THE WALK A MILE PROJECT
INTERVIEW BY DARLENE RUSH ALLISON
The Walk a Mile (WAM) Project placed state welfare recipients with their state legislators in Olympia for four weeks last fall so that they could walk a mile in each other's shoes. It is currently launching a similar program on the federal level, connecting welfare recipients across the country with their representatives in the US Congress. The project was started by Natasha Grossman, a social worker with the University of Washington's Northwest Resource Center for Children, Youth, and Families; Deborah Smith, an administrator at the Institute for Public Policy and Management, and Alicia Straub, a UW student and a current welfare recipient. WAM has been awarded a grant by the MacArthur Foundation to expand the project nationally.
What is the mission of the Walk a Mile project?
Smith: The mission of the project is public education. We're trying to educate the public to the realities of who is on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and what their lives are like. We are also educating recipients to the realities of their legislators, and how they develop the policies that recipients have to live by. Hopefully, this experience will bring them together.
What are the guidelines for the matches?
Smith: The matches last four weeks. We ask that during that period they speak on the phone at least once a week and usually it is the responsibility of the legislator to call the recipient. At least once they get together for an in-person activity. Some people went to a food bank together or to the welfare office or to a grocery store to buy groceries with food stamps. The goal was to foster some interpersonal action and communication and to develop a relationship. Some legislators found they could only do the minimum and some went way beyond, inviting their recipient to go to Olympia to see what their lives were like.
Also, we had a Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) caseworker break out what the legislator's food stamp allowance would be based on that family's size and asked the legislator to use a food stamp-equivalent budget for a month. At the federal level, the US members of Congress are much more reluctant to participate for four weeks in the food stamp budget, so we are changing that to two weeks. Some may change that component, or cheat on it, but there are some who will be really diligent. We're requesting that they try it. It's the only controllable factor we can give them to artificially experience limited resources and poverty.
What are some examples of what a food stamp budget would be?
Smith: The average allotment for a family of two was $210 a month, a family of three was $275, and a family of four was allotted $333 a month.
Have you noted any changes in attitudes at the state level by either recipients or legislators because of the WAM project?
Smith: We've heard from people who spend a lot of time down in Olympia that the attitude since this project happened is more positive and open and that there is now a dialogue between recipients and legislators. Recipients are being included and their testimony is being listened to. Recipients are now there testifying, when they were reluctant to before. They are feeling more empowered to speak up and the atmosphere is more open to receiving their input.
We have also received comments from legislators who were traditionally liberal about welfare policy saying that they now understand this issue better after putting their own family on a food stamp budget for a month and getting to know a recipient. They have a better understanding now. Kathy Moorefield from the Fair Budget Campaign has said that one thing she noticed about the project was that even legislators who were not involved and didn't sign up to be matched were still very aware of how the project was impacting public opinion. She also said the project had energized a lot of people already active in promoting welfare policy.
Grossman: The media's reporting of the issues of welfare and the images of welfare recipients hasn't been balanced in the past, and was very negative. This project has provided an opportunity for the media and the general public to see some real welfare recipients - the struggles and realities of their lives. It has been reported to us that the media in Olympia is now interested in hearing both sides and covering what welfare recipients have to say. They are doing a more balanced portrayal now.
How many legislators have you placed with welfare recipients?
Smith: At the state level we had 21 matches. At the federal level, which will take place in April, we're still developing support which will be firmed up next week. Senators Patty Murray and Slade Gorton and Representatives Jennifer Dunn and Jim McDermott are taking the lead. We're getting them to sign on to a "Dear Colleague" letter as a general invitation to participate in the project. Our goal is to get the whole Washington State delegation to participate.
Will you be focusing just on Washington state legislators on the federal level?
Smith: No, the whole country. We have people from other state delegations who are helping. Also, we're getting help from groups in other states to find recipients in those districts who want to participate in being matched.
After the project's federal experiment in April, what are your plans for continuing your work?
Grossman: We have definite aspirations as to where we would like to take this project. It would take about 18 months to do a successful national project, and to do it thoroughly by developing a community training packet that we can give to communities that want to use this model as a public policy tool. That is our eventual goal.
This idea can be a model for any type of thing to match legislators with welfare recipients, business people with unemployed or welfare recipients, or match people without health care with hospital administrators. It's a model to match people who don't always talk with one another and get them communicating.....
What is going to happen in all likelihood is that the federal government is going to block- grant welfare money out to the states. We're going to need to have state legislators educated as to what they should do with the block grant money at the state level. We would like to see this project launch that system.
Some people have a stereotype of what an average welfare recipient is. Many believe a welfare recipient is a young mother, a minority, has been on welfare all her life, has several children and those children will be on welfare all their lives. Could you speak to that perception?
Straub: According to the 1992 tracking report from DSHS, the average welfare recipient in Washington state is a 26 year old woman; 95 percent are adult, female heads of households and the other 5 percent are either two-parent families or single-father families. She has 1.7 children and she is white. She is experiencing welfare for the first time in her adult life. She will be on welfare an average spell of about 18 months, and the average total time is about two years and two months. National statistics are similar to our state's statistics.
There is a very common phenomena that a family will be on welfare for a period of time, then the adult in the house will get a job for a period of months. It is usually a low-paying job with no benefits. Then, her child may get chicken pox, her car breaks down, or something will happen which makes her lose her job and she will be back on welfare, but for a shorter period of time. So in that sense, there is a certain amount of cycling in and out of the system. About 16 percent of welfare recipients are on welfare for five years or longer, so the majority is off within two years and most within five years.
A family income study done by the Washington Institute for Public Policy at Evergreen State College shows that 60 percent of women on welfare have experienced some sort of domestic violence, sexual or physical abuse either as a child or an adult, and are still traumatized by it. We could say that they are fleeing from an abusive relationship.
Welfare is doing what it was designed to do. It is a temporary safety net for women and children who are in a period of crisis. That crisis is caused by health problems, domestic violence, by being abandoned, by unfair child support enforcement laws, and to a certain extent by lack of jobs that pay a decent wage.
President Clinton recently stated that one of the first things he'd like to look at concerning welfare reform is what has become known as deadbeat fathers. Is that responsive to the issue of welfare reform?
Straub: It would definitely respond to some families' problems. But we also need to keep in mind that women who are poor may also have absent fathers that are poor. For instance, I'm a welfare recipient and my son's father is a student. My child support award is $180 a month which he pays to the state because I'm on AFDC. But if I weren't on AFDC, that $180 a month wouldn't be enough to support myself and my child.
The families who would be helped by Clinton's proposal are those who are divorced with an absent parent employed who has adequate money to pay support. It does not speak to a certain percentage of people on AFDC. There's a whole group of woman who would need help anyway. Child support enforcement is not an alternative to the AFDC program, but it may lower the numbers. It is also very expensive to enforce, to find them and collect from them, especially if it's across state lines.
As a welfare recipient, in 1993 I received a little over $2,000 from the federal government. From the state government, I got a little more, but it all totaled up to $4,700. That enabled me to stay in school and ensure that my son was warm and fed. It will enable me to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June. That will enable me to go on and get a job or go to graduate school or whatever I can do on my own. I will have been on welfare for a little over two years, about the average.
Grossman: I think it is a very important point that welfare recipients are not living high on the hog. They are living well below the poverty line. Also, I'd like to underscore that when we talk about the welfare budget, we are not talking about a lot of money. AFDC, which is the cash assistance program, is one percent of the federal budget. The food stamp program is 3.4 percent. They are proportionately very tiny parts of the budget, less than 5 percent. Cutting welfare programs is clearly not going to balance the budget.
Straub: I believe very strongly, having worked with lots of women, that there are women and children literally being kept alive by the welfare program. Our federal tax dollars are not going down a rathole. A lot of really wonderful things are happening with these programs. Welfare is an important part of our federal budget and should be on our national agenda.
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Contents on this page were published in the April/May, 1995 edition of the Washington Free
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