Welfare Plan Would Count Family Time

The Bush administration, which has declared the “well-being of children” an official goal of welfare policy, would allow low-income parents to meet part of their work requirements by participating in organized activities with their children, including Scouts, boys and girls clubs, educational programs and sports.

“Moving folks into employment is not the only goal of [the welfare program], as important as that is,” said Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services. “In the end, it’s about whether the kids are better off.”

The details, which are part of a broader White House proposal to toughen the work rules for welfare recipients, were not initially spelled out in the administration’s welfare plan, which was unveiled last month. The nation’s $16.5-billion welfare program must be renewed by Congress this year, forcing the first major debate over welfare policy since a massive overhaul in 1996.

The allowance for family activities is one example of the administration’s bid to put a distinct imprint on welfare reform--seeking a substantial work effort from as many recipients as possible, while also allowing a portion of the workweek to be family friendly. Officials also hope that parents themselves will benefit through activities in which they play an important role, for example as an assistant soccer coach, not merely as a spectator at the game.

But critics say the administration’s proposed work rules--which also include a firm demand of 24 hours a week on the job--are overly rigid. States, they maintain, should be much freer to tailor a broad set of education, training and other services to fit a family’s individual needs.

In an interview, Horn, who runs the welfare program, said that active parental involvement in such organized activities as Head Start, library programs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and others that “meet a reasonable-person test” could be acceptable for up to 16 hours of the 40-hour workweek that is envisioned for welfare recipients.

He also provided a background document to The Times that says states would have “tremendous flexibility” to design activities that are helpful to children and families, “provided the activities are within a structured setting and participation is monitored.”

“Not dropping your kid off so you can have a cup of coffee, but participating in it jointly” would be a standard, Horn explained. Joint volunteer efforts, educational programs in which the child is enrolled, and after-school activities “emphasizing positive youth development,” all are ways of meeting 16 hours of the work requirement, according to the administration.

States Would Have Say in What Counts as Work

It would be up to the states to work out plans that would account for each individual’s work participation.

Rep. Wally Herger (R-Marysville), chairman of the House subcommittee on welfare, said he viewed the child-friendly efforts as part of a larger attempt to have welfare policy strengthen two-parent families among the poor.

“If the states choose to, the 16 hours can be used for just about anything, including programs to promote marriage and to promote more stable families,” he said, describing such goals as an important remaining frontier for welfare reform.

Herger plans to introduce a welfare bill reflecting the White House aims next month and said he hoped it would reach the floor by early May.

No one doubts that children can benefit from time spent with responsible parents, and even those skeptical of the White House approach refrained from criticizing provisions that would promote parent-child experiences.

But some minimized the child-friendly proposal, pointing out that it would only kick in after parents met a much stiffer work requirement than is now in force, and contending that parents on welfare would still face enormous pressure to use their time to make money rather than volunteer for children’s activities.

Many welfare parents also face problems of mental health, substance abuse and other difficulties that could stand in the way of successful volunteer involvements.

“Our concern is the total picture,” said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, who is sponsoring a major Democratic alternative to the administration plan. Cardin said that while establishing child well-being as one goal of welfare “is something we agree with,” it’s “a stretch” to conclude that the administration plan gives greater flexibility to states than is now the case.

Currently, welfare recipients may face a 30-hour weekly work requirement. But due to certain technicalities and exceptions, the work demands frequently are not enforced. Only one-third of the 2.1 million adult recipients work.

The Bush administration wants to establish a strict, 24-hour work requirement with few exceptions. But it would give recipients various options for the remaining 16 hours of the 40-hour week, including vocational education and other activities that can help a family become self-sufficient.

The 16-hour period also includes the child-oriented activities that Horn outlined in the interview.

Also acceptable would be parent-child “counseling sessions that help parents build stronger bonds with their children,” parenting education classes and joint participation in after-school activities “emphasizing positive youth development,” according to HHS.

For people with the greatest difficulties in entering the work force, the White House would also allow three months within any 24-month period outside of work, in programs that state officials believe will help prepare them for a job, including treatment for substance abuse, rehabilitation and training.

“Everybody ought to be engaged in some sort of plan that will lead them toward whatever level of self-sufficiency that person is capable of achieving,” Horn said, terming the administration approach a “universal engagement strategy.”

It is unclear how many welfare recipients would choose volunteer and other activities with their children over jobs that pay. Under welfare reform, states generally limit benefits to five years, so recipients face growing pressure to find real jobs.

“I think it’s positive in the sense that it’s allowing the states flexibility to count some positive parenting toward this work requirement that on the face of it is very strict,” said Sheila R. Zedlewski, a welfare expert at the nonpartisan Urban Institute think tank in Washington. But she added that welfare recipients “also have this other, competing pressure on them, which is to work more and earn more and leave welfare. You have to weigh it all. It’s a positive, but a small positive.”

Since its inception in the mid-1990s, welfare reform has largely coincided with a period of economic growth and declining poverty rates. But the link between welfare reform and the well-being of children remains unclear in the minds of some researchers.

Democrats have proposed that U.S. welfare policy establish the reduction of poverty as a formal goal. But the administration instead came up with the broader, if harder-to-measure objective of child well-being.

The White House also wishes to use welfare policies to promote healthy marriages, noting that children growing up in single-parent families are statistically more likely to drop out of school, have their own children during adolescence and abuse drugs.