The Challenges of Implementing The GAIN Program
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) no longer exists. A new era has arrived and the nation has moved in a completely different direction. In 1996, new legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, was passed. Under this new Act, " The state and local governments wide –ranging autonomy, discretion and responsibility for serving poor women and children were returned to them. It does this by repealing AFDC, the nation’s welfare employment program (the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Training Program), and the AFDC emergency assistance program. In its place, Congress and the president have authorized an unprecedented amount of block grant funding to states through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)".
In this paper, I will briefly identify provisions and rules under TANF, identify administrative policy and programs set-up to deal with the new TANF regulations, and discuss implementation of the Greater Avenues through Independence Program (GAIN) in relationship to administrative issues at the Regional Administrator (RA) level.
TANF/CalWorks/GAIN
In 1998, Los Angeles County implemented new rules under the TANF program. "TANF takes welfare in entirely new directions by creating a welfare cliff: a five-year, lifetime limit for receiving assistance from federal TANF funds. A state’s failure to comply with this requirement will result in its block grant being reduced by 5%." Through its California Work Opportunities and Responsibilities to Kids (CalWorks) program, cash aid is available to needy families who meet certain requirements. Under CalWorks counties are required to enroll single parent families in welfare...
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...s and what and how they feel about the services of case managers. Provides comprehensive overview of consumers opinions to help in quality service.
Stocker, Robert P. and The George Washington University and Wilson A. Laura and
University of Baltimore. "Verifying Compliance: Social Regulation and Welfare Reform." Public Administration Review vol. 58 (Sept/Oct 1998) 395-405
Examination study of Maryland’s welfare reform system. Two procedures are
given to aid with enforcing social regulations. Includes verification and program design, administrative concerns and lessons for policy analysts.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services " LA GAIN overview"
http://dpssweb.co.la.ca.us/gain/overview.htm
Overview of Los Angeles County GAIN program. List and discusses participant eligibility requirements, services available, and timelines.
In Carlos Chavez’s Sinfonia India, he makes a point to use actual themes he researched from the Huichol Indians of the state of Nayarit, the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, and a Seri melody for the finale. In this piece, Carlos Chavez makes a point to include an obscure native percussion instrument called the “Yaqui”. He makes a point to use various mixed meters (5/8 2/4 and 5/8 3/4). The colors that Carlos manages to get out of the orchestra, particularly through meter and percussion, are different than anything I’ve heard, yet he manages to keep it tied to understandable western music.
Susser, P.A. (1985). Legal Issues Raised by Drugs in the Workplace. Labor Law Journal, 36, 42-54.
The main focus for the federal governments revamping of drug screening to be able to better determine the timeframe in which the drugs were used and the accuracy of the test. Also, the idea of the new test is to deter workers from finding ways around testing positive and also to stop the inaccuracies of falsely discrediting workers. As they explain with "testing workers' hair, saliva and sweat, testers are able to draw more accurate conclusions which will lessen the false positives" (TAP, pg 2) this will enable the employer to decide if the drug usage did affect or cause the outcome of the negative actions. Hesitation from the federal government to put these tests in place is also derived from the idea that the alternative tests would provide the employers with unnecessary information as to the timeframe of consumption (TAP, pg 1) thus giving them the upper hand in taking and "cheating" the test. At this point, it is under review for how far a company can go with drug testing without infringing on workers privacy. Because testing urine for illegal substances for example can not differentiate between consumption of marijuana for same day usage or five days before an incident occurs.
The work place is not meant to be boring. For most working is a way to provide for themselves and their families. Drug testing for employees will solve many problems that not only occur at work but as well as in society. Drug testing is only performed on about 1/3 of all applicants in America. The effect of substance abuse in the work place is a large problem employers face when issues arise with new employees or veteran employees.
Dolgoff, R. & Feldstein, D. (2003). Understanding social welfare (7th ed). New York, Allen & Bacon
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program was developed to help needy families become self-sufficient.¹ The TANF program was created by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996.² TANF was created by The Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) out of the preexisting Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which itself was created by Congress in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act.² There were some notable differences between the PRWORA and the TANF when it was created, the most noted differences were that the TANF allowed states to use TANF dollars to support child care, for job search support, social services,etc. and there were no requirements on how much could be spent on cash aid directly.² Also, the entitlement aspect of the PRWORA ended and states were not required to serve all eligible families/individuals.²
The concept of Case management has was first introduced in the 1970’s by insurance companies as a way to monitor and control costly health insurance claims, commonly created by a catastrophic accident or illness (Jacob & Cherry, 2007). Today almost every major health care organization has a case management program managing and directing the use of health care services for their clients. Also, case management by payer organizations is recognized as external case management.
HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999, researchers had discovered that HIV is derived from chimpanzees native to west equatorial Africa. This epidemic is spreading throughout countries and infecting 14 thousand victims every day. Learning about HIV includes knowing how to contract the virus, understanding most of the people it affects, how to prevent the spread of it, and knowing what treatments are available.
According to IC & RC, Case Management is defined as, “activities intended to bring services, agencies, resources, or people together within a planned framework of action toward the achievement of established goals. It may involve liaison activities and collateral contacts” (Herdman, John W., 6th Edition). Case management is a concerted effort of various professionals in the human social services network that assess’, plans, implements, coordinates,
First of all, business intelligence analysis requires the capturing of information and storing in a single location for effective data analysis. Currently, data analysis is supported by transactional systems, business specific data marts, and other ad-hoc processes. Information is distributed making it difficult and time-consuming to access. Business teams have adapted to this environment by creating user maintained databases and manual “work-arounds” to support new types of reporting and analysis. This has resulted in inconsistent data, redundant data storage, significant resource use for maintenance, and inefficient response to changing business needs.
When employees get hired, they get a drug test due to the fact that the drug testing can prove if the person they are hiring is a good person for their business. For an example “Approximately eighty-one percent of companies in the United States administer drug testing to their employees.” Drug testing also proves that people who passes it are clean and responsible people who the company can trust on doing their job well done and showing overall percentage of the US using drug testing (Chodorow). People who cheat on a drug test and gets a job will later ruin their job of getting into accidents during working and or start a fight with the boss or coworkers unknowingly just because they were high on drugs. That is why companies strive to do drug tests every time they hire an employee now due to the fact that they don’t want to be reliable for an employee who isn’t responsible and trustworthy of their time at their company. Which it will affect the company financially once employees gets hurt on their job. An employee who is not a drug abuser can really benefit a company by not causing trouble for themselves getting hurt in the company and also the business not being reliable for anything that is caused by the employee; who was not responsible. Another example is that reports confirm that 80% of those injured in “serious drug related accidents are innocent coworkers.” And after it began requiring accidents drug
When it comes to the workplace privacy debate, employees question what rights employers have pertaining to privacy. This means there is a fine line between supporters and critics. Debates on this subject are happening everyday in a large percentage of companies throughout the United States. Supporters mainly consist of standard employees in a company; they want the laws that apply to privacy outside of the workplace to work inside as well. The critics are mainly upper management in companies, they believe “It is absolutely essential for employers to monitor their workers closely in order to encourage productivity and suppress potential problems” (Workplace Privacy). This usually happens through monitoring emails, phone calls, and even Internet use. Some employers have taken it as far as punishing workers for their activities taken place off the clock.
Drug abuse in the workplace is a very serious challenge faced by employers. The reason that drug abuse within the workplace is so serious is because it can negatively affect the company itself, the employee that is abusing the drugs, and fellow co-workers within that area. Even though we have not found the answer to completely eliminate drug abuse and bringing drugs into the workplace, drug testing is one of the most effective methods for employers to eliminate the potential harm that employees could bring into the workplace. Many variables are at risk when dealing with drug abuse in the workplace such as the quality and productivity of the goods and services offered by the company, the liability of the company
As drugs such as marijuana continue to legalize, the United States of America jeopardizes the safety of the citizens. Today, people have a construed belief that drugs allow a person to become more intellectual. Because of this distorted view of drugs, both teens and adults are relying on drugs to accomplish their duties such as their jobs. To guarantee the safety of the employees, the government enforces the “General Duty Clause” of the OSH Act of 1970. Under the OSH Act of 1970, companies are responsible in creating a better working environment. As much as employees disagree with drug testing, drug testing helps create a better working environment.
Howard Dresner of the Garner Group introduced the term “Business Intelligence” in 1989 and defined it as, “a set of concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems (Debortoli et al, 2014), thus it is an all-encompassing field that uses analytics to process big data. BI is driven by data. It includes data generation and analysis that businesses need to make an informed decision. Additionally, BI is not strictly technological, since it relies on processes and methods (Junk, 2015)