Confessions of a Wayward Academic

by Tom Corbett

  I am reminded of a study we did in Dane County (where Madison is located) a few years hence. By this time Mary Ann Cook, the woman who initially dragged me into the welfare wars, now held a top county-level position. She was worried. The county could demonstrate very few work placements despite spending a lot of money for that purpose. I recall a conversation that went something like the following: “Mary Ann, this is Dane County. The unemployment rate is less than 2 percent. I cannot walk a couple of blocks without seeing a dozen help wanted signs. Even if you manacled your clients to their beds and forbade them to look for jobs upon pain of death, more of them would have gotten hired than you are claiming. Believe me, many are finding work, you just don’t know it. And if you don’t know about it, you can’t get credit for it.”

  What was happening was not hard to figure out. Clients would be sent to another agency across town to obtain employment help. When they got a job, probably before reaching this other agency, no one reported this fact back to the initiating caseworker. Often, the client just seemed to disappear from the agencies’ purview. No one systemically followed up to see what had happened. This was a fundamental communication failure among agencies poorly linked together in a very imperfect system. With this simple insight, Mary Ann and crew would be off and running to create an integrated welfare-work agency of its own.

  A few years down the road, I walked into Dane County’s new integrated work center, which also housed the former welfare functions. I asked Mary Ann to help me with a video I was developing for a project at the time. I started to explain that I wanted to capture the culture change from the old isolated welfare system to the new way low-income women with children are treated when they walk through the door of a full-service agency. I thought this would require some discussing and perhaps a script. But within seconds Mary Ann stopped me and said, “I know exactly what you want.”

  She called over a frontline worker who had been with the agency for a while and gave a brief description of my vision, perhaps discovery as Hollywood’s next hot director was not far off. The woman sat down at a desk with another worker to play the client. The camera crew went to work. We filmed the old welfare culture in black and white, and the new culture in color. Our “actors” hit it perfectly with virtually no prompting. The old culture was all about collecting information, cutting off the client whenever they asked for help with problems, and stressing fraud and fear. The new culture was inviting, probing for what the customer needed, and talking about how this integrated agency could help the whole family to a better future. Even I was stunned at the sharp contrast and how well the staff could capture and portray the transformation that had taken place.

  But I have digressed far afield yet again. What to do with the Kenosha Gang when all this programmatic change yet seemed a futuristic dream? With the problems identified, solutions slowly emerged. If the work message is communicated too late, move it to the front of the customer’s experience. If transaction costs are too high and client “leakage” is a big problem, collocate essential services so that everything is available in the same physical location. If feedback is too episodic or faulty, make sure you bring workers who must communicate about the same case into physical proximity with one another. In principle, all this sounds reasonable and simplistic. It was simply common sense after the fact. However, it was revolutionary at the time. Common sense only becomes common in hindsight.

  Years earlier, in the infancy of my career, I recall watching my colleagues at Wisconsin’s state-level super-agency that was created to facilitate better communications across programs at a top management level. I would listen to staff drawn from the welfare side of the ledger as they talked about those from the services side…those social work types had soft opinions about the client populations, thus not recognizing reality. Likewise, the service-oriented staff viewed their welfare counterparts as being too hard and distrustful of these struggling families, of not appreciating what they were up against. At the time, I was too raw to put the meaning of these asides into any larger context. Now, however, the snide comments I had overheard were beginning to make more sense.

  Each side had been acculturated differently. At the beginning of their careers, they may have self-selected into a career trajectory based on internal hardwiring, professional preparation, or simple circumstances. On the last factor, I recall chatting with a county director one day. He related how he started out in his career. When he first was hired, his boss told him that he would be processing welfare applications. The man in charge waived off protestations from the new hire that he knew nothing about welfare, that he wanted to be a social worker. “Not important that you know nothing about the program,” the director told him, “you look mean and ugly, and that is exactly what I want an applicant for welfare to see first—a mean and ugly look! Maybe then they will just go away.”

  Once an individual is propelled on a professional trajectory, it is likely they probably will be surrounded by like-minded people. They would be rewarded for thinking in certain ways, viewing clients more and more as their peers do, absorbing simplifying perceptions that made a complex world less confusing (e. g., most or all clients are like this), and adopting tactics that others assure them are tried and true. When suddenly they are thrown in with other officials who do not speak the same language or share the same presumptions about the world, there is a tendency to become further isolated in a cultural cocoon most familiar to you as if you were warding off an invasive virus.

  My long-time colleague, Jennifer Noyes, who was tasked by Governor Thompson to manage the merged welfare and workforce development people at the state level many years later, called it the “plop” factor. You can plop folks from one institutional culture into a mega-agency dominated by another culture, but you cannot necessarily make them swim together. This is particularly true if you throw them in the same pool naked, without any preparation for what it will take to get along. Most focus on not drowning one another, or perhaps on drowning the other person intentionally, as everyone frantically sloshes around trying to avoid contact with those from the other side while seeking the upper hand in any emerging competitive confrontations.

  Back to Kenosha for a moment! The longer they struggled with key challenges like getting the work message to the very front of the application process, the more they realized that small changes would be insufficient. When you added in all the transaction costs and leakage problems embedded in the existing system, the more they recognized that profound changes were needed. They were not likely to achieve their vision through incremental change. They needed something truly transformative!

  They pretty much threw out the old organizational structure and built something new from the bottom up. I am not sure I recall an aha moment, but by the time we had finished our blackboard “line of sight” exercise, merely tinkering with the status quo was viewed as totally insufficient, bordering on the ridiculous. Our intrepid band from Kenosha then started to create a brand new one-stop shop that would fully integrate all welfare and essential job placement functions. Again, while this was rather commonplace by the late 1990s, it was revolutionary in the 1980s.

  Once they got the vision right, I am not sure how much they needed from us. One day I recall asking the Kenosha team what they were getting from our hanging around all the time. I believe it was Jim Kennedy who responded with, “We just need someone to tell us we are not crazy.” I paused before responding, “Well, let me be the first to say you are totally out of your mind, but for heaven’s sake, don’t let anyone stop you.” And they didn’t! I recall being in meetings where Earl confronted less than eager future partners. It was not always a pretty sight, but he got it done. He did what change agents do, blustered, cajoled, threatened, and charmed. Most importantly, he never lost sight of the prize. I think our role was to clean up the blood spatter after the sessions were over.

  At one point, they needed additional state resources to keep moving. When they sent the budget in, it was returned with th
e request to cut it back some. They waited awhile and sent a larger budget back saying their re-review indicated additional costs. No, no, the state said, we need a smaller budget, go back and do it over. But our intrepid heroes came up with an even larger budget the third time, thanking the state for requiring them to take a closer look. Otherwise, they might have missed some essential costs in their haste to meet the previous state deadline. The state caved at this point, a wise choice.

  One of my favorite contributions was to come up with a front-end diagnostic tool. We would triage clients into four levels as they came into the system. The applicants at the highest level were the pass-throughs. The assumption was that they would need minimal attention since they were considered job ready, probably requiring no more than access to job networking help. The second level did need some attention but were in pretty good shape. Perhaps they needed a course or two, some intensive help with job-seeking skills and interviewing techniques. Still we might expect them to be on their way in three months, a year at most.

  Then we got to the serious groups. The third group we called system dependent. They had more severe impediments to employment. Here we were talking about serious issues such as substance abuse, legal problems, and cognitive challenges. They required more intensive help, perhaps even some structured work experience activity, before transitioning into the labor market. In addition, family problems might require multiservice interventions, which would require coordinated agency interventions. Still, with help, there was an expectation that they could make the transition to work though not likely in the short-term.

  The final group, the FUBARS were, in our scheme, fouled up beyond all recognition. This was the group I wanted to focus on while in D.C., but no one else appeared interested. Of course, Director Earle always preferred the more descriptive obscenity to be substituted for word “fouled.” According to the director, such folk typically responded only to the potted plants situated in the corner of the room during the application process. Efforts typically were made to shift these clients to a federal disability program.

  This reminds me of a program that existed in neighboring Michigan during this time. Their governor was in a competition with Thompson to be the top dog in the world of welfare reform. Their initiative was called something like the zero-cases initiative where every case would be transitioned into the labor market. I was visiting a local agency there and the director told me they were within a case or two of meeting their objective. “You will have no more cases,” I asked incredulously since this was a distressed county. “Oh no”, he replied, “we will have succeeded with all our employable cases.” Of course, that is always the catch, figuring out who is employable.

  Back to Kenosha. We developed individualized bureaucratic pathways that the client would travel, based upon the initial diagnosis. The scheme was used for many years though some felt that this initial triage was not terribly predictive of subsequent progress. Clients that looked like basket cases upon arrival at the agency might rebound quickly without much help. Others who looked like pass-throughs might reveal hidden impediments with time. Later, when Governor Thompson launched his famous W-2 welfare replacement program, they used the exact same schema. I was disappointed that he never called to thank me for my contribution. Perhaps he couldn’t find my telephone number.

  One of my favorite, though embarrassing, moments came when a group of legislators were touring the state holding hearings on WEJT and other welfare issues. My friend John Antaramian was leading this merry band in an era when legislators were still known to talk across party lines. Mike Wiseman and I were to speak but E. Clarke Earle was scheduled to address the group just before us. Earle launched into this peroration telling the legislators that they should give the Institute for Research on Poverty two million dollars to evaluate the one-stops that were emerging (read Kenosha County) and help spread the innovation elsewhere. As he went on and on, I slumped further and further into my chair.

  When Earle finished, it was my turn to speak. John smiled at me as I slid into the speaker’s chair while, at the same time, hastily applying a disguise over my face. He remarked that my fees had gone up considerably since I had consulted with his committee for free. “Well,” I stammered, “you know the old saying…you get what you pay for.” Apparently, the legislature did not think I was worth two million dollars. Go figure!

  When the Kenosha one-stop opened around 1990, it soon became the talk of the welfare world. Representatives from all over the nation and foreign countries with advanced welfare states came to see what they were doing and how they were doing it. They won national awards and recognition. But I noticed something right away. Not many who came to observe were able to rush home and duplicate the model. No matter how much they loved what they saw, replication proved damn hard. That was an insight I stuffed into my back pocket.

  Around 1990, my damn phone rang again. This time it was from someone named Neil Zank, the executive director of the Council on Employment Relations. The Council was an advisory group that had been established to advise presidents on selected labor market and workforce issues. The president at the time was George H.W. Bush. Apparently, no one had told Neil that I was considered a left-wing terrorist in some Republican circles. Thus uninformed, he invited me to participate in a series of sessions the commission was organizing that would be dedicated to achieving better collaboration among programs for low-income and vulnerable populations. Now, where had I heard that theme before? Perhaps it was because I was beginning to sense that replicating the Kenosha model might be more difficult than I had imagined. Perhaps it was because I was stunned that a high-level Republican appointee was inviting me anywhere. But I agreed to go without much hesitation. Once again, I was glad I did.

  There were three major sessions, each with a distinct target audience and focus. The session held in Washington D.C. concentrated on collaboration at the federal level. I must note that I had another one of those ego-inflating moments where people sought me out at the break to say nice things about my insights, and to pump me for more information. In retrospect, this must have been a new crowd for me, more conservative, a group that had not heard me endless times before. This is a good thing to remember: keep changing the cast of characters around you if you want to stay interesting. While you will be spouting the same old crap, they might not have heard it a dozen times before.

  The second meeting was in San Antonio and zeroed in on collaboration at the state level, while the third session was held in San Diego and dealt with local collaborative efforts. I wish they had done these in the reverse order because the message from each level was unique and clear. Going from local to federal would have been made even more apparent where the opportunities for substantive change lie. That message could then have been taken to Washington. Those were the people who needed to hear this message.

  The local-level crowd that convened in San Diego were unambiguously positive about collaboration. Yes, integrated program structures are where we must go, since our current way of delivering benefits and services to troubled families makes no sense whatsoever. The overall service system needs to be redone in a way that permits providers to deliver help that is coherent and rational. That way, customers might be able to make sense of the programs designed to assist them, and the services provided could be more efficiently delivered.

  The San Antonio session (state-level stakeholders) was supportive of program integration but more cautious. There were a lot of yes-but comments. Yes, we should move in that direction, but there are some real problems and impediments to doing so. They pointed out what they considered federal impediments and some local forms of resistance. In some cases, they felt impotent to change the way business was done despite seeing the need for such change. Still, this group was supportive overall. It just had a few residual concerns.

  At the federal level, the mood was basically “are you kidding?” Oh, most paid lip service to the concept of greater collaboration, but a lot of attention was paid to
the things that made substantive collaboration a nonstarter. It might cost money. It would require a realignment of turf across the entrenched executive agencies. And the Congressional Committee structure was simply beyond being touched by the hand of reason or the hand of God. There, program oversight and budget responsibilities had been divided up by the same British diplomat who drew the Mid-East national boundaries sometime after World War I. That map put together conflicting religious and ethnic groups that hated one another with a passion while separating like-minded groups from one another. But all the Washington attendees did like the food that was provided.

  Throughout this process I had grown to rather like Neal Zank. In truth, I liked most folk who wandered through my candy store. He was a dead ringer for John Sununu who had been governor of New Hampshire and was serving as Bush the elder’s chief of staff at that time. They could have been identical twins. Neil still had not been told that I was the enemy, so he asked me to write a chapter for the book that came out of their conferences. Neither the book nor the final report submitted to the president had much effect, as far as I could see. Still, I had no hesitation about at least writing a book chapter. After all, I had learned a lesson that would stay with me as I plunged deeper into this issue. Service integration had the best chance of success at the local level.

  Still, circumstances demanded that I tilt at the federal windmill one more time. Though I remained skeptical, this next effort at least gave me the title of this chapter…that human services integration is the holy grail of public policy. You can keep searching but the odds of success are rather long…Powerball lottery long. I was also coming to the realization that this issue was going to become a rather long counter in my policy candy store, one laden with both sweet and sour goodies.

  The issue of human services integration cropped up during the year I spent in D.C. messing with Clinton’s reform proposal. One of my responsibilities was to work on ways we could achieve better coordination and efficiencies among programs, particularly cash and cash-like income support programs. I wonder how I got such assignments. Do I look as if I enjoy pain? No matter, my integration work group looked at where some broader synergies across a set of nominally-related systems might be exploited.