Albert de Zutter/Key photo Amy Blouin speaks at a workshop on welfare reform during the annual Missouri Catholic Conference Assembly Sept. 2.

Families are being illegally deprived of Medicare and Food Stamps because their rights under the Temporary Aid Assistance to Needy Families bill are not being explained, according to the leaders of a workshop on "Welfare, Poverty and the Church," which was part of an annual assembly for Catholic activists sponsored by the Missouri bishops' public policy agency in the State Capitol Building. The official count at this year's gathering was 690 participants from all parts of the state.

In addition to welfare reform, workshops tackled the death penalty, long-term care, Medicaid, television, family violence, adoption, immigration, urban growth, education, abortion and fetal parts trafficking, and corrections.

While welfare rolls are decreasing under TANF, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, agencies are reporting increasing demand for emergency aid for food and utilities assistance, workshop leaders reported.

While no one knows what the eventual outcome will be when people begin reaching their lifetime limit of five years of aid under the new law, the new system is already adversely affecting thousands, according to the workshop leaders.

Amy Blouin, director of administration for Catholic Charities of the St. Louis Archdiocese, said that 58 percent of the 133,000 Missourians who have left the welfare rolls under the new system are living in poverty, according to a study by the Midwest Research Institute, an independent non-profit study center based in Kansas City. The federally defined poverty line is $1,421 a month for a family of four.

In addition, Blouin said, the study found that 90 percent of those who have moved off welfare are "near-poor" at 185 percent or less of the poverty level. Fully 20 percent of the total are living in extreme poverty, with incomes only 50 percent of poverty levels.

"That means that six of every 10 families that went off welfare are living in poverty four years after welfare reform," Blouin said.

Furthermore, she said, poverty does not correspond with unemployment. Eighty percent of those living in poverty are working, she said. "Poverty has to do with wages, education, child care and transportation," she said.

Higher incomes are correlated with education and more than one adult in the family working, "One income is not enough," Blouin said. However, the most common TANF recipient family consists of a woman with one or more children. Sixty percent of welfare recipients are children.

Forty percent of families with a working adult do not have health insurance, she said, and people are being unnecessarily cut off from food stamps, Medicaid and child care assistance because their rights and options under the new law are not being explained.

Blouin said welfare reform has failed on all five points of church teaching with regard to treatment of the poor, which she defined as protecting human life and dignity, strengthening family life, encouraging and rewarding work, preserving a safety net for the vulnerable, and a preferential option for the poor.

She advocated removal of barriers to existing benefits like food stamps, child care and transportation; re-authorizing TANF beyond the five-year limit; supporting families through opportunities for post-secondary education; and making benefits available through employment.

Another presenter, Amy Smouchin, advocate for Reform Organization of Welfare, an action group for people in poverty supported mainly by faith-based contributors, including the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, said aid agencies in 85 percent of reporting cities experienced increases in demand for emergency assistance when cash welfare stopped being an entitlement.

She said that people going into work activities are not being advised to hold on to their food stamps and Medicaid, and instead erroneously get the impression they are no longer entitled to those benefits.

She said that "unreality was driving policies" under which the TANF program was being administered, citing primarily the requirement that people must re-apply every three months, a measure that was imposed to reduce fraud.

But, Smouchin said, most of the fraud is not recipient-based, but rather takes place on the retail and corporate level. In addition, she said, findings are that fraud involves $815 million in a program that costs $21 billion - a 3.8 percent rate.

In addition to such "unrealities" as the three-month re-application rule and turning people away if they are late for their appointment regardless of reason, the protections under the existing system are not being upheld. People are not being advised of the exceptions and exclusions to the work requirement, she said. For example, a parent with a child under six can fulfill the requirement with 20 hours of work instead of 30; a mother with a child under 12 months is not required to work to be eligible; a person with a temporary or permanent disability or a victim of violence is exempt from the requirement.

Speaking of the five-year limitation, she said the new welfare law was written "as though there was a stable pool of people on welfare, and if we move them off we will solve the problem." The reality is that people are moving onto and off the welfare rolls continuously, she said.