strib: Don't ignore lessons of welfare reform

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StarTribune.com

May 21, 2006

Editorial: Don't ignore lessons of welfare reform

Rigid federal mandates could push states backward.

In 1999, three years into the nation's landmark experiment with welfare to work, Ramsey County authorities noticed that about one-quarter of their welfare recipients were simply not making headway in the job market, despite a stern message from the state and months of coaching from job counselors.

They walked across the hall to the county's mental health unit and asked if a couple of psychologists could interview some of these struggling adults. What the experts found was startling: A mix of mental illness and low IQ so incapacitating that some of the clients couldn't cook a meal for their children, write a grocery list or remember to change their clothes at night. Ramsey County's findings weren't unique. Since Congress overhauled welfare in 1996, several studies have found that perhaps one-fourth of adults on cash assistance have crippling cognitive problems, physical disabilities or a combination of the two.

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The premise behind work targets is appealing: Just tell welfare recipients to go get a job. That was the thrust of the 1996 law, and for most welfare adults, it worked reasonably well. The number of families on cash assistance has fallen from 4 million to less than 2 million, the sharpest decline on record, and some 2 million poor, single mothers have found jobs. But simple mandates didn't work -- and won't work -- for the sort of clients that Ramsey County discovered. If you don't have the mental capacity to read a bus schedule or remember your own address, you need more than a few mornings in job-search class.

This month dozens of Minnesota welfare officials, together with five members of the state's congressional delegation, sent letters to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, urging it to give states the flexibility to serve this heterogeneous caseload. Gov. Tim Pawlenty joined his colleagues in the National Governors Association in a letter making the same request.

Washington should grant that flexibility. Since 1996 states have developed several techniques to help the "hard to serve," such as transitional jobs, which resemble sheltered workshops, and case managers who can give hands-on support such as driving clients to job interviews. But states won't have the flexibility or the funds to sustain these efforts if Washington imposes a cookie-cutter mandate.

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