On the front lines of welfare delivery: Are workers implementing policy reforms?

Abstract

The impact of policy changes on the local delivery of services has been overlooked in several decades of largely unsuccessful efforts to “reform” welfare. This article uses one case of state‐level welfare reform in the early 1990s to examine the implementation of policy changes in local welfare offices. Direct observation of transactions between welfare workers and clients suggests that policy reforms were not fully implemented by street‐level bureaucrats. The instrumental transactions that continued to dominate interactions with clients were consistent with processing claims and rationing scarce resources, but they were poorly aligned with new policies aimed at changing the services and message delivered to welfare clients. The failure to fully implement reforms on the frontlines has implications for the achievement of policy objectives and for equity in service provision. Implementation issues will have even greater urgency as welfare is devolved from federal to state governments.

Creating the Disabled Person: A Case Study of Recruitment to “Work-for-the-Disabled” Programs

“…Evans & Harris 2004, Fineman 1998, Lipsky 1980, Meyers, Glaser & MacDonald 1998, doing the evaluation, interpretation, processing and codification. Of course, the NEO is not the place where occupational disabilities invent themselves, but the organized environment that makes possible the assimilation of certain experiences of job applicants…”

“…Each individual interviewed worked on a daily basis with helping disabled people to find a job. According to literature on ''street-level bureaucrats'' (see Evans & Harris 2004, Fineman 1998, Lipsky 1980, Meyers, Glaser & MacDonald 1998, the main activity of welfare organizations is to process prospective clients into manageable units that may entail the creation of certain ''processable attributes'' (Prottas 1978:290). In order to understand how staff at the NEO accomplishes organizing unemployed clients as occupationally disabled, questions were asked to the staff on how they (a) identified people for work-for-the-disabled programs; (b) on what formal grounds people were classified as occupationally disabled; and (c) how they tried to convince clients of their new social status.…”

Strategieën van lokale veiligheid : Een achtergrondstudie en drie reflecties

“…Door hun relatief autonome positie is het lastig te bepalen wat zij precies doen. Ook vindt de implementatie van beleid soms mondjesmaat plaats of pakken maatregelen anders uit dan gewenst (Meyers et al, 1998). Deze bevindingen hoeven overigens niet per se op onwil aan de kant van politieagenten, toezichthouders en sociaal werkers te duiden.…”

The Public Administration Case against Participation Income

“…This has been shown to lead to the creaming of easy cases and the dumping of problem clients, the selective provision of key information to clients and the arbitrary use of compliance and sanctioning (Handler 2004). Paradoxically, attempts to curtail welfare workers' discretion by expanding rules, regulations and other attempts at routinizing welfare implementation have proven counter-productive because they incite case workers to ignore cumbersome procedures and to use their discretion to achieve what they perceive as the primary goal, typically case-load reduction (Meyers et al 1998;Handler 2004;Hander and Hasenfeld, forthcoming). "Because staff recognize the limited ability of the programs to move all clients into work, they develop alternative definitions of organizational success" (Sandfort 2000: 739).…”

“…This again contrasts favorably with PI which demands the institution of newly valued activities; or at least activities that are "new" from a rule perspective. Of course, research has shown that workfare in practice faces many complicated problems and in fact manages to gather support despite its record of obtaining goals and objectives (Meyers et al 1998;Sandfort 2000;Handler 2004;Handler and Hasenfeld, forthcoming). Nevertheless, from both a political and an administrative perspective, it makes a considerable difference whether the task of conferring standards of entitlement is initiated from a clear and coherent perspective or one that is by its very nature covers a diverse and heterogeneous range of activities.…”