Impact of welfare reform on children, parents, teachers, and schools: Interprofessional challenges and opportunities

Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall 1999 by Briar-Lawson, Katharine

Interprofessional education and collaboration efforts of the last decade have attempted to promote improved outcomes for children, youth, and families, especially involving school achievement for impoverished children. Beginning outcomes suggest that in some school communities improvements can be seen in children's educational, health and family functioning (Wagner & Golan, 1996; Tetleman, 1996; Briar-Lawson et al., 1997). The advent of welfare reform and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) changes the lives of impoverished children, youth, and families and those who serve them. Because 67 percent percent of TANF recipients are children, their experiences with TANF may be felt in their classrooms and schools. Moreover, because employment now replaces income supports for poor families, many of the assumptions and change strategies underlying school communities as well as the helping professions may be altered. Such changes will also expand interprofessional collaboration with school communities and efforts to build improved educational, health and family outcomes.

This paper examines the implications of interprofessional collaboration as a strategy to address TANF and the effects of welfare to work for children, youth, and families and for school communities. It offers ways in which interprofessional initiatives on behalf of impoverished children, youth, and families can help offset some of the negative outcomes that are predicted to accompany the end of their food, health, income, and educational supports. An interprofessional capacity-building mission is outlined involving employment, income supports, economic and occupational development as well as new pedagogies. internships, and demonstration projects.

Interprofessional Developments and the Poor

Over the past decade, emergent university and community collaboratives have demonstrated the ways in which once separate disciplines, professions, and their agency-based counterparts can join forces to maximize outcome effectiveness for children and families. Works of Casto and Julia (1994), Adler and Gardner (1995), Hooper-Briar and Lawson (1996), Brandon and Meuter(1995), McCroskey and Einbinder (1998), Knapp & Associates(1998), and Jones and Zlotnick (1998) among many others reflect efforts to promote integrated service delivery and professional practice paradigms. While impoverished children have not always been the explicit focus of each interprofessional venture, they nonetheless have been central to much of the good work that has transpired. For example, at Ohio State, interprofessional collaboration at the University is mirrored in a demonstration project serving impoverished neighboring communities. Similarly, McCroskey and colleagues repositioned student interns to more effectively serve poor and challenged children, families, and their neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Texas A&M University with the Bryant School District has successfully partnered with agencies and generated improved outcomes for poor children and families. As a result, the collaborative received a national award.

Many of these partnerships have involved urban Universities and communities. Increasingly, attention is turning to the parallel needs of rural communities, especially as they invent ways to better address impoverished children and families (Jones & Zlotnick,1998). Such integrative thinking and practice Involving poor families in rural communities was the focus of participants in an interprofessional conference in upper New York state.

Collaboratives that simultaneously involve universities and communities and center on poor children, families, and neighborhoods represent historic milestones in interprofessional work. Furthermore, they help position university and community partners to become major problem solvers as poor families attempt to replace welfare with employment.

Many in the interprofessional practice movement have found that categorical disciplines, services, and funding streams impede effective approaches to children and families. Yet, few if any would want to see children and families set back when decategorized funding streams accompany policies that send children into poverty. Welfare reform through TANF can be seen as an historic opportunity or a major setback to collaborative movements to improve the lives of children and families. In fact, welfare reform, in the absence of collaborative, outcome focused practices, may prove harmful to children and families for decades to come (Einbinder, 1998).

The Advent and Implementation of TANF

With the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996, welfare parents across the nation have been told that they must find jobs. Income supports through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) no longer exist. Welfare benefits are now time limited, lasting no more than five years over a lifetime. In some states, the time limits are two or three years. Only 20 percent may remain with benefits on welfare because they have been deemed "hardship cases."