Stuck in a Loop: Individual and System Barriers for Job Seekers with Disabilities

Research conducted within Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) and Workforce Investment Act of 1998 systems indicates pervasive issues hindering program effectiveness for job seekers with disabilities. This population frequently experiences employment barriers beyond those of able-bodied job seekers, including significantly lower self-esteem. Service providers need and want information about disability but do not know how to obtain it. Program staff and job seekers with disabilities get stuck in a loop wherein each questions their ability and neither feels empowered to make meaningful changes to improve outcomes. Career counselors may need to expand their role to be more culturally relevant for these clients. The ultimate goal for two of America's national public assistance programs, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF; Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) and the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), is that their clients become more self-sufficient through employment Weinrach (2003) recommended that career counselors expand their role beyond traditional notions of career development to include providing culturally relevant support to clients of these major employment programs. For example, a career counselor working in a WTA workforce center may encounter a client who needs life skills training and reading instruction more than he or she needs counseling or a single mother who needs a job at her current skill level with access to public transportation and affordable child care rather than counseling to learn a new set of skills (Weinrach, 2003). Over the course of three studies, we investigated the ways in which the TANF (one study) and WIA (two studies) systems could better meet the needs of job seekers with disabilities; we observed a pattern of low selfesteem among consumers with disabilities and low disability awareness among service providers that, together, produced an often endless loop without results (i.e., employment). Thus, this article takes Weinrach's (2003) notion of culturally relevant support one step further by exploring how job seekers with disabilities interact with program staff in TANF and WIA workforce center settings and discussing the implications for career counselors. TANF and WTA F.mployment Programs Although neither TANF nor WIA services are specifically targeted to people with disabilities, people with disabilities disproportionately use or need to use them. In fact, a full 29% of TANF recipients have at least one physical or mental health impairment in contrast to 11% of a comparable non-TANF population (U.S. General Accounting Office [GAO], 2002). Furthermore, Americans with disabilities experience very high unemployment rates, estimated at about 63% (Erickson 6c Lee, 2008), and, thus, have a greater need for WIA employment services than do their counterparts without disabilities. Not only are people with disabilities represented at higher rates in TANF and WIA programs, they also experience poorer outcomes. The TANF program, as created in the 1996 comprehensive welfare reform effort, imposes a 5-year lifetime limit for individuals to receive cash assistance. Furthermore, TANF requires recipients to be employed within 2 years of entering cash assistance, with very few exceptions. The emphasis is "work first," with limited opportunities for educational or rehabilitation services. The GAO (2002) found that recipients with impairments were half as likely to exit welfare rolls as those without impairments. WIA was enacted with the goal of consolidating a variety of federal job service programs with universal access as one of its main principles. This legislation was operationalized, in pare through the creation of the One-Stop service delivery system in which any job seeker should be able to access a series of core services at one location. …