Meaningful Welfare Reform - More than just Money

America is the most generous society on earth in terms of money donated to charitable causes year after year. Whether it be a flood, earthquake, or other disaster, the United States of America is there to offer a helping hand. However, at home, the cost of maintaining individuals and families on welfare year after year is too much a burden for the taxpayer. Therefore, fundamental reform is needed. I offer a concept that will extend the hand of assistance to those in need, but also challenge them to become self sufficient.

The motivation behind these concepts is the underlying premise that life is not fair. Can everyone play basketball at the level of Michael Jordan? Can everyone drive a race car like Jeff Gordon? Can everyone make deals like Donald Trump? Certainly, life is NOT fair, but rather, life is what you make of it. How many hours did Michael Jordan spending playing basketball prior to going pro? How many races did Jeff Gordon not finish on his way to the NASCAR championship? Success requires effort, desire, and a little luck. Life requires effort.

Therefore, the proposal for welfare reform is to help those that seek assistance to understand that they control their future by the amount of effort they are willing to put into their situation. Many people fail because they make poor choices, or in some cases, many poor choices. The heart of any assistance program must be to assist those to learn how to make good choices and to be self sufficient.

Some of the specifics could be:

1. Require all adults on welfare to be enrolled in adult education classes
2. Provide training on making good choices. Not what to choose, but how to weigh the costs and benefits and long and short term consequences of choices.
3. Provide relationship training. How to relate to people in a positive manner, whether it be family, friends, potential employers, or other service providers.
4. Help them to identify and or build support systems within their extended families and communities.
5. Help them learn how to manage their emotions.
6. Teach them the expectations of society at large. They need to know the unspoken rules of society.
7. Challenge them to complete all of the above within a set time frame.

The best resource I have found on this is the work of Dr. Ruby K. Payne, "A framework for Understanding Poverty" 4th edition 2005 aha process inc. Much of the list above comes from the cited work.

Merely handing out money, without support is cruel and cold. If we want to truly assist those in need, we need to understand the entire situation and support in ways that extend beyond financial. A combination of government assistance along with faith based initiatives could be the solution we have been missing to impact much of the poverty in America today.

We need to challenge those that need assistance, but we also need to challenge ourselves to respond to the whole situation with a different perspective.