 people getting cash assistance in January 1996 while the figure in December 1998 was 23,148.
But critics of welfare reform say that rather than success, these numbers more accurately reflect the number of people who have been put on the streets or pushed further into poverty.
One of the reasons numbers have declined, critics say, is tougher sanctions for those who violate the rules. For example, a recipient in violation of the old system might have had the adult portion of his or her check withheld for one month. Today, a first violation results in withholding the entire family’s check and in most cases the adult portion of the food stamps for the same time period.
Hamilton County Department of Human Services (HCDHS) officials said the change in sanctions was necessary. The old sanctions were “not enough incentive to get off public assistance,” said Lora Jollis, client services director for HCDHS.
But thanks to miscommunication and rules that can be implemented at a caseworker’s discretion, many say welfare reform is not providing proper incentives or doing what it was supposed to by taking people from welfare to work.
“I don’t call it incentive,” said Karen Gray who is relying on public assistance as she tries to finish her second year of an associate’s program at the University of Cincinnati.
“It’s an insult.”
Gray and others, including low-income advocates at Over-the-Rhine’s Contact Center, are supporting state Sen. C.J. Prentiss, D-Cleveland, and state Rep. Tom Roberts, D-Dayton, who plan to introduce a Welfare Corrections Bill this month. The bill would reduce the severity of welfare sanctions for those who do not fulfill the requirements to get cash payments by ending full-family sanctions. Instead of an entire check being eliminated, $50 would be eliminated, and the sanctioned household would remain eligible for other support services.
But HCDHS officials said full-family sanctions are the only way to make sure welfare recipients comply with the rules.
To understand sanctions, it is important first to understand the welfare system in Ohio, which has changed several times in the past three years. The cash benefits system created by welfare reform in 1997 is called Ohio Works First (OWF), which replaces the old program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
In order to get an OWF check, a participant must sign a Personal Responsibility Agreement — a contract that states the person’s goals for becoming self-sufficient such as participation in job search programs, paid or volunteer work or subsidized education or job training. It also could include things like substance abuse or personal counseling, depending on a person’s circumstances.
TANF recipients could only be sanctioned for failing to meet work requirements, while OWF recipients are sanctioned for failure to comply with any portion of the contract.
Under TANF, recipients faced a series of four sanctions for failing to meet the work requirement.
A first violation resulted in the adult portion of the check being withheld for one month or until the work requirement was met, whichever was longer. A second violation meant the entire family’s check was withheld for the same time period, and a third violation resulted in the entire family’s check being withheld for two months or until the work requirement was met, whichever was longer. A fourth violation meant that an entire family’s check would be withheld for the longer of six months or until the work requirement was met.
Under OWF, a participant who fails to fulfill any part of the Personal Responsibility Agreement faces three sanctions:
· For a first violation, the entire family’s check and in most cases the adult portion of the food stamps are withheld for one month or until requirement is met, whichever is longer.
· A second violation results in the same sanction as the first for three months.
· A third violation means the same sanction for six months and medical benefits for the adult not in compliance with work activities can be stopped at this sanction level.
According to HCDHS regulations, “OWF sanctions eliminate eligibility for other subsidized programs. An OWF participant under sanction is ineligible for job search which, in turn, makes the family ineligible for child care assistance.”
The reason for the more severe sanctions is a focus on personal responsibility, Jollis said.
“The message from the federal and state government was … (welfare recipients) can’t walk away from the opportunity to earn money,” Jollis said.
But representatives of the Contact Center, an advocacy organization for low-income people, point to studies in other states that are showing that full-family sanctions do not help families find work. Instead, families are being driven further into hardship.
Lynn Williams, a Contact Center organizer, also interviewed several women who had been sanctioned because of a lack of child care, missing documentation, needing to care for ill family members or miscommunication with caseworkers.
One of the most common reasons people are sanctioned is because they cannot find child care for their children under age 5, although their caseworkers are supposed to inform them that they cannot be sanctioned for that reason, Williams said.
Caseworkers, she said, are not telling people this.
Jollis said that recipients are given assistance with finding child care. They are interviewed by a day-care specialist to determine their needs, such as location and hours and are given a list of five to 10 providers that they can choose from.
Mindy Good, director of communications for HCDHS, said there were more day-care options in Hamilton County than in any other county in Ohio, including more than 1,000 in-home providers, which are certified by HCDHS, and 200 state-certified day-care centers.
Jollis said that there were some problems, including not enough spaces for infants and not being able to find care for children whose parents worked nights or swing shifts.
A recipient cannot be sanctioned for those reasons, Jollis said, but could be sanctioned if they just did not like any of the child-care options.
Williams said sanctioning recipients for that reason was not acceptable. There are not enough day-care centers that accept infants, and many mothers do not want to leave their children in someone’s home, she said.
“They don’t know who these people are,” she said.
Critics of the sanctions also said that sanctions sometimes were being incorrectly implemented because caseworkers did not know the rules or made errors.
“We’re all human … mistakes are made,” Jollis said.
But, she said, recipients can request a state hearing if they think they have been wrongly sanctioned, and they will continue to get their checks until the hearing.
“Folks know they have this right,” she said.
Jollis said she only knew of one case in which HCDHS did something wrong among the instances that clients had complained to her about. In the rest of the cases, the client was at fault, she said.
Some people simply refuse to comply, while others have legitimate barriers to employment and need more help, Jollis said.
There are various reasons why people can be exempt from working, including disabilities, mental health problems or substance abuse issues. But those people still must participate in some activity that helps them attain sufficiency, whether that is counseling, job training or other activities, she said.
“If they can’t hold a regular job … we can work with that,” Jollis said.
Still, she said, “There isn’t much reason not to participate.”
But critics of the sanctions said that people with legitimate reasons for not working are still being sanctioned or terminated for not meeting the work requirement.
These critics also said that another reason for the harsher sanctions is a one-size-fits-all approach to getting recipients off welfare and into jobs. Caseworkers, they said, are single-mindedly focused on work, not necessarily self-sufficiency.
Contact Center officials pointed to Gray, a single mother of five sons ages 10 to 20, as an example of an OWF recipient who might suffer because of a caseworker’s shortsightedness.
Gray is a full-time student at the University of Cincinnati in her second year of an associates degree program in early childhood education. She gets grants and student loans to pay for her education and must go to school full time to keep that financial aid.
Gray has been on welfare for nine months, getting a check for $525, $380 worth of food stamps and medical benefits. She said she wanted to finish her degree so she could get off public assistance and get a job that would support her and her family.
Gray already has faced a state hearing to contest the discontinuation of her benefits because of a mix-up with rescheduled appointments. Now, she faces the possibility of being sanctioned for not complying with the work requirement, she said.
While Gray said she knew people who were getting welfare benefits without trying to become self-sufficient, she is not one of them.
“I am doing something,” she said.
Gray said her caseworker told her to drop some classes so she could work 25 hours each week or else she might be sanctioned and lose her entire OWF check. But Gray said going to school full time and taking care of her children should be enough to keep her benefits, and she said she had no intention of sacrificing her education.
“That degree means something to me, and I’ve come too far to drop any classes,” she said.
Dropping classes would delay completing her degree, which would keep her on welfare longer and that just doesn’t make sense, she said.
Williams said Gray’s caseworker was not aware that an OWF recipient can count the first 1,040 classroom and other school-related hours toward the work requirement. That kind of exception, though, is left up to the caseworker’s discretion, Williams said.
Gray said she had received incorrect paperwork, was given conflicting information and experienced problems with miscommunication with her caseworkers. In less than 10 months, Gray has had four different caseworkers.
“Every time I leave (HCDHS), I leave in tears,” she said.
Katy Heins, Contact Center director, said one reason for the sanctions and problems recipients experience was that caseworkers were pressured to reduce their caseloads in order to meet quotas.
Officials at HCDHS said that the pressure comes from the federal and state governments.
According to HCDHS regulations, “The federal government now provides capped funding to states in the form of block grants. States must put an increasing percentage of welfare recipients to work each year or lose some federal block grant funding. … Financial incentives are available to counties that meet — or exceed — the standards, but the Ohio Department of Human Services will levy financial penalties against counties that fail.”
Findings from two recent studies seem to confirm some of the frustrations of welfare recipients.
The Ohio Empowerment Coalition (OEC), of which the Contact Center is a member, surveyed welfare recipients throughout Ohio and found some trends:
· Miscommunication between recipients and caseworkers resulted in almost half of the sanctions or terminations.
· A majority of respondents had problems with child care arrangements and transportation that led directly or indirectly to being sanctioned.
· Caseworker errors accounted for almost a fifth of the sanctions or terminations.
· Almost 20 percent of recipients did not know they had the right to appeal, and many who did know about their rights to appeal were not informed about “good cause reasons” to stop a sanction.
· Being sanctioned or terminated did not lead to employment.
· Sanctions caused stress and hardship on families with children because they could not pay basic bills because of a complete loss of cash assistance.
Just one person who responded to the survey had a job.
Forty percent of respondents had been sanctioned or terminated for a month and more than 20 percent for three or four months.
Another survey is being conducted by Applied Information Resources, a non-profit public policy research organization in Cincinnati. The group is scheduled to complete the study and release the findings in mid-March, but recently released some preliminary findings.
According to the study, “Those recipients who were employed in making things work overwhelmingly relied on family members for child care and were able to walk or use public transportation to get to work.”
The Applied Information Resources study called the current system “an entrepreneurial design, which rewards the system and its workers not for moving people to productive, gainful living-wage positions but for eliminating them from the public rolls. One consequence, which seems clearly intended is that a number of respondents have, either in frustration or resignation, given up on participating in the system.”
Williams said a former HCDHS case reviewer testified at a state hearing, saying, “It’s built into the plan to frustrate people off the rolls.”
But HCDHS officials said that there were legitimate reasons for the confusion and frustration.
“We are in the midst of one of the major culture changes this country has seen,” Jollis said. “A lot of the struggle has to do with the inability of the two sides to come to the middle.”
On one side, clients are angry and refuse to work minimum wage jobs, she said. But it is important, she said, for them to break the cycle of welfare dependence by taking those minimum wage jobs and showing their children that work is important.
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” she said.
On the other side, human services workers need to understand how their clients are changing, she said. There are deeper reasons why some people will not comply with the work requirement, including substance abuse, domestic violence and mental health problems, she said.
“We’re not always prepared to put these folks to work,” Jollis said.
So caseworkers are learning to work with other agencies to solve those problems, she said.
“We’re trying to get away from a cookie-cutter approach,” she said. ©
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 1999.