Self‐Sufficiency, Ecology of Work, and Welfare Reform

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 662-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Daugherty ◽  
Gerard M. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Self Sufficiency

From Enabling to Bootstrapping: Welfare Workers' Views of Substance Abuse and Welfare Reform

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Dohan ◽  
Laura Schmidt ◽  
Stuart Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Substance Use Problems ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Drug Problems ◽  
Welfare Workers

In the United States, a trope of “deservingness” shapes policy related to public aid and substance abuse. In recent decades, poor people with substance use problems have increasingly been seen as “undeserving.” Federal welfare reform, passed in the mid-1990s, is an important exemplar of this trend. Welfare reform empowered line workers to directly and indirectly withhold aid from people with substance use problems. This paper uses in-depth interviews with workers to explore their views of these new policies. Workers generally applauded welfare reform's renewed attention to deservingness, including program emphases on client self-sufficiency and personal accountability and policies that time-limited cash aid and mandated working. They felt that these changes allowed them to stop “enabling” substance abuse and to encourage clients with alcohol and drug problems to bootstrap their way into jobs. Workers' embrace of these policy changes appears likely to shape how substance abuse problems are addressed within the welfare system.

Linkages between Work and Health of Parents and Children in the Florida Wages Program

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Ronald Habin
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
The State ◽  
Quality Health Care ◽  
Federal Level ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Quality Health ◽  
Cash Benefits ◽  
Work And Health

The State of Florida implemented its welfare reform program entitled Work and Gain Economic Self Sufficiency (WAGES) in October, 1996. Key elements of the program are a two-year limit on cash benefits with a lifetime limit of four years. Within a year, that program's philosophy was emulated at the federal level, and within two years, the State reported that more than 60,000 families had moved off of welfare. This article attempts to discern whether these families are more likely to obtain ‘quality health care’ as a result of these changes.

Learning to Labor, Love, and Live: Shaping the Good Neoliberal Citizen in State Work and Marriage Programs

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Randles ◽  
Kerry Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Emotional Skills ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Promoting work and marriage were primary aims of the 1996 welfare reform bill, yet implementation of these dual goals has not been analyzed comparatively. In analyzing our respective ethnographic data from government-funded work and marriage classes, we identified similarities in the programs’ focus on teaching the cognitive and emotional skills presumed to comprise what we call the good neoliberal citizen. Drawing on the programs’ curricula and our class observations, we reveal how both pillars of welfare reform sought to promote individual responsibility and economic self-sufficiency among poor parents by teaching skill-based strategies for regulating participants’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. We argue that by framing economic mobility as the result of learned capacities for skillful self-regulation and proper planning in the realms of work and family, welfare programs’ attempts to create good neoliberal citizens obscure the structural factors that sustain poverty and the need for welfare.

scholarly journals (De)Constructing The “Lazy Indian”: An Historical Analysis of Welfare Reform in Canada

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Taylor-Neu ◽  
Tracy Friedel ◽  
Alison Taylor ◽  
Tibetha Kemble
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Welfare Regime ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Since their official inception in the mid 1800s, Indigenous-aimed welfare policies in Canada have presupposed and entailed a racialized subject: the “lazy Indian.” This paper highlights continuities in how Indigenous subjects have been constructed in welfare policy discourse from 1867 to the present. Building from this historical overview, we analyze how today’s neoliberally inflected federal welfare regime at once recodes and reinscribes preexisting ethical narratives of “productive” and “unproductive” citizens, effectively casting Indigenous peoples as non-workers and thus “undeserving” of welfare relief. As our analysis indicates, further reform of welfare policies for Canada’s First Nations must first puncture the persistent myth of the “lazy Indian” in order to attend to the lasting legacy of colonial governance, contemporary barriers to self-sufficiency, and ongoing struggles for politico-economic sovereignty.

scholarly journals Work and Welfare: Lessons on Employment Programs

1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M Gueron
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Family Support ◽  
Social Welfare Policy ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Family Support Act ◽  
The Family ◽  
Employment Programs

The nation's social welfare policy reflects an ongoing effort to balance sometimes competing objectives—alleviating poverty and promoting self-sufficiency—in a manner consistent with underlying public values about the primacy of the family and the importance of work. Concern has been growing that the welfare system has not been doing this very well, and welfare reform once again moved towards the top of the policy agenda, resulting in passage of the Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA). This paper discusses what economists know about the potential of one central component of the new legislation: the effort to transform welfare from a means-tested entitlement into a reciprocal obligation, in which getting a welfare check would carry with it a requirement to look for and accept a job, or to participate in activities that prepare people for work. It sets the context for this discussion by briefly outlining why this approach to reform gained support and by summarizing major policy and program alternatives.

Mental Health Implications of Welfare Reform and Florida's WAGES Program

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-39
Author(s):  
Angela Gomez
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Welfare Program ◽  
Health Implications ◽  
Children In Poverty ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Tremendous Challenge

The Federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 set in motion changes to the welfare system which represent a tremendous challenge not only for the states as implementers of this reform, but also for the children and families who are directly affected by the new law. The National Center for Children in Poverty has called our attention to the fact that while two-thirds of the recipients of the former welfare program were children, these new ‘reform’ programs tend to concentrate on adult jobs, adult work, and adult self-sufficiency.

Welfare Reform: Facilitating The Bottom Up Approach

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-9
Author(s):  
Catherine Sugg
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Original System ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Self Sufficiency

Florida is unique in the approach it has adopted to implement welfare reform. It has handed over the responsibility of reworking the original system to local communities by establishing local WAGES Coalitions. WAGES is an acronym that stands for Work and Gain Economic Self-Sufficiency. It is the only state approaching welfare reform in quite this way and our citizen boards are revolutionizing government in Florida.

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