ATHENS, Ga.--A $1.5 million grant to the School of Social Work and Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia will fund an in-depth view of those who are continuing to receive welfare assistance and the changes that have taken place in the Division of Family and Children Services since welfare reform began in the state five years ago.
"We plan to richly describe the people who are still receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families," said Dr. Larry Nackerud of the School of Social Work, who will serve as co-principal investigator on the project. "We will describe what challenges and barriers still exist and what resources need to be made available for more people to move off of the welfare rolls."
The second portion of the study will focus on how DFCS agencies--both at the state and county level--have changed in response to welfare reform. The grant is funded by the state Department of Human Resources.
"Our first task will be establishing a baseline of what's there," said Dr. Steve Condrey, who will head the Institute of Government's section of the project. "We want to see how comfortable DFCS employees are with their new roles, what type of training and assistance do they feel they need, and what are the salient issues facing them in terms of welfare reform."
Condrey said the DFCS offices will be surveyed several times over the course of the project.
"The number of people who are still receiving assistance has dropped dramatically," Nackerud noted. "But, I think you have to view that drop with guarded optimism. It's not clear how much is from the good economy and how much is an impact of welfare-reform programs."
Georgia's welfare-reform program officially began in May 1995 with a shift from a traditional "income maintenance" program to a focus on self-sufficiency via employment. This was nearly a full year before President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in August 1996. However, the state actually began early steps in welfare reform in 1993 when it instituted a number of changes in its welfare policy, including capping the amount of money a family could receive regardless of whether additional children were born into the family.
Social Work Dean Bonnie Yegidis noted that the current project is one of the first to use a systematic approach to review welfare recipients throughout the state. It also will include collaboration with several universities in South Georgia.
"By working with our colleagues at Albany State University, Valdosta State University, and Fort Valley State University, we have the potential to take a systematic view of the whole state, which will enable us to thoroughly describe how those still receiving welfare are faring," she said.
Nackerud said the project also will document new initiatives on the part of private business, religious organizations and other nonprofit groups to help welfare recipients become wage earners.
"We know that there are a lot of exciting things happening in the area of collaborations among these groups," he said. "For example, some organizations have developed collections of clothing that are appropriate for work-related interviews. We want to examine what combination of services have been provided by these community-based innovations and how they have come together to assist those who are trying to leave the welfare rolls."
Nackerud noted that under the federal guidelines each state is able to identify a percentage of its caseload as being unable to ever make the transition from dependency to self-sufficiency. It may include those who must care for a handicapped or elderly relative, and some have physical or mental handicaps that prevent them from obtaining work. Georgia is still developing policies on who will be included in that category.
"We plan to develop a profile of who will fall into that 20 percent," he said. "That criteria can serve as a cost-savings to the state because we'll know which people won't make the move to self-sufficiency regardless of the investment of even exorbitant resources."