From January 2002 NASW NEWS
Copyright ©2002, National Association of Social Workers, Inc.

Welfare Reform Found to Stress Agencies

Sponsored by the association's New York City Chapter with funding from the United Way of New York City, the study says nudging the city's poor off welfare as eligibility limits come into being places both welfare recipients and the already-strapped social services agencies they rely on in jeopardy. The primary focus of the study is how all the low-income people suddenly without an economic safety net and in need of additional services will impinge on the ability of agencies to function.

In New York City, which houses the bulk of New York state's approximately 50,000 families who were to be forced off welfare at the end of 2001, the situation is aggravated by a slumping economy and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Mimi Abramovitz, a professor at Hunter College School of Social Work and principal investigator of the report. "The need for cash benefits, social services and mental health services will increase enormously," she said.

To develop a systematic account of the impact of welfare reform on the city's nonprofit human services agencies, researchers interviewed senior staffers at 107 agencies. Implications of the study extend to the thousands of other nonprofit agencies in the metropolitan area.

Among the findings were:

• Changes in federal, state and local welfare policies have intensified the economic insecurity of low-income families, leading them to request more and different services from nonprofit agencies.
• Welfare reform has limited the capacity of nonprofit agencies to respond to their clients' changing needs.
• Along with managed care and new child welfare laws, welfare reform has "challenged key service priorities and generally interfered with the capacity of nonprofit agencies to provide the support, treatment and advocacy that for years helped low-income families manage, and in some cases, to overcome the hardships of every day life."

The report contains five major sections: demand shift, heavier workload, morale shift, mission drift and advocacy.

The "demand shift" section shows that agencies spend much more time helping clients find their way through the welfare maze than they did before welfare reform. Of the 107 agencies, 76 percent spent more time on helping clients understand welfare rules; 72 percent, on dealing with "workfare"; 72 percent, on handling case closings; 66 percent, on job searches; 66 percent, on fair hearings; 60 percent, on sanctions; 52 percent, on waivers; 50 percent, on Medicaid applications; 47 percent, on food stamp applications; and 40 percent, on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families applications.

The study quoted one hospital-based social worker as saying of clients, "You're educating them. You're also breaking down some myths that they have had about what they are entitled to and what they are not entitled to. So it takes a lot of time."

The report's "heavier workloads" section describes the impact of the increased demand for services on agency workers. "Already functioning on a shoestring, agency workers find themselves caught in the crossfire between their clients' increased requests for help and their agencies' strained capacity to serve them well," says the report. "Doing more with less, they report heavier workloads, more paperwork, more crises, a faster pace of service and more time-consuming fieldwork."

Staff caseloads have increased at 50 percent of agencies since welfare reform, while remaining the same at 40 percent and declining at 7 percent; and paperwork increased at 86 percent of agencies as public and private funders demanded greater documentation of services.

As clients such as immigrants and single mothers with small children struggle with the pressures of finding and maintaining decent employment before their benefits run out, the workers at agencies trying to help them find welfare caseworkers "more inaccessible, less helpful and more openly negative to clients and workers alike," the report says. An agency worker said the city's income-maintenance workers are "downright rude. It's worse than condescending. They are totally without empathy."

Additional demands by agencies for information about clients have led many social services workers to face the ethical dilemma of protecting confidentiality while satisfying reporting requirements. "Hired by nonprofit agencies to help clients maximize their strengths and resources, agency workers worry that providing certain information to welfare officials will cause clients to lose their benefits, increase their economic hardship and undercut their well-being," says the report.

The "morale shift" section indicates serious morale problems since welfare reform brought heavier workloads, welfare center intransigence, complicated ethical dilemmas and a sense of diminished control on the job. Of the officials at 107 agencies queried, 83 percent said burnout/stress was greater than before welfare reform, while 2 percent said it had decreased. Job satisfaction had increased at 20 percent of agencies and decreased at 41 percent. Morale had improved at 7 percent of agencies and decreased at 62 percent.

The "mission drift" section tells how welfare reform has impinged on agency goals and service priorities without a proportionate increase in resources. "High levels of paperwork often stand in the way of fulfilling agency priorities," the study says.

The "advocacy renewed" section shows that 43 percent of agency officials "disapprove" of welfare reform, and 43 percent "strongly disapprove."

Yet welfare reform has led many agency workers to get involved in advocacy to promote change in policies and practices that affect all welfare recipients, not just their own clients.

The report points to a number of policy recommendations at national, state, city and agency levels that would eliminate the most punitive features of welfare reform, ease the burdens of workers trying to carry out their jobs under "nearly impossible conditions" and provide agencies with the means to sustain their missions.

While research for the report was done before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the delivery of social services after that date points to an ideal model, said Abramovitz. All services to victims of the World Trade Center disaster were delivered from one location with a minimum of red tape.

"That becomes a model to look at as we try to improve services down the line," she said. "Also, the outpouring of generosity, financial donations and volunteers shows tremendous capacity to care and take care of people which the standard social services system could benefit from if funders and politicians incorporated that into their way of thinking."

The bad news, she said, is that it created a new divide between old and new victims — between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. "Victims of the World Trade Center [attack] are getting all the help they need; people in similar circumstances not involved in the World Trade Center are not getting the services they should."

For the report: labramov@hunter.cuny.edu

Back to NASW NEWS Contents