Give states more say in job-training programs
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 7:27 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleWashington will have to redouble its effort to move people from welfare to work in order to comply with new federal requirements. Regulations issued last week to enforce legislation signed into law in February will require states to have 50 percent of their adult welfare recipients working or in a job-training program by Oct. 1, 2007, or risk the loss of millions of dollars in block grant aid.
Washington is among 40 states that do not currently measure up to the 50-percent requirement. It's close. A little over 46 percent of the state's adult welfare population is working or enrolled in approved job-training programs.
Still, meeting the deadline for 50 percent working or in training will be more difficult than it would appear at first blush. The task is complicated by narrower federal definitions of what qualifies as work and job training and the absence of adequate federal help with child care and other costs.
The new rules greatly reduce the states' flexibility in determining how best to prepare welfare recipients for the work force. They require that recipients be enrolled in training and education programs directly related to a future job, making it more difficult to enroll recipients in higher education programs. Also, the new regulations limit the time substance abuse and mental health programs can be counted as job readiness programs to just six weeks.
Of more concern than the tighter work and job-training requirements is the lack of more federal help with child care. The amount authorized by Congress for child care -- less than $1 billion -- doesn't keep pace with inflation, according to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Child-care assistance, of course, is essential to moving welfare families into the work place. Entry-level jobs do not pay nearly enough to provide for the care of infants or young children during working hours.
Recognizing that, the Washington Legislature provided $91 million in supplemental funding for the state's WorkFirst program earlier this year to avoid cut backs in the program's day-care assistance. Without that help, more than 2,000 families in the program would have lost the assistance. For many -- particularly single-parent families -- it would have mean quitting work or dropping out of training programs.
These new federal regulations will require still bigger investments in child-care assistance, no doubt.
We don't take issue with the requirement that 50 percent of welfare recipients be working or in job-training programs. That's a reasonable mandate. But states do not need the federal micro-management with regard to what constitutes work or a program leading to work. What they do need is a larger federal investment in this national effort to "end welfare as we know it."
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