An Urban Institute Assessing the New Federalism Program to Assess Changing Social Policies THE URBAN INSTITUTE State Update No. 9, October 2001 Recent Changes in Colorado Welfare and Work, Child Care, and Child Welfare Systems Jeffrey Capizzano, Robin Koralek, Christopher Botsko, and Roseana Bess Introduction system was also characterized by the In the years before welfare reform, strong county role in the administration of Colorado’s Aid to Families With social services. County agencies had pri- Dependent Children (AFDC) and Job mary responsibility for the delivery of Colorado’s welfare Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) pro- income support, child welfare, and child grams focused on income support and care programs. reform legislation sig- education and training as means to achieve Colorado’s welfare reform legislation, the long-term self-sufficiency of AFDC Colorado Works, significantly departs from nificantly departs from recipients. Accordingly, recipients were the state’s traditional emphasis on educa- encouraged to participate in education and tion and training while further embracing the state’s traditional training programs with the idea that such a decentralized administrative structure. activities would eventually lead to high- Colorado’s strong economy, low unem- emphasis on education wage jobs. This philosophy prevailed in ployment rate, and prevailing belief that the years leading up to welfare reform, welfare recipients should be required to and training while even as the federal government granted participate in work activities in order to states more freedom through waivers to receive assistance helped to shift the focus further embracing a experiment with innovative welfare poli- of Colorado’s welfare system from an edu- cies. Indeed, while other states used feder- cation and training model to a “work-first” decentralized adminis- al waivers to make their welfare programs model. The two primary goals of Colorado more work-focused, Colorado’s welfare Works are to develop strategies and poli- trative structure. demonstration project, the Colorado cies to ensure that participants are in work Personal Responsibility and Employment activities as soon as possible, and to pro- Program, continued to emphasize skill vide counties with increased responsibility development through education and for the design and administration of the training. Colorado Works program. In addition to the emphasis on skill In June 1997, shortly before Colorado development, Colorado’s pre-reform wel- Works took effect, researchers from the fare system was also characterized by Urban Institute and Child Trends visited strong supportive services. In 1995, for Colorado to document and analyze how example, Colorado’s spending per poor the state was preparing to implement the family on services such as employment program, and more broadly, to describe the and training, child care, and child support services in place to assist low-income fami- were significantly higher than the national lies. Two years later, researchers returned average. Colorado’s pre-welfare reform to Colorado to examine changes to the ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies state’s social service system. This brief presents findings from the more recent visits to Colorado, and serves to update the 1998 report, Income Support and Social Services for Low- Income People in Colorado. This report begins with a short profile of Colorado’s demographic, economic, and political conditions and then moves into a discussion of different aspects of the state’s social safety net. The next three sections offer more detail on specific programs and ser- vices. The first section describes Colorado’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, Colorado Works, including the state’s work-related component for TANF recipients. The second section covers the state’s system for providing child care for both Colorado Works recipients and other low-income families. The third section describes the child welfare system, with particular attention paid to the interaction between child welfare and welfare reform. Each section discusses important policies affecting the pro- gram and the clients that the program serves, the program’s administrative structure and general service delivery, and information on recent changes. The brief concludes with a summary of noteworthy trends across the different social policy areas. The information presented in this report comes from in-person interviews and focus groups with relevant front-line program staff, as well as focus groups of welfare recipients and other low-income families. In addition, researchers conducted interviews with various state-level officials responsible for child care and child welfare to obtain a statewide overview of the system and to learn about new policy directions in these areas. Most inter- views were conducted with program staff in Denver, the state’s largest urban area. Thus, most of the information in this update paints a picture of the social service system in Denver, and does not necessarily reflect how social services are administered in other counties throughout the state. However, telephone interviews were carried out with child welfare administrators in 12 additional counties to get a sense of how the collaboration between child welfare and TANF was working at the county level; of how child welfare caseloads were affected by welfare reform; and of how financing had changed at the coun- ty level.1In addition, the primary data collected from the interviews and focus groups is supplemented with reports produced by other research organizations and by Colorado state agencies. To gather information for this update, researchers returned to Colorado three times during late 1999 and early 2000: September 1999 (child welfare interviews); November 1999 (child care interviews and focus groups); and June 2000 (Colorado Works and work- force development interviews). Telephone interviews with county child welfare adminis- trators took place from February through April of 2000. Social and Political Context Social and Economic Conditions In 1999, Colorado’s population reached over 4 million, growing throughout the 1990s at a rate almost two and a half times that of the nation as a whole. Colorado’s teen birth rate and the percentage of births to unmarried women are both lower than those of the nation overall (table 1). The state’s population includes a significant share of Hispanics, but rela- tively small proportions of other racial or ethnic minority groups. More than one in six Colorado residents are of Hispanic descent (14.9 percent), with most being either native- born or naturalized citizens. Non-Hispanic blacks, however, make up fewer than 1 in 20 residents (4.3 percent). In addition, most of Colorado’s population lives in metropolitan areas, despite the fact that most counties in Colorado are predominately rural. In 1996, only 16 percent of Colorado residents lived in non-metropolitan areas compared to 20 per- cent nationally. Colorado enjoys a strong economy that has outperformed the national economy for the past several years. Colorado’s unemployment rate is significantly lower than the nation as a whole (2.9 percent compared to 4.2 percent) and the state’s per capita income has grown significantly faster than the national average since 1995. The average per capita 2 An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM TABLE 1. Colorado State Characteristics, 1999 Colorado United States Population Characteristics Population (1999) a (in thousands) 4,056 272,690 Percent under age 18 (1999) b 26.3% 25.7% Percent Hispanic (1999) c 14.9% 11.5% Percent Black (1999) d 4.3% 12.8% Percent non-citizen immigrant (1998) e 5.2% 6.3% Percent non-metropolitan (1996) f 16.0% 20.1% Percent change in population (1990-1999) g 23.1% 9.6% Percent births to unmarried women 15-44 (1998) h 25.6% 32.8% Percent births to unmarried teens 15-19 (1997) i 8.6% 9.7% Birth rates (births per 1,000) females age 15-44 (1998) h 15.0 14.6 Birth rates (births per 1,000) females age 15-19 (1998) h 48.7 51.1 State Economic Characteristics Per capita income (1999) j $31,546 $28,542 Percent change per capita income (1995-1999) j 16.0% 10.8% Unemployment rate (1999) k 2.9% 4.2% Employment rate (1999) l 83.0% 81.5% Percent jobs in manufacturing (1998) m 10.1% 14.8% Percent jobs in service sector (1998) m 30.2% 29.9% Percent jobs in public sector (1998) m 15.7% 15.8% Family Profile Percent children living in two-parent families (1999) n 66.1% 63.6% Percent children living in one-parent families (1999) n 21.3% 24.8% Percent children in poverty (1998) o* 12.3% 17.5% Percent change in child poverty rate (1996-1998) o* –16.3% –15.0% Percent adults in poverty (1998) o* 9.0% 11.2% Percent change in adults in poverty (1996-1998 ) o* –11.8% –10.4% Political Governor's affiliation (2000) p Republican Party composition of Senate (2000) q 18D-17R Party composition of House (2000) q 27D-38R *1998 National adult, national child, and state child poverty estimates show statistically significant decreases from the 1996 estimates at the 0.10 confidence level, calculated by the Assessing the New Federalism project, The Urban Institute. Table 1 notes begin on page 21. 3 ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies income of Colorado residents in 1999 was about $3,000 higher than the per capita income nationally. In terms of employment sectors, Colorado has a lower than average percentage of manufacturing jobs but similar percentages of service and public sector jobs compared to the nation overall. The strength of the economy in Colorado has not translated into significantly higher revenues for the state. Colorado’s revenue is subject to limitations imposed by the Taxpayers Bill of Rights amendment, passed in 1992, which stipulates that government revenues may not increase more than the combined percentage of population growth and inflation.