Law Commons^™

Book Review, Chad J. Schatzle

Scholarly Works

Welfare's Forgotten Past: A Socio-Legal History of the Poor Law is a timely reminder of society's legal duty to the poor. In an era of global economic turmoil, with recent welfare reform and heated debates over the extension of unemployment benefits here in the United States, it is easy to forget that laws for the relief of poverty have roots reaching back more than 400 years. Author Lorie Charlesworth, Reader in Law and History at Liverpool John Moores University, focuses her book on the poor law-a historical, English system derived largely from the seventeenth-century laws of settlement and removal, which …

Bearing Witness To Economic Injustices Of Undocumented Immigrant Families: A New Class Of "Undeserving" Poor, Francine J. Lipman

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Bad" Mothers And Spanish-Speaking Caregivers, Annette R. Appell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Uncharted Terrain: The Intersection Of Privatization And Welfare, Rebecca L. Scharf, Henry Freedman, Mary R. Mannix, Marc Cohan

Scholarly Works

Welfare, a mainstay of legal services practice, is cutting edge again. Clients need help negotiating a system that devolution, discretion, and privatization have changed radically. Public officials need help in this new environment to "get it right," so that programs achieve the laudable goals ascribed to them.

Privatization creates special challenges for welfare advocates. New players, ranging from neighborhood nonprofit organizations to churches to multinational corporations, are making decisions that affect clients' vital interests. New legal issues, ranging from state action to public contracting compliance, can arise. Accountability and transparency, difficult to achieve in the governance of traditional welfare programs, …

Child Care For Families Leaving Temporary Assistance For Needy Families, Rebecca L. Scharf, Sujatha Jagadeesh Branch, Cynthia Godsoe, Sherry Leiwant, Roslyn Powell, Cary Lacheen

Scholarly Works

Since Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in 1996, the welfare rolls have decreased by more than 40 percent. While unemployment and poverty rates have declined, families who leave welfare generally earn low wages and remain below the poverty level. Because families leaving welfare are mostly single mothers with young children, child care is critical to their ability to work outside the home. Low-income parents trying to make ends meet, as well as employers of low-wage workers, emphasize the importance of appropriate, affordable child care in enabling women who leave welfare …

The Wages Of Welfare Reform: A Report On New York City's Job Centers, Rebecca L. Scharf, Barry Bassis, Lorraine Doran, Benjamin Dewitt Duke, Donald Friedman, Matthew Schneider

Scholarly Works

Waving the banner of welfare reform, President Clinton signed historic legislation in August 1996 abolishing poor families' federal entitlement to direct cash assistance and replacing it with a decentralized system of conditional block grants to the states. To qualify for these grants, most states—including New York—overhauled their own welfare systems and added rigorous new welfare-to-work requirements (the most prominent of which is frequently called "workfare"), as well as other programs which became conditions of eligibility for assistance. Not surprisingly, New York City, with one of the largest and most concentrated welfare populations in the United States, has become a crucible …