As the recession worsens, more and more Americans must turn to welfare to make ends meet. Once inside the agency, the newly jobless will face a bureaucracy that has undergone massive change since the advent of welfare reform in 1996. A behind-the-scenes look at bureaucracy's human face, "The New Welfare Bureaucrats" is a compelling study of welfare officers and how they navigate the increasingly tangled political and emotional terrain of their jobs. Celeste Watkins-Hayes here reveals how welfare reform engendered a shift in focus for caseworkers from simply providing monetary aid to the much more complex process of helping recipients find work. Now that welfare officers are both more intimately involved in their clients' lives and wield greater power over their well-being, their racial, class, and professional identities have become increasingly important factors in their work. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork in two very different communities in the northeast, "The New Welfare Bureaucrats" is a boon to anyone looking to understand the impact of the institutional and policy changes wrought by welfare reform as well as the subtle social dynamics that shape the way welfare is meted out at the individual level.

About the Author
Celeste Watkins-Hayes is assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at Northwestern University.

Reviews
"This is an insightful study of the interplay between the formal rules of the welfare bureaucracies and the discretionary power and practices of welfare caseworkers. Watkins-Hayes brilliantly documents the emerging culture of the welfare workplace and its effect on human service delivery. This timely book is a must-read for citizens, domestic policy analysts, and scholars concerned about strategies to address the plight of the truly disadvantaged." - William Julius Wilson, Harvard University"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226874920
Author Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Format Paperback
Page Count 328
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 510g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 2mm