Tracking County Responses to Welfare Reform

The "Tracking County Responses to Welfare Reform" project is an inter-institutional effort by 11 UNC campuses to understand better the decentralization of policy-making powers and autonomy in North Carolina counties after the “devolution” of power by the 1996 National and 1997 State legislation.  Unlike most research on welfare reform that evaluates programmatic results and tracks program recipients, this project examines how counties transform their organizations, policies, and decision making as they implement welfare reform due to devolution.  In addition, the “Tracking” project highlights how North Carolina counties are spending TANF (Temporary Assistant to Needy Family) dollars brought about by the increased use of block grant funding.  Counties are the primary unit of study, with a focus on county policy choices and implementation capacity.  The project is funded by grants from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation to the Odum Institute for Social Science Research.  The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, provided initial seed funds for the project.

             The research and information gathering is taking place in three phases.The first phase is the collection of 23 in-depth county reports conducted by Faculty Associates from 11 UNC institutions across North Carolina.These studies provide a rich, contextual look at the ramifications of “devolving” power to counties, how county actors respond to changes in responsibilities and workload, and the differing goals of major county actors.The in-depth reports were completed in Summer 2000.The reports and general themes from the reports are available on this website.

The second phase is an effort to gather information from all 100 NC Counties.Five county actors were contacted for their views and opinions.These include (with response rates):Members of the County Commissioners (29%), County Managers (65%), Chairs of DSS Boards (65%), DSS Directors (67%), and Work First Administrators (70%).The survey results provide critical and previously unexplored information concerning how county-state relationships have changed as a result of the decentralization of power to NC counties.

Phase three involves the tracking of federal, state, and local TANF dollars (including local matching) to each NC County and how the Counties spent these funds.Various stakeholders, especially the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, suggested these fiscally focused efforts to us.The project's is finishing up data gathering during the summer of 2002 and will announce "tracking the money" findings in the Fall of 2002.

This current study is part of a projected long-term research agenda to track welfare reforms over several years.The results and findings of the present “Tracking” project were released to all interested stakeholders in a recent book, entitled "Meeting Challenges: North Carolina Responds to Welfare Reform..  The project held a policy symposium to celebrate the publication of this book.  That symposium was held on May 14, 2002 and over 50 academics and NC policymakers were in attendance. In addition, we intend to make all information available on this website while still preserving confidentiality requirements and standards.  Information and implications generated by the “Tracking” project will be important to county and state policymakers, advocacy groups, the press, academics, and other stakeholders.

             Dr. Deil Wright [Political Science, (919) 962-0414; dswright@mindspring.com] and Dr. Phil Cooke [Social Work (919) 962-6531; pwcooke@email.unc.edu] both at UNC-Chapel Hill, are the co-principal investigators.  The Project Director is Christine Kelleher [cak@email.unc.edu] and the Assistant Project Director is Susan Webb Yackee [swebb@email.unc.edu].  Both are doctoral students at UNC-CH in Political Science.