Evaluating the welfare safety net: New roles for faith-based organizations

By Susan Williams

Reingold

Welfare reform, the study found, has increased modestly the demand for services from FBOs in provision of two types of help—rental assistance and emotional support.

Welfare reform in the ’90s included a new law, known as “charitable choice,” to encourage state governments to contract with faith-based organizations (FBOs) for the delivery of social services to the poor. This shift in the relationship between government and FBOs gathered momentum in 2001 when President George W. Bush established an Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He also created centers in five cabinet departments to identify and remove barriers that might prevent religious groups from receiving federal funding to provide social services to the poor.

Maureen Pirog and David Reingold are using data on recipients in Indiana’s welfare reform programs—the new Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children—to compare and study the effects of new policies. They recently published their first related report, “Has the Social Safety Net Been ALTARed? New Roles for Faith-Based Organizations.” Their findings may hold significance to policy decision makers.

Pirog is co-director of IU’s Institute for Family and Social Responsibility; Reingold is on leave from IU as assistant professor to serve as director of research and policy development at the Corporation for National and Community Service—an independent federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps, the National Service Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America. Their project used data from Indiana welfare recipients and was funded by the Joyce Foundation, Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration and the Indiana Township Association.

In their report, Pirog and Reingold note that FBOs have a long history of providing hospitals, schools, clubs and welfare services to members of their own faiths. The authors also point out that the use of public funds by FBOs is not new. In the past, however, FBOs were not allowed to use public monies to fund programs with specific religious content.

“Recent legislative changes now allow for the funding of social service programs with an explicit religious content for the needy by religious organizations,” explained Pirog. “This is a significant change in policy and some people object to it because they believe in separation of church and state.”

Those objections are likely to grow louder and the issues hotter. In January, the current federal administration proposed that religious organizations be allowed to build or renovate facilities with federal housing money, as long as the buildings shelter social services along with religious activities.

Pirog and Reingold’s research was designed to look at the actual delivery of social services by religious and secular groups in an attempt to answer several questions about who is using faith-based social service providers and if legislation has created a higher demand for services from FBOs.

“We wanted to determine who is being served by religious groups,” Pirog said. “While we found that religious groups serve the most seriously disadvantaged members of the welfare population, we also found that very few of the poor go to a religious group alone to get help. Religious groups are usually the third or fourth type of provider from which the poor seek help after friends and family, the government, and secular, community-based organizations.”

The researchers also looked at whether welfare reform per se had increased the demand for services from FBOs. According to Pirog, they found only a modest increase in provision of two types of help—rental assistance and emotional support.

In terms of future policy-making, another result was of particular significance, according to Pirog. In a survey of actual providers—both faith-based and secular—that accompanied the welfare recipient data analysis, the researchers discovered that nearly 27 percent of FBOs self reported that they have tightened eligibility criteria, compared to 8.3 percent of non-profit, secular agencies. The reasons, according to the report, are suggested by anecdotal evidence that some FBOs wonder if clients are abusing generosity. Others are concerned that many of the people they assist are not members of their congregation.

“In the wake of welfare reform, we did find that religious organizations were significantly more likely than secular social service providers to have tightened their eligibility criteria for the receipt of help,” said Pirog. “This is of concern when poverty and unemployment rates are on the rise.

“Unless the government increases funding for social services, which seems unlikely, then moving funds to religious groups will be at the expense of either secular social service providers or local governments that are now in the social service forefront. This could well change the composition of the types of services that are offered to the poor, and this shift in funding may or may not actually increase the social services provided by religious groups.

“In some cases, it is possible that religious organizations could use new federal funding to offer services that had previously been subsidized by the congregation,” she said. “If that occurs, then services provided to the poor will clearly be reduced.”

Pirog and Reingold are working on another paper regarding welfare reform. It will look more closely at the effectiveness of the services provided by religious organizations as reported by the users of social services from both secular and FBOs.