VISTA Volunteers Assess “Welfare-to-Work” Strategies

Fall 2002, Volume 24, Number 1

Feedback session for VISTA volunteers

Challenges contained in two major bills pending in Congress provided impetus for a mid-summer conference on “Welfare-to-Work” sponsored by Americorps VISTA in partnership with IPR. The three-day meetings were held July 29-31 at Northwestern in Evanston.

The conference objective — to improve programs that move recipients off welfare and into the workforce — was a key component of the 1996 welfare reform act, which expired on September 30 and is awaiting reauthorization by Congress.

Making such programs accountable is a key ingredient of The Citizen Service Act of 2002, still pending in the House of Representatives. The bill would reform the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), extend its Americorps VISTA, Learn and Serve America, and National Senior Service Corps programs for another five years, and make it more accountable for its programs’ outcomes.

The conference brought together 100 VISTA volunteers and supervisors, government and agency officials, and academics to address two overriding goals: to identify promising practices and innovative approaches to move welfare clients out of poverty, and to learn how to measure program outcomes more effectively. By bringing poverty researchers into direct contact with practitioners, the conference provided a reality check for the researchers and some helpful evidence for the VISTA volunteers to carry back to their programs.

Panels organized by IPR Director Fay Lomax Cook, Joint Center for Poverty Research Director Greg Duncan, and Professor of Education and Social Policy James Rosenbaum presented some of the latest research on opportunities and barriers to moving people off welfare. They also assessed educational and training programs and offered insights on welfare-to-work programs at the local level.

The government view. From the perspective of the federal government, welfare reform has been markedly successful, according to keynote speaker Don Winstead, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy. Winstead laid out the Bush administration proposals for reauthorizing PRWORA and chalked up its positive outcomes over the past five years. He pointed to a drop in welfare caseloads from 4.5-million to 2.1 million from 1996 to 2001 and a decrease in child poverty from 20.5% in 1996 to 16.2% in 2000.

Nonetheless, the VISTA volunteers were less sanguine. “We need to push for a livable wage,” said one Ohio worker. “We may have gotten people off welfare, but we’ve put them in a worse situation than before.” A Utah volunteer estimated that an employed worker in Salt Lake City “needs $13.50 an hour to make it.”

Mixed results for education and job training. One of the most contentious issues raised was the value of education for those trying to move off welfare. Winstead argued that “evaluations have shown that what works is work. Education just delays work.” Tom Brock, senior research associate at the Manpower Development Research Corporation, (MDRC), concurred that mandatory education programs had proved ineffective among low-skilled people, though they were more successful when combined with job search programs. These findings were based on MDRC’s five-year National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS), which evaluated 11 national programs.

However, University of Chicago economist Robert LaLonde estimated that though the government spends $3,000 per person on job training compared to $8,000 for a year of education, job training programs do not increase people’s wages as much as education.

Training vs. Work. Larry Mead, professor of politics at New York University, advocated mandatory participation in available jobs, as opposed to work-based training, and close supervision of clients.

But “Work First Programs don’t work for everybody,” cautioned Debra Strong at Mathematica. Her research indicates that “the groups we need to care about are non-custodial parents and the working poor who get off TANF.”

Sandra Danziger, who heads The Women’s Employment Study at the University of Michigan, delineated the many barriers to employment that make it difficult for welfare recipients to enter or remain in the labor force.

Her study has found that factors such as high school dropout, child health problems, and mental health, especially depression, are associated with longer stays on welfare. “Welfare-reliant women had seven or more barriers in 50% of the months studied,” Danziger reported. Since most work programs don’t address these barriers, she urged that employers be made more aware of these problems. Among steps that could be taken are more exemptions for work requirements when a mother must take time off to take a sick child to the doctor.

Problems in the field. In the small group sessions, the VISTA volunteers and supervisors exchanged experiences and ideas about problems they encounter and possible solutions. A typical concern was the need for holistic support services for clients, who lack life skills as well as job skills, and should be included in the planning process and goal-setting. Teaching life skills is also important, one pointed out, so the client doesn’t become dependent on the service provider.

David Reingold, CNCS director of research and policy development, told the volunteers that the corporation is shifting its focus to measuring outcomes. “We need to provide a scientifically valid way to measure outcomes across a range of activities,” he said.

To improve the role of CNCS in the VISTA programs, the volunteers suggested that the corporation use higher education resources to develop evaluation tools; involve VISTA volunteers in the evaluation process; and measure the empowerment of clients and the positive steps they have taken.