How these regulations will be implemented remains unclear and will require monitoring. To expand circumstances in which someone on cash assistance can count employment and training activity as part of the state work requirement. This provision reached conference committee in the state legislature where it died. To expand state funded child care. Initially a welfare rights organization, it soon focused on low income issues, including child care, health care, affordable housing, and crime.
Members report that the primary result of welfare reform is the stress it is placing on families.
With the state s two-year time limit coming November 1, plans are in the works to stage a major protest to bring attention to the impact of welfare reform on children and families. The Coalition Against Poverty is a New Bedford-Fall River based community organization of welfare mothers and former welfare mothers, most of them students at local community college. They need work, child care, health care, and to be able to keep more in their pocket so that they can build assets. The public action was preceded by a major post card campaign by the Coalition and a petition that gathered 3,600 signatures. The Coalition sponsored a second speak out on health care this summer that drew an even larger turnout.