...The Welfare Reform Act The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) enacted in 1996 came up with three basic legislative goals, to reduce dependency, child poverty, illegitimacy, and strengthen marriage. The reform has been effective in meeting each of these goals. After implementing the welfare reform, the AFDC/TANF caseloads have dropped by nearly 50%. Some argue that this decline in welfare dependency is do to a stronger economy; but with no previous economic boom, this decline has never resulted in a decline in the AFDC caseloads, let alone a 50 percent drop. It is welfare reform, not economic conditions that has produced the drastic decline in dependency in the 1990s. The fifty states vary dramatically in their states rate of caseloads that have declined, but these rates of decline are uncorrelated to differences in underlying state economic factors such as job growth rates or unemployment. States with better economies have not had greater drops in caseload. By contrast, declines in dependence are directly and strongly linked to the austerity of state workfare policies (TANF, 1936-1999). The persons against the reformation of the welfare have said that the reform will throw millions of children into poverty but in all reality child poverty has decreased because the reform was enacted, from approximately 20.8% in 1996 to 16.9% in 1999. The Black children and the families with single mother’s poverty levels have decreased as well. States...
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...Name Tutor Course Date Response paper 5 PRWORA (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation) Act of 1996 had three primary legislative goals: to reduce child poverty, dependency, illegitimacy and support marriage. The reform was effective in meeting the goals. Upon implementation of the welfare reform, the AFDC/TANF caseloads dropped by half. Though some believe that the decline was as a result of a sound economy, but without a previous economic boom; however, the majority believe that the decline in dependency was attributed to the welfare reform. Welfare reform's reliance on deterrence and punishment to reduce the rolls tipped the financial and emotional balance of already vulnerable families. Request for more aid went up, and the women whose motherhood and fertility targeted by public debates, policy mandates and reproductive legislation were the same women who were accused of being a burden to the economy and punished by means of programs funded by the government, thus becoming subjected to violence, and crime related activities. Most of the methods used to employ welfare reform worked or semi-worked for about a decade, but with the growing economy, it was no longer able to keep up with the demands of the future. A serious update is required to go along with the growing economical times. Ethically, one has to wonder if it is even possible to fix something that is clearly outdated or do we just start from scratch. If the intention is to decrease the deficit...
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...What do you consider the most important historical event in the history of the human services profession? Why? I believe the most important history event in the history of the human services profession is the Welfare Reform Act. These living benefits could involve general and special payments for certain circumstances (e.g. young mothers and pregnant women), food stamps, and Medicaid health care and housing benefits. I would also go out on a limb and say that Welfare Assistance reduces the crime rate. If the person’s needs are being met (food, clothing, shelter), there is no need to shoplift, rob, committing additional crimes. However, this is where the reform comes in. The way our welfare programs are currently run there is a huge and lack of accountability of where the money is being allocated, and it doesn’t seem be flowing smoothly. It’s ruining the chance for the very people it’s supposed to help, and providing short-comings in the process. We need to tighten up the process if there is an individual that is able to work and received government assistance, either work, prepare for work or at least be looking for a job. I believe our Welfare Receipts are becoming too dependent on their government paychecks. This assistance is used as a temporary measurement, but you will find people who have been receiving government assistance for 20 plus years. When you are out of the workforce for a number of years, your skills sets start to diminish, any valuable training...
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...Welfare working for or against Single Mothers When I think of the word Welfare system, nothing but bad memories comes to mind. I remember when I had to wait in line for free government cheese, butter and peanut butter. Being on Welfare goes hand and hand with poverty in my mind. Living in the projects in Brooklyn, New York and the environment that surrounded me still has an effect on me today. This type of violent environment made my outlook on life dim and I had total disregard for life in my earlier years. I desired to have my dad present, but he went his own way in the 80’s about the same time when crack hit the streets of New York; my dad became a statistic to the crack game. My mother had to move us out of the city and away from our father. My mother thought moving us upstate would help us see a different life. Well yes it did, it showed me how a single mother has to work two jobs to get off of welfare. She was still driving about two hours one way to get to work and never was home to help her kids with their homework; or even to attend any of the sports games. I guess the worst part of it is when I was writing this I would use words like “is” instead of “was” for past tense like I still have very strong feelings today about poverty, welfare and single mothers because I know how it affected my family and me. In the United States there is a very big social problem with the Welfare System. First I will be going over the major legislation reform in the Welfare System...
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...Work Activation Programs to Reform Welfare Tammy Wooten ITT Technical Institute Work Activation Programs to Reform Welfare In August of 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (Welfare Reform section, 2010). Before that, federal welfare was an open-ended entitlement that encouraged long-term dependency (See Chart 2). It neither reduced poverty nor helped the poor become self-sufficient. It did however, encourage out-of-wedlock births and weaken the work ethic. The pathologies it engendered were passed from generation to generation. This reform was a step in the right direction, however, much more needs to be done. The next step should be to transfer full responsibility for funding and administering welfare programs to the states. Each state would then have the freedom to innovate their own low-income programs and would cause them to have stronger incentives to reduce taxpayer costs and maximize work requirements (Replacing Welfare with Private Charity section, 2010). The federal government funds an array of subsidy programs for low-income Americans. The two programs that are of the greatest concern to me are food stamps and Medicaid. When most people think of “welfare”, they are usually thinking of the joint federal-state cash assistance program, better known by its most recent name, as TANF or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (Overview section, 2010). According to...
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...Recognizing a Faulty Welfare System by Educating the People of Our Society As a society we are lacking the education needed to fully understand the welfare system. This naivety about the welfare system has caused it to become the least effective assistance program designed for the people of our society. Instead we have found it easier to generalize that the system is only for people who are lazy and choose not to work and therefore causing us to neglect the system. According to an article written by Elizabeth Anderson, “Survey research shows that most welfare recipients endorse the work ethic.” (2004) I know what you are thinking, how does a valued work ethic play a role if a person chooses not to work? The response is that everyone has to have a starting point. If we can believe that the majority of welfare recipients are willing to work then together we can review the current welfare system and make the changes that will benefit all the parties involved. If we can sift through the flaws and support the need for assistance we can effectively create a system that will produce results and potentially lessen dependency. So where do we begin? It all starts with an education. To support a need you first have to understand it. The goal of the welfare system is to provide cash assistance for low-income families with dependent children. The benefits a family can receive were outlined in 1996 when a law was created to design a new welfare program called Temporary Assistance...
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...In August of 1992, former President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law, which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program with what is now the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The new legislation rolled back much of what the National Welfare Rights Organization and welfare rights activists fought to reform; it deepened the stigma women on welfare face by actively but subtly targeting poor women of color. A reactionary response to the growing number of “undeserving” women of color and immigrants on the welfare role, PRWORA calls for stricter eligibility requirements and ultimately aims to reduce TANF’s total recipient pool...
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...of the United States economic safety net to help families with children. There is negative and positive implication of the Welfare Reform Act on Medicaid. Throughout the rest of the paper you will learn about these negative and positive implications of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 on the Medicaid Program. There are many positive and negative implications when it concerns “The Welfare Reform Act” that came about in 1996. Welfare has been many debates dealing with this issue since the 1960s, and continues to be a contentious issue for many years to come. In the late 1980s, some communities were calling for a reform of the Welfare because their concerns for the personal responsibility. Then Welfare and Opportunity Reconciliation Act also known as PRWORA came into effect. Bill Clinton signed a personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation in 1996. The Welfare Reform Act changed the United States welfare system excessively, and the Welfare Reform Act was set to provide more guidelines to which regards to the administration of Welfare benefits. The United States changed how funding is available to help families financially and how it is administered to recipients who can be eligible for Welfare benefits....
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...substance addiction, Vitter (2011). After I analyzing the reliability, credibility, and validity of the data used by the author, some information were withheld from Vitter’s writings of the “Robert Wood Johnson Foundation” also added that the use of drugs is not as widespread among TANF recipients as studies feared (Vitter, 2011). Vitter, also base parts of his argument on stats from the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act saying it cut welfare money by 2.5 million dollars in 2002. Those numbers is the result of putting more people to work and found that more people are taking advantage of job training programs (Vitter, 2011). Vitter put this information in hoping that the reader will make the assumption that less money, so recipients have to go to work and the act is pushing people off welfare. Vitter use a form of logical fallacy called “confusing association with causation”. The WOA open up doors for working people to strategize, get back to work or find a better job. The WOA also are supporting families that is evolving back to work with health coverage, childcare, and personal employability plans to evolve back into the workforce...
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...would set guidelines as too who would qualify and how much benefits they should receive. AFDC was what people would turn to too live. Being an ex AFDC recipient I always thought I knew the INS and the outs of the program. AFDC helped me raise my children from 1993 through 2004. That is 11 years and before that AFDC helped my significant other raise my child for two years from 1991 through 1993. My oldest child now is 16 years old. A total of 13 years of his life was fully or partially supported by AFDC. Personally I never thought that I would be off of AFDC. This was how I was going to support my children forever and I know many people who thought the same way. TANF was formulated in 1996 as “a block grant created by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996” (Coven, 2005). TANF replaced AFDC and there were numerous changes and outcomes for people who were on AFDC. I was on AFDC when the...
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...who are receiving public assistance funds are using this money to support their alcohol and or drug addictions. Is drug testing to receive public assistance an answer to this problem? Would making this a condition of eligibility actually push people with serious substance abuse and or dependency problems farther away from the help and treatment they need? Federal Welfare Reform The Federal Welfare reform act which, was passed in the mid 1990’s has changed the way our system addresses these issues. PRWORA (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) provided some distinctive features to address the issues, and changed the idea that there was universal entitlement for all, and helped to reinforce the notion that there is a class of the deserving poor. In 2001 California implemented the policies required and created our version of the TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) called Cal-WORKS (California’s Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program.) This program has allowed for rules to be implemented such as time limits, work requirements and the availability of substance abuse treatment. (Newell, 2011) The population and the substances. According to the National Poverty Center (2004) the numbers have been overstated and the number of people that are on welfare and are abusing substances are lower than originally estimated. The studies have varied widely in their findings due to the different types of measurements used and the fact that...
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...During the 1990's, welfare reform was essential in regards to addressing federal policy issues. Concentration around issues such as limits on cash funding, work requirements, and qualifications were some major focuses. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which established Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grants, provided necessary services that enable families to find employment and remain self-sufficient. This act changed the structure of welfare payments and added new criteria to states that received welfare funding. AFDC also known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was a federal assistance program which was in effect from 1935 to 1996 and was stopped and then modified into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families because AFDC encouraged women to have children in order to receive financial aid. Gais states that "one other consequence is that the simple distinction between state and county supervised welfare systems under AFDC has been blurred, as many state supervised systems create more decentralized structures" (Gais, pg. 2). I'd rather a work incentive program and education requirement to establish welfare needs. Programs such as grants for housing and daycare attached to it so that if you have kids, they put you to work and you get a loan for school would have been beneficial to the AFDC. Instead the government sought a better solution; TANF. Policy changes, funding flexibility, and devolution in welfare...
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...Introduction What does personal responsibility mean to me? Personal responsibility means taking responsibility for your actions, in other words, it’s being able to take care of one’s own well-being without expecting or blaming others to do it for you. In school, this means turning in your work on time, studying for you tests and working effectively with your classmates. Personal responsibility and college success go hand in hand because it’s up to you as the student to do what is necessary to succeed in college. My preliminary plan consist of making use of all resources that are available to me, completing assignments in the time allotted and making sure that I have done all the readings required to complete my course. To begin with, my preliminary plan for personal responsibility and college success is making use of all resources that are available to me. One of the sources that I would use as a resource is the Internet. Doing the proper research on the internet should give me a great understanding on how personal responsibility works. Also, another resource I could use for the following research through the library. Researching from books, magazines or the encyclopedia is an excellent way to get a great understanding because it can give you examples of personal responsibility. Using those appropriate resources should give you the best understanding of personal responsibility to use throughout your time in college as well as your own life. Next, the second source for my...
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...There are many barriers that can hinder a student’s success in college. Personal responsibilities and how a student handles them is a very important barrier to understand. Students must understand how their responsibilities can affect their everyday functions and those around them. Understanding these responsibilities will make gaining a higher education easier and more fulfilling. Personal Responsibility is taking responsibility for your actions, accepting the consequences of those actions and understanding what impacts your decisions have to those around you. At the college level, your personal responsibilities can include attending and participating in your class activities. It may also include assisting other students with group projects and learning from one another. Personal responsibility has been very important in my life and career. As a US Sailor, I had the responsibility of protecting my fellow Americans from harm. This is a responsibility that I volunteered to carry. Sometimes our responsibilities are not voluntary. When you sign up for a college education, you are telling the institution that you are willing and able to handle the responsibilities included with such a step. There are many barriers that can hinder a student’s college success. Every individual has a personal responsibility to succeed. Although they may focus on different aspects of their responsibilities, the result remains the same. Culture can be a barrier that affects college...
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...Personal Responsibility Essay Juan Valdez GEN/200 April 23, 2014 Donna Cooper Personal Responsibility Essay Personal responsibility is a skill and learned behavior that can make or break a person’s success. The response of how one reacts to their own personal responsibility is a direct correlation of their happiness and achievements in life. People cannot be held responsible for experiences they are brought to, only the feelings and thoughts they express when faced with those circumstances. Having the discipline and understanding of responsibility not only helps a person get far in their college career, but also has many other benefits. When a student makes their own choices and decisions, they are open to learning from mistakes they have made. As the Author According to Hubbard (1856-1915) “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually afraid you will make one” (p2). The college life is all about learning who you are and how you fit in the world. Without making mistakes, one will never truly know their full potential. Also, if students are constantly living by what others tell them to do, they are not given the benefit of learning why there was a certain result and how to change it when faced with a similar situation in the future. With learning and taking responsibility, a sense of trust is obtained from others around you. Knowing students are reliable and trustworthy comes from the way they react to situations. Others are more inclined to trust...
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