@GRASSROOTS.ORG/Single Parent Employment Demonstration (SPED)

Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008

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Single Parent Employment Demonstration (SPED)

Single Parent Employment Demonstration (SPED)
Office of Family Support
Utah Department of Human Services
120 North 200 West
Salt Lake City, Utah 84103
(801) 538-3970

The idea behind this pilot program, which was implemented early in 1993 in Salt Lake City's Kearns neighborhood and in the smaller Utah cities of St. George and Roosevelt and rural Kane County, is to turn AFDC from an entitlement program into an employment program. Its goal is to increase the income of single-parent families by maximizing employment opportunities and child support while using waivers (a total of 46 of them in AFDC, food stamps and Medicaid) to ease families off welfare gradually as they begin to earn, rather than yanking benefits as soon as a family member picks up even a small income.

According to the executive summary of a paper, "It's About Work," presented by Republican Gov. Michael O. Leavitt to the National Governor's Association in July 1994, SPED makes several fundamental alterations in the traditional AFDC approach:

Self-sufficiency planning occurs BEFORE eligibility for AFDC is determined. From Day One, the client's goal, in consultation with her worker, is not to go ON welfare but to establish a plan to get OFF welfare. If it appears that a quick, focused financial payment will solve the problem without the client going on the welfare rolls at all, workers are able to authorize it.

Every AFDC parent, regardless of his or her age or the age of the children, develops an individualized "self-sufficiency plan" and is expected to participate in self-sufficiency activities such as training or education and job search AND a concentrated effort to collect all child support that's due. Families participating fully in their self-sufficiency plan receive an additional $40 monthly incentive payment added to their grant. Families that refuse to participate have their grant reduced by $100 a month, but this penalty ends immediately when the parent chooses to participate.

"Employment is supported rather than penalized." In the traditional AFDC program, after the first four months of employment, every dollar earned after the first $30 causes a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the grant. In SPED, the first $100 of personal income and 45 percent of the remainder is not counted in determining the grant; and this incentive has NO time limit. "Families graduate off AFDC because of increased income, not arbitrary time limits," the governor said. In addition, the first $90 or earnings is not counted as income for food-stamp allocation; and restrictions on continuing Medicaid and child-care assistance for working poor families coming off welfare are also dramatically eased, up to a maximum of 24 months.

The pilot program has been so successful, the governor said, that it will be expanded from 1,700 to 2,500 families, representing 15 percent of Utah's welfare case load. The increase, he said, emphasizing the point in bold type, will be "PAID FOR BY SAVINGS GENERATED THROUGH CASELOAD REDUCTION AND GRANT SAVINGS."

According to Joe Duke-Rosati of Salt Lake CAP, a recent evaluation found that among clients who came to SPED as first-time welfare recipients during its first 18 months, fully 69 percent have come off welfare and not gone back.

There's much in this program to please liberals and conservatives alike, and it's no coincidence that both the right-wing governor and progressive anti-poverty advocates seem to like it. It involves a contract with clear rights and responsibilities on the part of government AND welfare recipients, and that goes beyond politics.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
Send him E-mail.
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