Thomas McLaughlin's study of Maine's welfare system subject of colleagues' opinion pieces in two newspapers
published an opinion piece by Sandra Butler, professor of social work at the University of Maine at Orono, who is the co-researcher with 51品茶Professor of Social Work Thomas Chalmers McLaughlin on a study of Maine's Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program (TANF) that is becoming central to the debate on Gov. Paul LePage's pledge to reform the welfare system. The study was also the subject of a column by Rachel Lowe, board president of Maine Equal Justice Partners, published by the (Lewiston).
Among the study's many findings, Butler explains, "more than 25,000 children depend on the program as a lifeline. Without it, more than 80 percent of these families wouldn鈥檛 be able to afford a place to live. Without help, these young families, and their children, would be on the streets. They鈥檇 be left to fend for themselves in an economy that鈥檚 been unkind to even the most educated and mobile. While the mythology suggests that assistance programs create a lifestyle of dependence, our research shows that the median amount of time a family receives TANF is just 18 months. Strikingly, of those families who exceed five years of assistance, almost 90 percent include a family member with a disability. But even then, the amount of assistance is small. The woman with two children who receives assistance gets, at a maximum, just $485 a month, the lowest rate in New England, and the amount hasn鈥檛 increased in 10 years."