SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 1561 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS

HEADLINE: WELFARE TIME LIMITS AND WORK REQUIREMENTS

TESTIMONY-BY: MARGE THOMAS,, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,

AFFILIATION: GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF THE CHESAPEAKE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

BODY:
Statement of

Marge Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Baltimore, Maryland, and Chairwoman, Public Policy Committee, Goodwill Industries International

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Implementation of Welfare Reform Work Requirements and Time Limits

March 7, 2002

Good Morning Chairman Herger and members of the Human Resources Subcommittee, I am Marge Thomas, CEO of Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, located in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, I currently serve as the chairwoman of Goodwill Industries International's Public Policy committee. I would like to thank you for inviting me and Goodwill at large here today to speak on the issue of helping TANF recipients with multiple barriers enter and stay in the job market.

I am here representing my particular Goodwill, as well as all of the Goodwills in the United States, a group comprised of 177 local entities that are autonomous, community-based, non-profit corporations that provide career services and job training for people with barriers to employment. Over its 100 year history, Goodwill has maintained a strong commitment to serving people with barriers to employment, providing the assistance and training necessary to enable these individuals to be engaged and effective members of our nation's labor force. Since our beginning in serving immigrant populations in Boston in 1902, through decades of work with persons with disabilities, to our current expansion of services to a broad range of individuals, Goodwill continues to back up its belief in the power of work for all people with quality service provision.

For the context of today's testimony, it is significant to note that since 1996, Goodwill collectively has served through pre- and post employment services, job training, soft skills training, and job search assistance over 450,000 TANF individuals and in 2000 alone, served over 150,000 TANF recipients.

Today, I am here to speak to you about the work Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake is doing to move welfare recipients into stable employment.

Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake serves the Baltimore Metropolitan area and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Our retail network comprising 17 stores and 21 donation centers help to generate revenue for our employment services. We also have 9 custodial and mailroom contracts with federal agencies and the State of Maryland. These contracts allow us to employ 194 persons, 145 of whom are persons with severe disabilities. We are especially proud of our long-standing, 15 year + contract with the Social Security Administration.

Additionally, we operate 15 career centers where we prepare people for employment. In 2001, these career centers and our family support center provided services to 4,110 people. The staff at the Goodwill of the Chesapeake helped 1,140 people to obtain employment with employee benefits and career advancement opportunities. We operate a temporary employment agency, Goodwill Staffing Services that in 2001 helped 399 people to gain valuable paid work experience. Of the 399 individuals, 75 were hired permanently following their temporary employment.

All of the people we serve have one or more barriers to employment and we help them find and stay in good jobs. By design, we have targeted employment readiness programs for high school dropouts, for persons who need to leave welfare for employment, and for ex-offenders leaving prison and returning to Baltimore. I also want to stress how important it is to consider the special efforts that must be made to assist TANF recipients who are involved with the criminal justice system. We currently serve people who are in recovery from substance abuse, who are homeless, and those with severe disabilities.

I would like to give the subcommittee a brief idea of what it takes to help a person to leave and stay off welfare. To do this work, we take our clients through a number of steps that include:

1. Intake and assessment work that consists of determining a person's literacy and math abilities, interests and aptitudes, and need for services such as childcare and transportation.

2. Three or more weeks of job-readiness training to fully prepare job-seekers for employment focusing on the "soft skills" of how to accept supervision, what it means to give value to your employer, arriving at work on time and getting along with co- workers. For some of the people we serve, three months of occupational skills training is necessary to close a "skills gap," especially the basic computer skills many employers expect their employees to have.

3. A period of subsidized employment, usually three months, is often required for welfare recipients who have had little or no paid work experience. Often employers will hire these individuals permanently following a period of subsidized employment.

4. Transition into unsubsidized employment and follow-up support services is the most critical step in the work we do. Goodwill job placement staff also work closely with the more than 400 employers we place clients with and frequently makes visits to the workplace to get progress reports.

5. On-going case management support is also an essential service we provide to persons who have left welfare for work. Goodwill staff helps when benefits are mistakenly cut off. They provide support and guidance in the evenings and weekends to help clients cope with the multiple changes that they are experiencing as full- time employees.

These are a few of the many activities we undertake to help place and keep people in jobs.

I am accompanied by Ms. Fatima Wilkerson, who graciously agreed to take time off from work to join me today. She has benefited from the services I have described to you. Ms. Wilkerson will share with you her experiences of being served by Goodwill and her successful efforts to get and keep employment with job advancement potential.

We are particularly pleased that Goodwill has been very involved with welfare reform and will continue to be in the future. Over the last six months, Goodwill has been engaged in a yearlong public policy initiative, Consensus to Build the 21st Century Workforce. This initiative is an effort to understand the needs of our members and the communities they serve in developing and advancing the workforce needed in this new millennium.

Our goal is to help communities create effective programs and systems that help individuals with barriers to work gain access to skills, jobs and successful careers. We convened 13 grassroots meetings in medium and large cities as well as rural communities across the country. One of those meetings, I'm happy to share with you, was held in Baltimore.

At these meetings, Goodwill brought together leaders from business and government, service providers and other stakeholder communities to elicit information on the effectiveness and efficiency of the myriad of federal, state and local workforce development programs targeted to individuals with low wages, low skills and/or other barriers to successful entry into the workforce. Building on the results of these meetings, Goodwill is working with Congress, the Administration and the full Goodwill community to ensure better coordination and even more successful workforce programs now and in the future.

As part of the Consensus initiative, we are hosting an international forum this April in Austin, Texas, focusing on inclusion of the hardest to serve in the 21st century global workforce. This meeting will bring together CEOs, directors and managers from local Goodwills, non-profit organizations and foreign leaders. We will focus on lessons learned from serving those with multiple barriers, particularly in the U.S., United Kingdom, Hungary, the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Latin America and Mexico. We are particularly excited about what we can both learn from our international neighbors as well as share to help those with barriers find and keep a job.

Before I close, I would like to say that Goodwill is very pleased to be asked to comment on TANF and to be part of the ongoing discussion concerning reauthorization. As we have learned through our Consensus initiative, flexibility is key to eliminating the confusion among workforce programs and rules governing those programs. We have also learned that:

There are too many issues and too little collaboration among programs and organizations with the same mission;

The existing infrastructure is debilitating, not facilitating;

There is a call for leveraging our commitment to workforce development now because time is of the essence; and

There is a strong desire for a more coordinated system.

Therefore, we are particularly happy with the President's proposed "super waiver" which is a good first step in providing a more cohesive solution in communities to help people with multiple barriers to acquire and maintain employment. We at Goodwill are very happy to make ourselves available for further technical assistance in the effort to help as many welfare recipients find and maintain careers and excel in the workplace as possible.

Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am now happy to address any questions that you may have concerning my testimony.



LOAD-DATE: March 13, 2002