In 1995, welfare reform was signed into law in Massachusetts with a strong work requirement at the cornerstone of the sweeping reforms. Adults who were able to work were required to get a job or perform community service for 20 hours each week once their youngest child reached age six. When the law took effect, adults got jobs, left welfare, and began working their way from dependency to lives of independence. Welfare checks were traded for paychecks. Families moved from the sidelines into the economic mainstream. Today, more than half of families transitioning off welfare are able to do so thanks to better paying jobs. And once families leave welfare, they report being financially better off.

Several factors have contributed to the massive movement of families from welfare to work over the last six years. In addition to the work requirement, the robust economy has helped in this transition, providing new opportunities for individuals who previously had little or no work history. Other incentives, like allowing welfare recipients to keep more of their earned income while they transition to self-sufficiency, were also instrumental. And the Commonwealth’s investment in these families through support services like child care (up 120 percent since 1995), transportation (up 76 percent since 1996), and health care (nearly a quarter of a million previously uninsured residents enrolled into Medicaid coverage) are all essential pieces to solving the puzzle of dependency.

These investments, and the hard work of many of these families, have paid off. As has been the case across the nation, in Massachusetts we have seen a significant drop in the number of families on assistance. In the Commonwealth alone, the caseload is down nearly 60 percent since welfare reform’s inception, from over 102,000 families when the law was first signed to 42,250 this past March. This translates into tens of thousands of families, month after month, working and paying taxes rather than relying on welfare to support their families.

But times have changed. The caseload has changed. And our response to those coming to the state for assistance must also change.

The very economy that has been an engine for moving people off of welfare now demands a work force that is continually learning and building upon its skills. In 1995, the challenge was to get the able-bodied individuals with school-aged children into the work force to get work experience. Now the challenge is to help individuals who already have some work experience to upgrade their skills so they can continue to climb up the career ladder and create better lives for themselves and their children.

This doesn’t mean that attachment to the work force through employment is any less important than it was back in the mid-1990s. It remains the vital first step. But the state recognizes that we also need to structure our programs to encourage constant learning and development of the critical skills that our current economy demands.

That is why the Swift administration recently announced a series of proposals to keep our welfare policies in line with the changing dynamic of today’s families and economy. These proposals take the lessons we have learned from our original reforms and update them to reflect the new environment we’re in–one in which both work and ongoing skill enhancement are prerequisites for professional progression.

Specifically, Gov. Jane Swift recommended extending the work requirement to more families, while recognizing that education and training programs should count towards one half of the requirement. These proposals would impact three categories of welfare cases.

First of all, the work requirement for all families whose children are in school full-time would increase from 20 to 30 hours per week. Up to half of this requirement could be met through participation in education and training programs.

In addition, families with children between ages two and five would have a first-ever 20-hour per week work requirement. Again, half of this time could be spent taking classes or in training programs. The vast majority of mothers around the country work at some point before their children reach full-time school age. In fact, every state but two–Massachusetts and Texas–currently requires moms on welfare to work well before their children turn six. Earlier this year, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that 59 percent of moms with babies less than one year of age work outside the home.

Even though families with young children are not currently covered by the Massachusetts work requirement, they are subject to the statewide time limit, allowing them to receive no more than 24 months of benefits in any five-year cycle. Similar to the families on welfare before 1995, we are not doing these families any favor by not requiring them to work and begin transitioning into the labor force while their welfare clock is ticking away. We need to get them into the work force so they can get the skills necessary to succeed on their own.

The final group of welfare cases covered by the governor’s proposals are those who have been on assistance for the full 24 months and are seeking extensions. Currently, if these adults are cooperating with their transitional assistance worker, they are granted extensions and continue to be subject to the 20-hour work requirement. Gov. Swift proposed increasing the work requirement under the extension to 35 hours per week. Again, up to half of this requirement could be met through participation in education and training programs.

Accepting these proposals would apply the lessons of our earlier welfare reforms and update them to meet the demands of today’s environment. Work remains the critical first step towards moving families into self-sufficiency. Education and training plus work will ensure Massachusetts’s low-income families will continue their move to self-sufficiency. To do anything less is a disservice to these families in today’s economy.

William D. O’Leary is secretary of health and human services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Education helps but more work rules do not

Welfare reform has been billed as promoting “personal responsibility.” Yet it is the single mothers who have taught us a huge amount about personal responsibility. Often abandoned and/or abused by the fathers of their children, they are the ones who have stuck by their children and raised them–alone.

The mothers we see at legal services offices long for the opportunity to get education and training in order to support their children. They are striving to get jobs with good wages, health care, vacation, and sick days. They dream of living free of abusive partners and raising their kids in safe communities with good schools and quality day care.

The path to those dreams is paved with education and training. That’s now being recognized by two new, and most welcome, players in the welfare debate–the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

We heartily applaud their proposals that call for education and training to count toward all of the welfare work requirements, with benefits extensions to complete programs. We agree that the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) should offer recipients professional assessments of the barriers to economic self-sufficiency their families face, and should make changes to its education and training provider reimbursement structure. However, proposals to increase work hours from 20 to 30 per week and to require families with pre-school-age children to do 20 hours a week of work activities are ill-conceived.

Since Massachusetts implemented a two-year time limit and stringent work rules in 1995, the welfare caseload has declined by more than 50 percent. But this doesn’t tell the whole story.

By DTA’s own data, very few families have escaped poverty. Three-fifths of former recipients reported being financially the same or worse off after leaving welfare, with most earning less than the federal poverty level in notoriously low-wage or temporary jobs with no health coverage, sick days, or vacation time. The number of families using the services of homeless shelters has increased by close to 50 percent. Reliance on food pantries and soup kitchens by families with earned income is on the rise.

Of the families remaining on the caseload, nearly half the mothers lack a high school diploma. Many have children with disabilities, or are struggling with their own–including learning disorders–that have never been properly diagnosed. All too many suffer from past or current domestic violence. These families are no less willing to work than any other. Yet the services they need, and the hours they can realistically spend working, may differ greatly from families who¹ve been able to leave welfare more quickly.

We join with the United Way and Massachusetts Taxpayers in welcoming Gov. Jane Swift’s break with her predecessors’ all-work-and-no-education policies. That’s a start. But we strongly urge the new governor to reconsider her proposal to count education and training for only “up to half” of the work requirement. All of it should count. These very families have just two years on their welfare clocks, and the more education they get while on public assistance the more likely they will reach economic independence afterward.

Further, we urge Gov. Swift to reconsider her proposals to increase the hours of required work for parents with school-age children and to impose work requirements on parents of younger children. The Legislature wisely rejected similar proposals in the past, and should do so again.

The governor’s idea seems to be that if tough work requirements have gotten a lot of people off welfare and into the work force, tougher work mandates will do the trick for the rest. But increasing required work hours will do nothing to overcome the obstacles that keep these parents out of jobs. It has been proven that families who remain on welfare longer tend to have significantly more barriers to employment. Historically, DTA has done little to identify and provide services for those families. Indeed, the federal government ruled earlier this year that DTA systematically ignores the needs of parents with learning disabilities. A categorical increase in the work hours sets these families up for failure and sanction:

• Toughening the work participation requirements for the “hardest to serve” is not the solution to poverty for these families. The short- and long-term impact on these families will be far more costly to the state, as evidenced by more homeless families living in shelters and visiting soup kitchens and food pantries.
• The Swift proposal does not provide much-needed funding for education and training. In fact, since 1995 the department has systematically drained state funds away from adult education and training programs. Current and former recipients have swelled the waiting lists for adult literacy, ESL, and vocational programs, which now total more than 14,000 adults.
• The Swift proposal does not include adequate funds for child-care needs. If just half the parents targeted by this proposal began a mandated activity for 30 hours a week, they would need an additional $14.5 million annually in after-school and summer care. But even if funds were appropriated, it is unlikely that the current child-care system could absorb this increased demand without also increasing payment rates.

Requiring families with preschool children to do 20 hours a week of work or unpaid work activities is also the wrong way to impose “responsibility” on parents who are ill-prepared for the work force. The 1995 welfare law authorized DTA to require parents of preschoolers to participate in education and training programs, provided that child care existed. The department did not do this, and instead diverted substantial funds away from these programs.

Now the administration wants to force these parents to work, without adequate preparation and without adequate child-care resources. If just half of the families with preschoolers were to start mandated activities, that would require an additional $32.9 million for child care alone.

Welfare reform in Massachusetts does not need new work mandates and sanctions for welfare families. Rather, we need rules that allow education and training activities to count toward work mandates, funds restored for quality education and training programs, and extensions that allow parents to find and finish these programs. That’s a vision that promises the brightest day for all.

Patricia Baker is a senior policy analyst at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute in Boston.