Welfare Reform — страница 4

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unable to find work in the regular labor market have the option of taking a CSJ that pays minimum wage. These jobs enable participants to quality for New Hope’s earnings supplements, health insurance, and childcare assistance, so long as participants work an average of 30 hours per week in each month. Positions are located in private, nonprofit social service agencies throughout Milwaukee. Although the positions were created for the New Hope participants, the jobs were not guaranteed. Participants had to interview for the positions and had to perform satisfactorily in order to keep the job. They report to work as scheduled by the requirements of the worksite. ROLE OF COMMUNITY SERVICE JOBS IN NEW HOPECSJs were an essential component of the New Hope project. They were designed

to help a participant gain work experience, develop a work history, build skills, and obtain references that they could use to find unsubsidized work. New Hope offers participants a range of CSJ assignments to choose from in a variety of community-based social service agencies. A breakdown of assignments taken from the New Hope Final Report is shown in Figure 1. (Brock, pg. 141-142, 1997) CSJs serve as a safety net to help individuals keep their work hours high enough to quality for benefits when an unsubsidized job is lost and they are in the process of looking for a new job or work hours dropped below thirty hours per week. (Brock, pg. 181. 1997) These positions last no longer than six months and participants can apply to a maximum of three CSJs while involved with New Hope.

Even though training and education was not a component of the New Hope project, they offer an alternative in the form of “work teams.” Participants can learn an occupational skill together. These teams require full-time employment in non-profit agencies and pay minimum wage teaching a skill or trade. Work teams were offered in manufacturing, housing renovation, and housing lead abatement. An important component of participants’ experience with the project comes from the interaction with their designated project representative. The project representatives, here after referred to as project reps, interact with New Hope participants more frequently and on a deeper level than other program staff. Project reps serve as participants’ ongoing point of contact and source of help.

They are the gatekeepers of information on all New Hope benefits and services. Project reps help the unemployed find work and encourage participants to move up the career ladder and seek better positions. A project rep has contact at least once a month with participants and produces weekly participant status reports that account for active or inactive participants in the program. During these monthly meeting project reps engage the participants in discussions about their work, career goals, work-related problems and accomplishments. New Hope staff encourages participants to move into unsubsidized jobs as quickly as possible, before their six-month assignments were finished. One concern the staff has is that some CSJ participants grow too comfortable in their jobs and did not want

to leave. They had to persuade participants to look for unsubsidized work. This is an issue since CSJs were intended to be the job of last resort for participants. Preliminary New Hope Project findings indicate that twenty-five percent of the participants who used CSJs moved directly into full-time unsubsidized employment. (Brock, Executive Summary, 1997) This is encouraging. COMPARISON WITH W-2Wisconsin W-2 contains many of the New Hope elements. Like New Hope, W-2 is a work-based system of aid that creates employment opportunities for people unable to find work in the regular labor market. Both programs limit the number of years that participants may receive benefits: three years for New Hope and five years for W-2. Both programs provide access to subsidized childcare. An

important difference between the programs is that W-2 benefits will not be adjusted to bring incomes of participants above the poverty line. W-2’s subsidized jobs will pay a fixed grant for the work performed; as in the regular labor market, participants’ household size will not be factored into their rate of pay. New Hope pays CSJ participants a minimum wage and uses an earnings supplement to adjust for larger families. New Hope participants do not receive any additional training while involved with the program. However, they are eligible to take 10 hours of training to count towards a forty-hour workweek. New Hope considers the CSJ position as training for unsubsidized employment. W-2, on the other hand training and ongoing education are integral components of each rung on