CalWORKs: A Primer on California's Welfare System
In California, this lead to CalWORKs: California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program. CalWORKs serves 1.3 million Californians, with one million participants being children under age eighteen. (This is why the state has more recipients compared to other states.) The federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant supplies $3.7 billion annually for more than 575,000 families.
CalWORKs provides cash assistance to families. A family of three receives an average of $743 per month, supplemented with $350 in food stamps. The cash assistance has remained relatively static since the mid 1990's and is 17 percent lower in real dollars compared to 1997 payments. Recipients receive job skills assessment and training for employment opportunities.
Since adult program participants have a five year limit on receiving federal block grant funds, the program's structure seeks to offer skills to encourage a transition from welfare to work. Child care and transportation assistance minimizes obstacles for parents entering the work force. In a single parent family, the adult must participate in 32 hours per week of education, job training or employment and a two parent family must participate 35 hours per week. Adults not participating in this CalWORKs format loose the $139 adult portion of the family's cash assistance.
With the economic challenges of the past decade, CalWORKs tries to give Californians the opportunity to experience the dignity and right of productive work. The state's welfare expenditures are now 3 percent of the budget compared to 7 percent fourteen years ago. Since the late 1990's, case loads have been cut in half. The old welfare system only allowed a recipient to earn $225 and then reduced benefits by fifty cents for every dollar earned. Crafting CalWORKs eliminated this disincentive to seek employment, with job training and education, while addressing child care and transportation needs.
California is one of eleven states that provides benefits to children once the adult/parent's five year benefit with CalWORKs terminates. This creates a higher case load, but addresses the needs of poor and vulnerable children in a state where 20 percent live below the federal poverty threshold.
With the current budget challenges, cuts to CalWORKs continue. For instance, legislation effective in 2011 will decrease a child's cash assistance by up to 50 percent if a parent did not participate in CalWORKs jobs and education programs.