Welfare Reform Places Children at Increased Risk for Abuse and Neglect, New Report Finds

PRESS RELEASE

Analysis of time limits effect on children shows maltreatment increases as families lose welfare benefits; child welfare systems unable to provide safety net.

A report released today by Children's Rights, a national advocacy group for children, reveals that welfare reform is placing children in families who hit their lifetime limit for benefits at increased risk of abuse and neglect. The report, Working Without a Net: Children, Welfare Reform and the Child Welfare System, is a comprehensive analysis of federal, state and local data collected since the 1996 reform of welfare that examines the effect of benefit time limits on children. The report shows that the reforms as written can mean recipients who are doing everything they can to move off welfare - even working full-time - can still have benefits terminated before they are economically self-sufficient, throwing their families into chaos and putting their children at a greater risk for abuse and neglect.

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The report also examines the capacity of child welfare systems to protect children whose families fall into crisis after losing their benefits. The report concludes that these systems-already straining under current caseloads-will not be able to provide a safety net for these children, either by providing support services necessary to keep families together or by caring for children in foster care if they must be removed from their families. The report proposes a set of recommendations to Congress, state legislatures and agencies that would fine-tune federal and state welfare laws and set priorities for reform while leaving the concepts of time limits and work requirements intact.

"The rejoicing caused by plummeting welfare caseloads should not distract attention from the very real harm about to befall America's poorest children," states Rose Firestein, author of the report and Director of Policy Research for Children's Rights. "Congress was misled and children were betrayed if the lifetime limit on benefits was enacted on the assumption that the child welfare system would protect any children neglected or abused as a consequence of their family's permanent ineligibility for benefits. We have no safety net in place for these children."

Working Without A Net focuses on an important aspect for children of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWOR) - its lifetime limit of up to five years on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The calculation of time limits force families off the rolls before they are financially self-sufficient:

1.The lifetime limit counts months when a recipient receives any cash assistance even if it is combined with work. Recipients are thus penalized for trying to move from welfare to work.
2.The benefit clock ticks even if a recipient needs job training or is waiting for mental health or substance abuse counseling. In some cases, the clock ticks even when the recipient is not receiving any benefits.
3.The maximum number of families that can qualify for an exemption from the lifetime limit is growing smaller. (Exemptions are given to only twenty percent of the welfare caseload, but as the caseload shrinks so does the number of families that can receive exemptions.)

The report also reveals that families who are not financially self-sufficient as they approach their lifetime limit are already likely to be coping with serious and seemingly intractable problems such as poverty, substance abuse, mental health problems, and domestic violence. "In the presence of these grave problems, the loss of economic security will likely degrade recipients' ability to care for their children to the point that it constitutes neglect or abuse," states Firestein. Poor children, for example, are more than twice as likely to suffer abuse and over four-and-a-half times as likely to suffer neglect as middle-income children.

The report finds that the child welfare systems that should address the consequential abuse or neglect-the children's ultimate safety net-are ill prepared to deal with an even modest increase in caseloads. "Many, possibly all, existing child welfare systems fail in most aspects of their duties to the children and families within their jurisdiction, even in the performance of their core functions," the report states. Inadequacies are cited in the areas of staffing, training, investigations, provision of services to needy families and a failing foster care system.

Recommendations

With 22 states imposing a time limit of less than 5 years, families are already or soon will be affected by loss of TANF. The report makes recommendations for preemptive policy changes that can be swiftly implemented to prevent harm to children. Recommendations in the report do not alter the goal that drives welfare reform - to move recipients off the rolls and into work - but they would better protect the children of these families. Among the recommended immediate actions are the following:

1.Change Certain Eligibility and Work Requirements: Do not count toward the lifetime limit any month when an adult who received a welfare payment also worked in an unsubsidized job or was on a wait list for educational, substance abuse, or mental health services when no services were available.

2.Protect Children Whose Families Have Left Welfare Rolls: Arrange comprehensive professional assessments to determine whether recipients leaving the rolls need further services to prevent children's neglect or abuse.

3.Set Priorities of Reform for Child Welfare Systems: Identify at-risk children through adequate investigations of abuse and neglect; provide families with appropriate and effective services; and ensure the safety and well-being of children who enter foster care.

Children's Rights is sending Working Without A Net to members of Congress, state legislators and their staff, welfare and child welfare administrators, and child advocates across the country.

For a copy of the report or an executive summary, please contact Geoffrey Knox at 212-229-0540.

Children's Rights works throughout the U.S. in partnership with national and local experts, advocates and government officials to document the needs of children in the care of the inter-locking systems of foster care, juvenile justice, and mental health. CRI helps develop realistic solutions and, where necessary, uses the power of litigation to ensure that reform takes place.

Children's Rights works throughout the United States in partnership with national and local experts, advocates and government officials to document the needs of children in the care of child welfare systems. Children's Rights helps develop realistic solutions and, where necessary, uses the power of litigation to ensure that reform takes place.