Does Welfare Reform in New York City Work Essay

Does Welfare Reform in New York City Work - Essay Example It stretched from accommodating few natives to a large influx of immigrants from Latin America and other parts of the world. The city had not come up with a long term strategy to include all these new members. So the welfare system was overburdened and after some years (forty years), it started becoming inefficient. In the nineties, employees working for the welfare system in the City felt unsafe and started reinforcing their offices to protect themselves. Clients on welfare had to waste most of their day waiting for welfare workers who could not even deliver upon meeting the clients. Client files started getting lost; welfare workers did not complete cases and kept jumping from client to client so there was no case of continuity. This made most clients angry and they vented out their frustrations on social workers forcing security guards to intervene. This meant that people on welfare could not make time for other productive activities because they spent most of their time trying to chase for benefits and looking for child care. 'Mass confusion' are the perhaps the most appropriate words to use when describing the city's welfare prior to 1995. The New York welfare system underwent a rapid change between 1995 and 2001 or we could say that reforms were introduced. These reforms occurred during Rudolph Giuliani's term as New York mayor. Some of the changes that the welfare system saw were the decline in number of people on welfare; from one point one million to about six hundred. The welfare system's method of approach also changed. Instead of giving checks to clients, they were given jobs; it became employment based instead of issuing handouts. However, there is another side to this reform. Jobs were not just dished out from all directions. Welfare clients had to prove that they were compliant. This implied that the so called 'difficult clients' were not considered this included drug addicts and the like. Besides, this there were problems in system management and all these will be looked at in the subsequent sections in detail. Welfare reforms were not 'the knight on a white horse' for the residents of the City of New York. (Mead, 1992) 2.0 Literature review There are a number of changes that were observed during Giuliani's regime. There is no doubt that the general approach was work oriented. From the 1995 to 1999, most of the policies imposed sanctions and mainly dealt with work requirements. Clients were required to meet a certain criteria and if they were did not comply, then they were met by sanctions. During this time, New York saw the rejection of about a large number of adults. Cases of sanctioning increased from eight percent to fourteen percent. Besides these, the system was characterized by compulsory workfare jobs. This implied that there were a number of adults that were involved in work experience program jobs. These were more of assignments than actual jobs. However in the last years of Giuliani's regime (99-01) emphasis on workfare started diminishing and some emphasis was now being placed on training for jobs. This involved the three plus two model. Welfare adults were required to attend three days of workfare and they were also supposed to dedicate the remaining two days of the week to a training program such as education or job readiness service. There were also a number of programs that focused on special groups.