Source: Congressional Research Service
• February 26, 2008 - Child Welfare Issues in the 110th Congress
• February 20, 2008 - Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) for Workers: Current Issues and Legislation
• February 19, 2008 - The Alternative Minimum Tax For Individuals: Legislative Activity in the 110th Congress
• February 14, 2008 - Largest Mergers and Acquisitions by Corporations in 2007
Source: White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, February 2008
From the fact sheet:
Today, President Bush participated in a briefing on "The Quiet Revolution" report from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (WHOFBCI). This report offers a portrait of the successful implementation of President Bush's vision to reshape government's approach to addressing human need. By leveling the playing field for faith-based charities and strengthening grassroots nonprofits to effectively help Americans in need, the Faith-Based and Community Initiative is having a tremendous impact on countless lives across our Nation and around the world.
Source: Iris J. Lav and Elizabeth Hudgins, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 13, 2008
From the summary:
To date, at least 17 states facing deficits have made or proposed budget cuts that threaten vital services for many residents, including some of the state's most vulnerable residents.
Source: Liz Schott, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 20, 2008
From the summary:
Overall, the new Final Rule contains some improvements that provide states with some additional flexibility with respect to the activities that can count toward the work participation rate and how states must count and document hours of participation. However, the changes are fundamentally "around the edges" and do not address some of the core concerns that states and others had raised with respect to the Interim Final Rule. The marginal improvements include:
• The Final Rule expanded the circumstances under which a person with a severe disability (applying for or receiving SSI or Social Security Disability Insurance) or a person caring for a disabled family member could be excluded from the work participation rate calculation;
• The Final Rule includes a number of changes that will make it easier for states to get credit toward the work rates when an individual participates in post-secondary education; and
• The Final Rule includes greater flexibility in counting hours of participation with respect to excused absences and participation in job search or job readiness activities.
Moreover, the new Final Rule contains one significant and new restriction on how states can spend their "maintenance of effort" funds -- the state funds they must spend to qualify for federal TANF funds. In our view, this new restriction is contrary to the clear language of the statute and to Congressional intent.
This paper summarizes the key concerns that we and other commenters raised about the Interim Final Rules and describes the extent to which HHS made changes in response to these concerns in the Final Rule. The report also highlights the changed regulatory provisions.
The President's 2009 budget would provide some $20.5 billion less for domestic discretionary programs outside of homeland security -- a broad category of programs that includes everything from child care to environmental protection to medical research -- than the 2008 level, adjusted for inflation.
The budget calls for reductions in a broad range of services, including some areas that have seen sizable cuts in recent years. For example, the budget would cut child care, environmental protection, and job training -- all areas for which funding in 2008 is well below funding earlier in the decade, after adjusting for inflation.
Source: Maurice Emsellem and Omar Semidey, National Employment Law Project, February 12, 2008
Working families are bracing for major layoffs amid growing signs that the nation may be heading toward a serious recession. Despite their compelling concerns and strong evidence that federal jobless benefits will immediately stimulate the economy, the U.S. Senate recently came one vote short of the 60 votes needed to pass an economic stimulus package (Economic Stimulus Act of 2008) that included a 13-week federal extension of unemployment benefits. That leaves an estimated three million workers without any additional federal support when they run out of their 26 weeks of state jobless benefits this year.
Now, the attention shifts to Congressional efforts to promptly enact separate legislation to extend federal jobless benefits to help boost the economy. This paper makes the case for an immediate extension of jobless benefits and federal reforms to modernize the unemployment insurance program. It provides new state estimates of the number of workers who will exhaust their state unemployment benefits this year as well as a rebuttal to the argument of Bush Administration officials that unemployment has not reached high enough levels compared to prior recessions to justify an extension of jobless benefits. Underscoring the harshness of the downturn on long-established workers and the consequences of inaction by Congress for moderate-income families, the paper also finds that the unemployed include a disproportionately large number of older workers who are looking for work for longer periods of time in today's struggling economy.
Source: Congressional Research Service (via National Council for Science and the Environment)
The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance program (LIHEAP), established in 1981 (P.L. 97-35), is a block grant program under which the federal government gives states, territories, and tribes annual grants to operate home energy assistance programs for low-income households. The LIHEAP statute authorizes two types of funds: regular funds, which are allocated to all states using a statutory formula, and contingency funds, which are allocated to one or more states at the discretion of the Administration.
Full Report (PDF; 144 KB)
Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research
From press release:
Low wages, inadequate benefits, and limited work supports leave one-in-five people (nearly 41 million) in working families struggling to make ends meet. According to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, and the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. According to the report, many workers are in jobs that do not provide health insurance or enough earnings to cover basic expenditures but earn too much to qualify for work supports such as Medicaid and Food Stamps. While common to higher-wage workers, employment-based benefits, like health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off, are not available to most low- and many moderate-wage workers. Public work supports, however, can help fill in these gaps.
+ National Report (PDF; 1.3 MB)
+ Technical Report (PDF; 1.1 MB)
+ Presentation (PDF; 30 KB)
+ Podcast
From: Docuticker
Source: National Association of Social Workers, 2007
As with any profession, there are a number of factors that are commonly associated with higher earnings. The study found that social work salaries were highly variable.
This report highlights the role of salary in retaining professional workers, particularly newer workers. Of particular concern is the relationship between low salaries and agencies that are likely to provide services to the most vulnerable clients-- underscoring a long-held belief that social workers' salaries are closely linked to the societal value placed on their clients. Competitive and fair salaries are the first step to assuring that a competent social work workforce is going to be available to meet the needs of agencies and their clients in the coming decades.
Source: National Association of Social Workers, WKF-MISC-1308, 2007
In 2004, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) partnered with the Center for Health Workforce Studies, University at Albany, to conduct a benchmark national study of 10,000 licensed social workers. The study achieved a response rate of nearly 50 percent. The information presented in this fact sheet is based on that study and its findings.
The study examined a number of variables related to licensed social workers and their practices, including demographic information, practice issues, services to clients, and workplace issues. In response to the question, "Are you faced with personal safety issues in your primary employment practice?" a surprising 44 percent of the respondents answered affirmatively. Thirty percent of these social workers did not think that their employers adequately addressed the safety issues.
This fact sheet explores some of the factors associated with social workers who face personal safety issues in their employment.
From the abstract:
The Minnesota Integrated Services Projects focus on improving the delivery of employment, health, and social services to families who receive cash assistance and have serious or multiple barriers to employment. Operating in eight sites, the project seeks to provide comprehensive assessments of participants' barriers, improve access to more complete services that address multiple needs, and coordinate services provided by multiple service systems. This report examines the implementation of the projects, provides information on participants' demographic, economic and barrier-related characteristics, and describes changes in economic outcomes among participants within a short (six-month) follow-up period.
Source: Edgar O. Olsen, The Urban Institute, Opportunity and Ownership Project Report No. 2, August 20, 2007
The United States' current system of low-income housing assistance is biased against homeownership. This paper documents the bias and suggests reforms to eliminate it. The new policies would allow more low-income families to become homeowners by providing similar subsidies for renters and owners under the two largest programs for low-income housing, Section 8 and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The reforms would not require additional spending, would improve the cost-effectiveness of the system of low-income housing assistance, and would avoid the two biggest mistakes in past attempts to subsidize homeownership: subsidizing the construction of new units and requiring intended beneficiaries to buy from selected sellers.
Source: Sheila Zedlewski and Seth Zimmerman Urban Institute, Brief no. 4, June 2007
From the summary:
Low-income families in Alaska, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont received more than $4,000 in work supports per person in 2005, more than double what their counterparts in Idaho, Nevada, and Utah received, an Urban Institute analysis of data for 44 states reveals.
Nationally, federal and state governments spent $3,264 per person on the core work-support programs, which help nonworking parents get jobs and stay employed: Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Food Stamps, child-care subsidies, and the federal and state earned income tax credits (EITC). Medicaid, SCHIP, and food stamps are available to low-income families regardless of work status; child-care subsidies and the EITC specifically help working families.
Source: Maribeth Bersani, Nursing Homes: Long Term Care Management, Vol. 56 no. 6, June 2007
Before January 2006 and the implementation of Medicare Part D, dual-eligible assisted living residents (those who receive Medicaid and Medicare benefits) were exempted from remitting co-payments for their prescription drugs. The exemption from co-payments was also applicable to individuals residing in skilled nursing homes, as well.
Under the new Medicare Part D program, however, dual-eligible residents in assisted living communities are not exempt from prescription drug co-payments. This has created a severe financial hardship for these residents who are already living on very low incomes. The only discretionary income most of these residents have is a Personal Needs Allowance (PNA)—frequently less than $60 per month. Residents use the PNA to pay for clothing, personal hygiene items, over-the-counter medications, and any other necessary items they need. To have to use this meager allowance to cover prescription drug co-pays is a true hardship.
Source: Council for Affordable Health Insurance's Issues and Answers no. 143, June 2007
From press release:
The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is up for reauthorization, and there appears to be bipartisan support for not just reauthorizing the program but greatly expanding it. Indeed, the legislation may become a vehicle for much of what Congress wants to accomplish in health care this year.
However, SCHIP was intended to be a limited program to help uninsured children from modest- income families -- not a huge entitlement covering middle- and upper-middle-income children and hundreds of thousands of adults.
Today, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) released its newest Issues & Answers, "Principles for SCHIP Reform." The paper identifies key principles that should guide lawmakers in their reauthorization efforts, if they want a financially sustainable program that provides access to quality health care for low- income children.
Source: Olivia Golden, Pamela Winston, Gregory Acs, Ajay Chaudry, Urban Institute, Paper 7, June 12, 2007
This paper for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation conceptualizes a framework for a new safety net for low-income working families that is rooted in their most essential needs. It is organized around five key goals:
1. enabling parents to meet their family’s needs while working in lower-wage jobs,
2. helping families weather gaps in parental employment,
3. supporting parents’ job advancement,
4. helping parents combine work and child-rearing, and
5. improving children’s well-being and development.
The paper describes these families’ circumstances, discusses gaps in current safety-net programs, and explores possible alternative approaches to meeting families’ most pressing needs.
Source: Mental Health Weekly, Vol. 17 no. 17, April 30, 2007
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A national center for clinical social work was recently formed with the hope of representing the nation’s 200,000 clinical social workers, who constitute the largest mental health profession in the United States, said officials from the Salem, Mass., based Canter for Clinical Social Work, Inc. The Center is intended to be a unifying force amid the diversity and dynamism of the profession, said center officials.
Source: Sharon Parrott and Matt Fiedler, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 8, 2007
Under the Administration's budget, domestic discretionary programs -- the programs that are funded each year through the annual appropriations process, other than defense and international programs -- are slated for sizable reductions over the next five years. The budget calls for these cuts to start in 2008, when domestic discretionary programs as a whole would be funded below a freeze of the levels provided for 2007 in the full-year continuing resolution now moving through Congress.[i] The cuts would then grow deeper each year after 2008, and would come from almost every part of the domestic budget. The largest cuts would come in 2012, when domestic programs would be cut $34 billion, or 7.6 percent, relative to the 2007 funding level, adjusted for inflation.
Source: Richard M. Clerkin and Kirsten A. Grønbjerg, Public Administration Review, January/February 2007
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The Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 welfare reform act under the Clinton administration and the Bush administration’s establishment of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives in the White House have expanded the participation of overtly religious service organizations in the implementation of social policy. What has been the impact of these moves on human service-oriented religious congregations? Most of them seem unwilling to forego their sacred mission for the sake of receiving public funding, and for a few participating congregations, a measure of secularization may have crept into their service programs.
Source: Kevin R. Kosar, Public Administration Review, November/December 2006, Vol. 66 no. 6
In this conversation with the author of the 2005 Brownlow Nook Award winner, Government Matters, Lawrence Mead underscores the indispensable role of government in implementing effective welfare reform in Wisconsin. When policy makers and administrators work together conscientiously, according to Mead, old institutions can be revitalized and new ones built with remarkable speed and efficiency to achieve public purposes. Mead also shares his perspectives on the major failings of contemporary policy research.