Enforcement, Compliance, and Disputes in Welfare-to-Work Programs

A Multilevel Model of Client Participation in Intensive Family Preservation Services

“…Although we examined a wide range of predictor variables, we would like to include even more. For instance, variations in treatment participation may relate to case-level differences in service characteristics (e.g., types, amounts, and duration of services); client perceptions of the perceived relevance, demands, and efficacy of the intervention Kazdin and Wassell 1999); the strength of the helping alliance (Dore and Alexander 1996); and the strategies workers use to engage clients and attain compliance (Hasenfeld and Weaver 1996). Workers' expectations regarding client participation and outcomes are probably influential as well.…”

“…Organizational ideologies are thought to shape the helping process and roles (Hasenfeld and Weaver 1996). Just as workers' beliefs guide their approaches to families, certain assumptions underlie the structure and emphasis of FPS programs; these include assumptions about the origins of and solutions to problems related to child maltreatment, the nature of effective helping relationships, and the types of organizational structures and supports that facilitate effective casework.…”

Organizational Responses to Social Policy: The Case of Welfare Reform

“…For case mangers, attaining compliance is a determinant factor in their ability to meet the mandatory requirements of "work first." Threats of sanctions require far less investment in time and energy to attain compliance than through establishing and maintaining rapport and trusting relationships with the clients (Hasenfeld & Weaver, 1996). Sanctions are widely used.…”

The Public Administration Case against Participation Income

“…When clients fail to abide by conditions attached to the receipt of a grant they normally face some form of sanction -typically in the form of partial or complete withdrawal of the benefit itself (Handler 2004). The link between monitoring and sanctioning appears straightforward, and this has arguably had the effect that strategies of moral persuasion to induce behavioral compliance and change have been relatively undervalued (Mead 1996;Hasenfeld and Weaver 1996;Riccio and Hasenfeld 1996). However, recent research casts doubt on various assumptions implicit in the design and operation of common approaches to sanctioning welfare recipients (Wilson et al 1999;Hasenfeld et al 2004;Handler and Hasenfeld, forthcoming).…”

“…This in turn has potentially disastrous implications concerning the subsequent assessment of eligibility, sanctioning, and so forth. The situation becomes more complicated if we move from pure "people-processing" technology to the "people-changing" requirements inherent in workfare's ambitious activation goals (Hasenfeld and Weaver 1996). As has been reported throughout the relevant literature, agencies embracing an eligibilitycompliance culture find it hard simultaneously to endorse notions of self-sufficiency (Bane and Elwood 1994).…”