HOLLAR, Danielle
A holistic theoretical model for examining welfare reform : quality of life - Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, jan./feb.2003
Policy makers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining case loads or some other economic measurea practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than evaluating economic outcomes; it requires knowing the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we must strive for greater understanding about the sociocultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole personaspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth. This is how we come to understand one's quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model of quality of life and illustrates the model using data from a followup study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities that are premised on a qualityoflife model will help policy actors understand the impact of policies and how public institutions can be managed strategically within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform.
A holistic theoretical model for examining welfare reform : quality of life - Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, jan./feb.2003
Policy makers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining case loads or some other economic measurea practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than evaluating economic outcomes; it requires knowing the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we must strive for greater understanding about the sociocultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole personaspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth. This is how we come to understand one's quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model of quality of life and illustrates the model using data from a followup study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities that are premised on a qualityoflife model will help policy actors understand the impact of policies and how public institutions can be managed strategically within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform.
