welfare

Caught between falling budgets and the rising ranks of the unemployed and underemployed on welfare, the state of California has suspended employment assistance services such as child care subsidy for welfare families, according to The New York Times' Erik Eckholm. 

After vigorously pursuing policies to push more welfare recipients into the workforce, the state is also dropping work requirements and penalties for single parents with a child aged 1 to 2, or those with two children under 6.

By 2011, the state's welfare-to-work program CalWorks will enforce stricter rules for participants to reduce costs.  Until then, the state is slashing those programs because they are ineligible for stimulus act funds. 

The reversal of a decade's worth of welfare policies worries many who supported the cultural change effected by California's carrot-and-stick approach to getting welfare recipients back to work.

Mr. Schwarzenegger did wring savings out of the state’s welfare-to-work program, known as CalWorks, and achieved a future tightening of the rules. But those changes do not start until July 1, 2011. In the interim, to save $375 million a year, the state is trimming the employment assistance programs at the heart of the welfare-to-work approach, especially subsidized child care, and suspending work requirements for a large share of recipients.

Those programs were selected, in large part, because they were not eligible for extra federal money under the stimulus act.

--- Kristen Young

The recession has caused a 30 percent spike among Utah residents looking for financial assistance, reports Julia Lyon of the Salt Lake Tribune. Although only 6,797 people are on the "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, many more - 83,385 -- are asking for basic help to eat. The state is now considering easing the eligibility requirements so more households can receive assistance with food and other basic necessities.

The effects of the recession are sometimes hard to track by the numbers. In Provo, for example, homelessness is down - but that could be because people are relocating to Salt Lake City and other areas that have more shelters, the Associated Press reports.

Indigent and low-income residents of Colorado could get free cell phones under a program being considered by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. TracFone Wireless of Miami has proposed making Colorado the 17^th state to receive free cell service and phones for those who qualify for other state welfare programs, according to a story by David Migoya of the Denver Post. The program would give users at least 68 minutes of service along with a free phone.

Poor people in Colorado could soon get a free cell phone with that bowl of soup and and bed for the night. If approved by the state Public Utilities Commission, writes David Migoya in the Denver Post, Colorado would become the 17^th state to provide free cell service for low income people reliant on public assistance.

Our depressed economy presents an excellent opportunity to rally anxious Americans into supporting measures that make the lives of illegal immigrants and their families harder.

So believes a group of initiative pushers in California who want to end public benefits for illegal immigrants and cut off welfare for their children. They also want to make the process of applying for a child's birth certificate conducive to providing documentation for the deportation of illegal resident parents.

They hope to build on similar benefits curtailments in Oklahoma, Colorado Virginia, Arizona and Georgia, according to Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times.