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The California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program is California's response to the welfare reforms Congress set in motion in 1996. The most visible features of this program are its emphasis on moving welfare recipients from reliance on government cash assistance to work and toward self-sufficiency; its use of time limits and participation requirements; its provision of certain services, such as child care and job search assistance, to make participation easier; and its devolution of program authority from the state to the county level. This executive summary focuses on the four themes that have emerged from the authors' work to date: (1) Organizations have changed in response to the expanded mission of CalWORKs, despite limited time for planning. (2) Implementation is under way, but recipient compliance is low. (3) Counties currently have sufficient funds, but this may change. (4) Achieving earnings needed to achieve self-sufficiency before time limits expire is a challenge.
This report describes the implementation of California's Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program in its first two years. According to the CalWORKs welfare-to-work model, immediately following the approval of the aid application, nearly all recipients search for jobs in the context of Job Clubs. For those who do not find employment through job search, an intensive assessment and a sequence of activities follow, to identify and overcome barriers to employment. Implementation in most counties is proceeding more slowly than some observers had hoped, but about as fast as could realistically be expected. County welfare districts (CWDs) face the dual challenge of expanding their capacity to deal with the new, higher, steady-state workload that CalWORKs entails and handling the much larger one-time surge of old cases as they move through the system. Providing mandated support services--child care and transportation; education and training; and treatment for alcohol and substance abuse, mental health, and domestic abuse--has been a challenge for most CWDs. To cope with this expanded workload, they have made different capacity-building decisions. The slow pace of movement through the system is worrisome, however, given the five-year lifetime limit that aid recipients face. Finally, those who have found jobs often do not earn enough to move them completely off aid and toward self-sufficiency. Additional post-employment services appear to be needed.. (MP)
Examines the effects of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program on work activity participation rates of welfare recipients, welfare caseloads, and outcomes for welfare leavers. While the CalWORKs reforms appear to have been responsible for some of the uniform improvement in outcomes shown by the analysis, the robust economy and other policy changes were probably also important.
Includes publications previously listed in the supplements to the Index of selected publications of the Rand Corporation (Oct. 1962-Feb. 1963)