Utah has one of the 10 worst state welfare systems in the country and is showing little promise of improving, according to a report by a national advocacy group for the needy and working poor.
Utah has misused the latitude given all states under the 1996 welfare reform act by imposing a 36-month lifetime limit on welfare benefits, the report asserted, by having an extremely low percentage of poor families who receive help and by placing restrictions on the state's welfare-to-work program.
The original idea behind reform was to give states more discretion because local agencies are closer to recipient families and therefore supposedly better than the federal government at monitoring welfare programs, said Deepak Bhargava, director of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support.
"But state action over the past five years shows that unless states are required to do the right thing, they often do not," Bhargava said.
The advocacy group is a coalition of organizations in 40 states working to reduce poverty. It is issuing the report as governors from around the country are meeting in Washington, D.C., and just before Congress is to begin considering whether to reauthorize the welfare reform act.
The "States Behaving Badly" report gives ample evidence that some states just aren't up to the task and need federal regulations to ensure that they do the right thing, said Melanie Bush, a research analyst who compiled the Utah data.
Administrators in the state Department of Workforce Services, which oversees welfare programs in Utah, had not reviewed the report by Friday afternoon and declined comment until they do so. Utah was one of the first state's in the nation to implement a welfare-to-work program and has been viewed as a pioneer in its efforts to employ residents.
According to the advocates' report, there wasn't a single state that didn't have at least one bad score on their list of 11 measurements. The 10 worst had adopted at least six "extremely punitive policies" and lacked a "meaningful minimum standard."
Particularly egregious about Utah, Bush said, is welfare mothers must go back to work after a newborn is one day old. Another 11 states require parents to work when an infant reaches three months.
"Utah is one of three states that will not allow any circumstance to count as a good cause for non-compliance," she said. "There are no exceptions, at least not on the books, for that or for taking time to care for an ill child or family member."
The policy is punitive, does not help people get off welfare and runs counter to trends in the latest census, which showed that half of all mothers in the country stay home with a child under one year, Bush said.
"State policies have resulted in extreme requirements for low-income mothers that fly in the face of the lack of infant care and child development research that shows the benefits of parents being able to stay at home with their infants," the report states.
Utah also has one of the widest gaps between the actual number of poor people in the state and the number of those who receive public assistance. More than 38,000 people live below the federal poverty line (about $16,400 per year for a family of three) but only 30 percent, or 11,430, are receiving assistance, Bush said.
The report states that those in Utah who are rotated off welfare because they've reached the three-year time limit leave without much chance of making it on their own.
Nearly half are depressed.
22 percent experience some kind of traumatic stress after leaving.
32 percent have a learning disability.
45 percent do not have a high school diploma or GED.
43 percent have a limited work history.
42 percent report physical health problems.
17 percent say they have been involved in some kind of severe domestic abuse in the previous 12 months.
The other nine states listed as having the worst welfare policies are: Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Idaho, which the report listed as having the worst system of all.
E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com