June/July 2006

On the Ground With...

Jerry Stepaniak, Vice-President, Maximus

interview by Bob Jacobson

BJ: How has W-2 played out differently from what you expected when your involvement with the program began back in 2000?

JS: Caseloads have been reduced quite significantly since 2000 levels, and, at least anecdotally, you're looking at clients who generally have more barriers, multiple barriers, and generally have less of a skill set. So the job of jobfinding becomes a bit more difficult. Another component that has changed since that time is that in Milwaukee, prior to about 2003, the Milwaukee County Department of Human Services was cohoused with each of the TANF one-stop centers throughout the community. After that time, they decide for a variety of reasons to consolidate their operation at the Coggs Center at 12th and Vliet. I think that was a step backwards from my point of view. It's more difficult for participants applying for W-2 and also for food stamps and medical assistance to have to go to two locations miles apart. I think that's unfortunate and I'd love to see it reversed and have some or all of the staff that have been out here to return.

Another major change we've dealt with was the handling of refugees within Milwaukee County. Prior to about 2001, refugees came to the community--usually with the sponsorship of the resettlement agencies, like Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, Jewish Family Services and so forth--and they had a tough time negotiating the system because it required going to each of the existing W-2 facilities in a particular georgraphic area and then separately going to the County. So we, in conjunciton with the state and the resettlement agencies, opted to coordinate the services in a one-stop refugee center that is physically housed at our southwest location in West Allis. I would say that has worked enormously well. People are not being boomeranged around. We have developed language capabilites so that we can now speak 14 languages on staff. This has been a vast service improvement. It is an ongoing learning experience becaue the cultural expectiations of a particular subculture sometimes don't correspond with American societal expectations, or with program expectations and requirements. That may include things like gender roles in that subculture, or the role of work. But all things considered, I think that has been a dramatic improvement.

Demographically, things continue to change. UW-Milwaukee has documented the patterns of movement of poverty within the area. Compared to the traditional central city focus, there is an ongoing shift to the northwest and the southwest, and we're all trying to understand those movements and make sure services and resources are in place correspondingly. That's always a challenge because funding allocations typically have a backward-looking focus rather than a forward-looking focus, so we may not catch the movement in the appropriate time frame.

Each program year for the TANF/W-2 contracts, there has been the assumption that the caseload will continue to decrease, and the resources have decreased correspondingly. At the same time, the expectations in terms of accountability have increased, as has the need to deal with clients with arguably more challenging skill sets. There have also been some improvements in screening, so more barriers are identified. You put all that together and it's an interesting set of challenges to make sure that the right amount of serveices are being focused on the right folks. It's getting tough.

What about changes in terms of the administrative challenges, levels of accountabilty, that sort of thing? How has that evolved?

I think there's a continuing and consistent move toward many more review points in the handling of every case, particularly in the current contract that we're now six months into. In Milwukee there has been a split between the case management function and the job devleopment and placement function. That results in a lot more required communications on a given case, either between separate agencies or between a variety of separately focused staff within the agency.

What additional challenges do you see on the horizon, aside from the obvious ongoing budgetary strain?

TANF was just reauthorized by Congress, but the rules haven't been written yet. Within the next few weeks we're supposed to start seeing some drafts of that. The participation measurement and documentation methodology could result in some changes. We're going to have to see whether it's significant, both what the Feds come up with and how the State then reacts to that. Generally, Wisconsin has been at the high end of participation, but there are a variety of measurement issues that are out there. Things that we've been counting as participation may not be countable in the new arrangement. That will just have to be worked in with the other kinds of changes we've talked about.

Do you think private companies, including for-profit ones, would be as eager to get involved in W-2 as they were at the beginning if they knew what we now know about how things would play out?

You need to look at what kinds of organizations have been contracted to provide the program and what has happened with the various models that are out there. I'm very happy to say that when I look backward, Maximus as a for-profit agency has done a very good job of producing on the performance measures that the State of Wisconsin has identified. We are consistently at or near the top in terms of all the key performance measures, whether those are entered employments, retentions, satisfaction, etc. The focus ought to be on what is the intent of the program, and how well is that intent being administered and completed, as opposed to some sort of more theoretical construct about who ought to be in this business or not. Speaking for ourselves, I think we've demonstrated that excellent performance can come from our kind of organization. It's also important to note that we've accomplished this through collaborations with a lot of well-established and well-respected nonprofit agencies with long records of excellent service in the Milwaukee community.

What kinds of administrative or contractual changes would you like to see that would be fair to everybody involved--agencies, state government, taxpayers and participants?

Tough question. Obviously more resources to accomplish a more difficult task would be helpful and perhaps appropriate, but of course we all live in a context where there's a low probability of that. I would also advocate for more simplicity rather than introducing additional complexities with multiple agencies and multiple communication points. The more simply organized you are and the more clear the accountability is, the better the results. I think there are improvements that could be engineered across the variety of systems--WIA, TANF, child support, even child welfare--the more progress we make in terms of crossing the usual lines and consolidating services, the better off we all are. There have been improvements along those lines, but there's certainly room for more improvement.