If you were Sid Johnson, executive director of the American Public Welfare Association (APWA) during the time when the president of the United States announced that with the stroke of a pen he just ended "welfare as we know it," you must lead your organization to reassess its mission in order to assure its continuing relevance.
In many ways, the state and local government officials who make up a large part of the membership of APWA need the association's leadership and coordination more than ever. According to Johnson, "The states face two profound changes simultaneously -- first, a change in goals from income maintenance to work along with the reduction of adolescent pregnancies. And second, a change in governance from federal prescriptions to state and local authority." These two sets of changes which Johnson considers both profound and extraordinary would each require significant changes for the states, but together require an unprecedented level of state and local focus on human services.
The change away from a "welfare state" to the new order of goals and local governance required a re-examination of APWA's mission. In a meeting of the organization's executives in Lake Tahoe, Nev., in early winter, the organization "addressed issues of special concern to the commissioners."
Johnson said from that meeting his organization decided APWA will respond to changes by supplementing its primary mission -- of being its members' primary advocate in Congress -- with additional primary roles that include: formally collecting information on state activities with a mission objective of identifying and sharing information on best practices. He added that they will "gather, analyze and disseminate information in terms that will assist state and local managers" in developing their own programs and policies. He also expects his association to address training and technical assistance in areas such as strategic planning and culture change. APWA will also support training caseworkers to move from being eligibility workers to becoming job counselors.
While APWA seems to be acting assertively to support state and local governments in the implementation of The Personal Responsibility Act of 1996, they had opposed it during deliberations in Congress. Johnson said they were concerned that there were too many strings attached to the block grants, that block grants require flexibility as opposed to restrictions.
APWA felt that requirements such as the two years to work and the 60-month restriction on benefits were the kinds of strings that tie up state and local program design and run counter to the concept of devolution.
APWA is also involved with information systems. According to Johnson, the 1996 federal legislation required that the Department of Health and Human Services report to Congress on the status of state information systems.
The department decided to work with APWA, the National Governors' Association and the National Association of State Information Resource Executives (NASIRE) to determine the states' current capabilities as they relate to supporting welfare and their capabilities in the new governance structure. Johnson said that this consortium was assembled because "the feds said that they did not have the resources to asses states' readiness themselves, so they hired" these organizations.
Johnson said APWA thinks it is important to be involved with the assessment of state readiness so that it can go to Congress to get the resources to allow states to respond to the needs identified during the assessment. Johnson said that his organization has always kept a reserve fund, but that anticipating challenges from welfare reform they have increased the reserves from $50,000 to $1.1 million. Some of those moneys will be used to support the assessment of state IT capabilities. APWA also received $40,000 from their affiliate, the Information Systems Management organization and $20,000 from NASIRE to hire Bob Reeg, an analyst who will work with managerial support from APWA's Kelly Thompson and Elaine Ryan to support the IT research.
Johnson said that indications are that state systems "support arithmetic quality control of eligibility but cannot tell program managers how many teenage parents are in their systems." He asserted that the information system must support the "new funding mechanisms that include federal performance bonuses that could be up to $200 million over five years" for achieving the desired outcomes. The systems not only must support the achievement of those outcomes, but will need to provide measures to demonstrate when they have been achieved.
Johnson said that states need to build information systems that will address goals and outcomes. He said that they will need to establish a baseline against which progress can be measured. They will need to support a new type of categorization -- differentiating "easier to employ and harder" instead of by program. The IT systems will have to provide information about the local economy and the kinds of jobs that are available. As a bottom line they will have to support caseworkers in the interview process to help determine employability. The system will have to support an intake interview that currently centers around the caseworker saying "let me see your receipts" to one where skills and assets are evaluated to identify services needed to help the client get a job.
Johnson asserted that it is still easier to change the culture and policy at the federal level as it relates to welfare but that it will be harder at the local level with both state and local personnel and clients. These folks at the grassroots are very anxious, local service providers are also very nervous and they all will continue to be until they understand how the changes in the system will affect them.
By the way, if you ran the NABWM -- the buggy whip guys -- you would have been wise to change your name to something like the National Automobile Dealers' Association, so the public and your members understood that you were maintaining relevance. APWA -- the welfare guys -- will also change their name after nearly 60 years. Sid Johnson and his commissioners have hired a firm to help them come up with a new name to reflect the critically important role they play supporting human services reform. Even that venerable institution is facing a difficult culture change.
Larry Singer -- an expert on strategic computing with 12 years experience in the information technology industry serving all levels of government -- is currently a research fellow with the Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. E-mail:
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Welfare workers
may soon find
themselves in the
job placement
business.
