Word: afdc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...decade ago. Congress strengthened a Work Incentive (WIN) program in 1971 during the Nixon Administration. But WIN suffered from inadequate funding, mismanagement and weak enforcement. In 1981, with the advent of the Reagan Administration, Congress passed legislation granting states more flexibility in administering WIN. For the first time, AFDC recipients could work in public agencies rather than in private-sector jobs. States were also allowed to use part of a recipient's welfare grant as a wage subsidy to his or her private employer. Given these new liberties, state governments began cooking up fresh workfare programs. "Obligation" is a word...
There are other well-reasoned objections to workfare: that it displaces people in the regular labor force; that by exempting single parents with preschool-age children, it excludes 60% of all adult AFDC recipients; that, as Ohio has experienced, welfare savings can be less than program costs; that workfare places too much emphasis on getting clients into the job market quickly rather than enrolling them in education courses that could help them gain entry to more useful and lucrative lines of work...
...that those who do will get adequate training and job-placement services. Roughly one- third of California's 586,000 Aid to Families with Dependent Children cases will be affected. The handicapped will be exempt, as will single parents with children under the age of six. All other healthy AFDC recipients will be ordered to take any necessary training, ranging from remedial math and language classes to high school equivalency courses...
When the training is completed, the welfare client has three months to find work. A trainee whose search is unsuccessful is sent to a one-year pre- employment preparation program to work off the welfare grant in an assigned job. For instance, an AFDC mother trained as a day-care worker who could not find a job on her own might be assigned to work in a public child- care center to receive her monthly grant of $600 plus about $125 worth of food stamps...
...income families, already bruised by the sweeping reductions of Reagan's 1981 budget, would be hurt by slashes in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. AFDC, the main cash welfare plan, would be cut by $175 million out of an expected total of $7.4 billion. In addition, the budget would bar payments to ablebodied parents whose youngest child is 16 or older. The budget would exclude nutrition grants for school breakfasts and lunches to families of four whose income exceeds $19,000 a year...