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The functioning of the U.S. social safety net as a support for low-income families depends on various means-tested programs and a system of both public agencies and nonprofit organizations. Using in-depth interviews (n = 5) and a survey of nonprofit employees (n = 73), we seek to understand the role of nonprofits in promoting equitable access to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Our findings reveal that public assistance programs are a necessary support for families, but that access is not always easy or equitable, and nonprofits form a protective layer of support providing resources and guidance for those most in need. Implications for policy and partnerships between the various components of the social safety net are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses upon factors related to the desire of social work students to work with the poor. It examines three sets of variables: students' perceptions of the causes of poverty, the best way of dealing with it, and preferred professional interventions. The sample consists of 514 graduating BSW students from Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and the United States. The findings indicate that interest to work with the poor is associated with less inclination to perceive poverty as caused by lack of motivation, effort, and responsibility; more inclination to view the expansion of state provision as the best means of dealing with poverty, less inclination to support its reduction; and more desire to employ policy practice and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the benefits of chartering public welfare in the U.S. The history of welfare bureaucracy can be traced directly to the New Deal when Harry Hopkins unilaterally decided to channel public assistance benefits through state agencies rather than rely on the caprices of private charitable organizations. Unanticipated by its architects, the institutionalization of public welfare through the 1935 Social Security Act would consign the poor to decades of inferior treatment. Today, public welfare has become synonymous with providing second-class service to second-class citizens, the vast majority of whom are minority women with dependent children. Chartering public welfare would allow citizens and professionals to establish organizations to provide essential financial and social services to families. To obtain a charter, such agencies would have to meet basic standards of service provision established by local government. Objectors to chartering public welfare will fall into two camps: The liberati will insist that the welfare-poor are too ignorant to make decisions about family finance and well-being and need a good dose of maternalism for their own good. Laissez-fair conservatives will insist the poor need the spur of their own poverty--that noxious public welfare dissuades the poor from becoming publicly independent. The ultimate rationale for chartering public welfare, however, is grounded in the realpolitik of poverty policy. The 1996 welfare reform prescribes a 5-year lifetime limit on receipt of federal aid with many states instituting shorter periods. Yet research on welfare-to-work programs has concluded that the majority of families on public assistance are poorer after aid is terminated due to time limits. Instead of time limits, welfare families require stable incomes and accelerated upward mobility, neither of which is a priority of public welfare departments.