by Tom Corbett
Joel said something like the following to support leaving eliminating poverty off the goals of welfare reform. He offered a rationale in his usual measured way with a slight Texas accent from his youth that could still be heard:
I don’t think we should focus on poverty and I will tell you why. When we were administering the AFDC program everyone blamed us for not doing enough to reduce poverty. Well, that program was not designed to eliminate poverty, but we got the blame anyways. If we now say that reducing poverty through TANF is our goal, we will simply be setting ourselves up for failure. It will take far more than what we have control over to make a dent in poverty. I want us to attack poverty as much as the next guy, but we do not have the tools yet.
The list of reform purposes covered many domains and specific measures. At some point we decided to formalize our thinking in a report. I won’t summarize substance here. Interested readers can go to the IRP web site to see this and other WELPAN products. The ends laid out encompassed a rather broad range of individual and family behaviors and circumstances. These WELPAN deliberations suggested to all of us that no longer thought of welfare, or its replacement, as an income maintenance program. We were beginning to think of TANF and other related systems as vehicles through which to strengthen families and communities. It was an ambitious agenda they were setting out but one that generated excitement among them.
Next, they decided that they wanted to go public with their conclusions. However, no one knew what kind of approval needed to be secured so that the final document could be published as an official WELPAN document. It took a while to finalize our product and give everyone an opportunity to vet it back in their home states before it was released in the late 1990s. As home states came to trust WELPAN the release of future reports seemed easier.
It was not clear at the time, but the character of this first product set up future discussions quite well. In terms of overarching themes, WELPAN would move on to an extensive dialogue about the transformative nature of services being provided through TANF. This dialogue would incorporate a clear rationale on why the silos between TANF and other service systems had to be broken down so that related service strategies could be merged. Occasionally, I would hear people say in various meetings around the country, “Well, as WELPAN has noted…” or see someone pull out and reference a WELPAN report. On occasion, one of my federal friends would ask what WELPAN thought on some issue. The little Midwest network was gaining traction.
Now, not all meetings were lofty discussions of macro-issues and strategies. There were plenty of discussions about details. How should states deal with a specific federal requirement? Was drug testing of recipients a good idea? And so on. Of course, I would waste time with my wit, which usually elicited the “look” from Ann, a whack upside the head from Unmi, and a sly chuckle from Joel and others.
Humor was critical, as was keeping a non-partisan and non-ideological approach to running the network. In the later years, Jennifer and I were co-facilitators. She was conservative, and I bordered on being a socialist. She was a Republican, while I liked to think of myself as independent but usually voted Democratic. Yet, I doubt if either of us betrayed our leanings and biases. I recall one day when a member from Iowa said the following. “Tom is the perfect facilitator for us since he doesn’t know anything.” While true, what I think she was trying to say is that I did not try to push any agenda on them. In a world where they were surrounded by people with strong leanings, Jennifer and I apparently proved refreshing. Besides, she was organized, unlike me, which Unmi and the members found refreshing.
When the issues were highly technical, we let them school each other. But when we were discussing issues on a more macro-level, I often would take a more active role. I would listen to what they were saying. Then I would do what I do best. I would lean back and muse something like the following, “Here is what I think you are saying.” Then I would launch into a (hopefully) short monologue trying to weave the discussion into a thematic whole. I would stop, pause until their blank expressions cleared and/or the laughter died down, and wait for feedback upon which we would further refine the thread of thought that had emerged. Mostly, this process would go back and forth as we worked toward a new synthesis of what TANF meant and where reform was going.
Pushing the group along was a persistent fear shared by all. When TANF was enacted, a block grant was created for providing states with the resources to carry out the program. This replaced the sum-sufficient funding mechanism (you received what was necessary to operate the program) that was in effect since the start of the program in the 1930s. The amount of the grant was based on AFDC caseloads as they existed in a given base year, 1994. When TANF came in the caseloads dropped dramatically in most states, some more than others. Still, almost all had a short-term windfall since the amount of the grant was based on a much larger caseload than they now served. This gave them resources with which to try out new ideas and approaches.
Two fears stalked the WELPAN discussions. First, the excess money would somehow be siphoned off for other purposes. Second, key politicians and others would forget about welfare as an issue. They could easily see politicians saying, “Oh, we dealt with that last year so let’s move on.” For the WELPAN group, they saw the struggle as just beginning.
There was a sense that the clock was ticking, prompting members to identify a single priority on which to focus. We had better reconceptualize what public assistance was all about or the TANF block grant would wither away in the face of inflation. Worse, it might be cut as caseloads continued to fall. This bleak prospect seemed inevitable even though the needs of those families they wanted to serve were, on average, more complex than in the past and thus require increasingly expensive interventions. They also wanted to reach out to non-traditional populations (at-risk youth) to intervene in a way that problems could be prevented before they became irreversible.
Having laid out some ambitious program purposes in the first report, the group expanded its thinking about a transformed approach to social assistance in several subsequent reports all of which are available at the IRP web site. In addition to the reports, we also developed a set of videos that captured some of our thinking on film. We typically called what we saw as emerging reform possibilities the “New Face of Welfare.”
At one point, we tried exploiting newer distance-learning technologies to reach officials at the county level. Kara Mikulich, a newly hired project officer at the Joyce Foundation, provided us with support to launch this concept. Kara got her undergraduate degree at Holy Cross College, where I would have gone if fate had not pushed me in a different direction. She then obtained her law degree at Stanford. Kara was a lovely person with a high tolerance for pain. She, unlike Unmi, forgave me all my sins and never fired me, not once. I always told Unmi that Kara was the nice program officer from Joyce.
In this project, Judy Bartfelt and I put together elaborate telecasts to reach locals who were sitting in studios throughout the Midwest and beyond. Judy was an IRP affiliate who had also earned her doctorate in Social Welfare at UW. The broadcasts were a mixture of prerecorded videos, live panel presentations, and Q&A sessions. The questions could come in via phone or fax, and the panelists would answer. Clearly, these events were very labor intensive. The quality was excellent, but we knew that to continue would absorb too much time and energy which I knew I did not have. Thus, this experiment did not last long. Besides, you could not generate the intimacy and creativity that existed within the WELPAN setting.
WELPAN helped bridge the communication gap between the knowledge producers and policymakers by bringing researchers and analytic types into an intimate setting where a true dialogue could take place. The resource people invited were often known to be good communicators and there was plenty of time to digest what they had to say. More to the point, the members could probe and ask questions to figure out if the substance of the research was applicable to their idiosyncratic situation. Even better, they could vet the mat
erial with their peers to further explore whether an idea was worth pursuing or how it might be modified to accommodate local circumstances.
Most of all, WELPAN gave the members a chance to think. Policymakers don’t have much time for thinking through what they are about. Neither do academics strangely enough. When we had European academics spending time at IRP they would ask me when we all sat around talking about ideas. Excuse me, I would respond with a chuckle, sit around talking about ideas! Sorry, you must have this place confused with a university, everyone is too busy here to think about stuff. It is worse in the real policy world where continuous meetings and immediate responses to crises consume all available time for each day. More than once I heard a member say, “I finally get a chance to lean back and think about things when I get on the plane to come to these meetings.”
While Theodora Ooms helped with the birthing process of Peer Assistance Network concept, her real fame was as the godmother of another model designed to facilitate communication between researchers and policymakers. As far back as the 1970s, she was most concerned that families were being overlooked in the policy-making process. We did economic impact analyses and environmental analyses, but new policies and programs were launched with little thought as to how they would affect families. Why not do something about that?
She developed a model called the Family Impact Seminars (FIS). At first, the model was used with the Washington congressional audience in mind. A topic would be chosen, speakers carefully selected, and brief talks would be made to the audience with a follow up Q&A session along with carefully prepared briefing reports. The speakers were selected if they were good communicators and were prepped to be as non-partisan as feasible. I had the good fortune to attend a couple of her Washington seminars and, after we got to know one another, Theo appointed me to her national advisory board.
Theo could only reach congressional staff members, not the legislators themselves. Still, staff members in Washington are critical to the policy process. Besides, her hidden agenda was to help those influencing policy to think about families in more critical ways. Don’t just look at the surface of a policy or program. Think deeper to assess the subtle, perhaps unintended, consequences as these innovations impacted families. She was trying to get people to approach policy in a different way, in a less narrow and provincial way. She wanted them to look at policies as they rippled through society.
By the early 1990s Theo could see that the locus of policy making was drifting toward the states. She decided to work on developing an FIS capability at that level. For some reason, she really wanted IRP involved in Wisconsin. Though IRP’s reputation on the national stage was stellar, we were tainted in Wisconsin, which is obvious if you had stayed awake while reading the prior chapters. But I went out to the training that Theo gave to potential state FIS coordinators, including a bright young new faculty member at UW named Karen Bogenschneider.
Karen is in perpetual overdrive. She goes at 110 percent all the time. She is a perfectionist in all she does, which is quite a lot. I get tired just watching her. In most ways, we are total opposites. I recall when she came into the university television studios just before we were going to do one of our distance learning programs. I was lounging there in my usual relaxed posture as she bounced up saying, “How can you be so calm, I would be a wreck right now.” I explained to her I have done all I can, it will now be what it will now be. I offered such profound or profoundly stupid utterances with annoying regularity. Despite our differences, we have co-authored a book together as well as several articles. In addition, I have been a close consultant in her work with the Family Impact Seminars.
I am not going through the entire history of the seminars. Originally, Karen and I were to run the Wisconsin seminars as a team. However, it turns out that my main contribution over the years has been to provide her with an endless supply of email jokes. She apparently has kept a running file of them for future use, or perhaps to blackmail me which wrongly assumes I am capable of shame. In those early days, she also kept reminding me that we had to be non-partisan. I would reply that I get it and five minutes later she would remind me again. I suspect she feared my reputation as a left-wing terrorist was true. Perhaps she thought I would unfurl a communist banner and begin singing leftist songs like The International or Solidarity Forever during an FIS seminar.
She did take a chance and let me help a little with the first one, and to speak at a couple of others. I do recall the first one vividly. The model back then was much shorter than it is now with the seminar finishing by noon. It so happens that I was scheduled to speak at a Wisconsin legislative hearing that very afternoon. I won’t even try to recall what the topic at the legislature was that day, probably something to do with welfare. However, I recall a Republican legislator on the panel I was about to address asking for some time to make a few comments before the proceedings were to start. She launched into a highly laudatory set of comments about this Family Impact Seminar event she attended that morning and suggested to her colleagues that they would be well advised to attend in the future. I thought, Damn, I think this is another winner.
Karen also uses a video snippet of me as part of her outreach campaign to others, particularly when seeking more money. Whenever I have been present she tells the audience that they must pay special attention to the next video bit since the expert shown demands a payment for each time it is used. This gets the audience’s attention as they wonder who this egomaniacal character might possibly be. Of course, the egomaniacal character is me! It gets a good laugh, so I don’t mind. But I am still waiting for those damn payments.
Over the years, I have been amazed at Karen’s energy and focus. She is one of the most organized persons I know and pays extraordinary attention to detail. I have wandered through life making it up as I go. She is the consummate planner. The FIS concept would not be what it is today if it were not for her dedication. Theo saw this as well. After launching the state-level FIS projects in several states she turned the whole thing over to Karen who created the Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars (PINFIS) which is now known as the Family Impact Network. This entity would be a platform for extending the FIS concept to additional states.
When I was in a position as a manager of IRP, I helped in any way I could. I saw FIS as a potentially important part of the institute’s outreach mission. Over time, the number of participating states reached about half of all states. She ran this network while running the Wisconsin state seminars and earning a named professorship in the School of Human Ecology. She is also recognized as a leading expert of family policy, having written a classic textbook and being asked to speak worldwide on the topic.
A typical Wisconsin FIS day looks as follows: it starts well before the actual seminar day when Karen works with an advisory group comprised of state legislators from both parties and a few other key state informants. As a group, they select a topic for the next seminar…a topic they know will be on the front burner that year. Karen then scours for experts who have researched the issue employing accepted scientific methods. She then vets them carefully to determine that they do not have a partisan reputation and that they can deliver their message in an objective manner. Working with them, she develops a briefing report that summarizes the information they will deliver. If needed, she will prep them on how best to communicate with policymakers. Unfortunately, many in the academy do not have a clue about how to do this.
On the day of the seminar, there will be relatively brief presentations followed by Q&A. The audience at this point includes legislators, legislative aids, executive agency officials, interested stakeholders, and academics. The press is not invited so that legislators and all participants can feel comfortable. This is followed up with a lunch for interested legislators only. Then there are break-out sessions for each speaker where the topic can be explored more fully. Depending on interest, one-on-one meetings are set up with the governor or his staff as well as top executive officials, if warranted. Final
ly, video and audio recordings are available for legislators who could not attend or would want to relive the experience.
The sessions are remarkably well attended by legislators who give them extremely high marks for objectivity, scientific rigor, relevance, and usefulness. In short, a remarkable number of legislators love and overtly endorse the seminars. In fact, they rate them higher than other sources of input except for their constituents whom, after all, they work for. Why all this positive feedback, you might ask?
Here is my best guess. Politicians are surrounded by people with agendas, people who seem to want to help, but are peddling one thing or another. True, sometimes a legislator likes what is being peddled but that is not always the case. They spend their days embroiled in a highly partisan cauldron where talking with people on the other side of the aisle is now tantamount to treason. They simply cannot escape this environment where highly scripted positions and beliefs are a daily fare. For them, access to quality, objective input is very hard to come by. Yet, the more serious among them know that policy choices not backed up by good evidence can easily be bad investments.
The seminars are a breath of fresh air. Participants are exposed to rigorous information imparted in an objective fashion. They get to listen to experts who know how to talk to them, who are not trying to make them feel stupid or put them down. They even get to indirectly interact with the enemy (members of the opposite political party) in a safe venue. This gives them a chance to see the concerns and interests of their day-to-day opponents.
