Background and Accomplishments

FEI was organized in December 1997 to develop an effective advocacy mechanism to address the hardships facing families as a result of welfare reform. Women heads of household comprise close to 95% of Massachusetts' welfare cases. Accordingly, FEI has given particular focus to the needs of such households in its advocacy. FEI has won or advanced critical legislative campaigns in the following areas and successfully defended against threatened harm in other areas :

• Increasing cash benefits for families receiving welfare benefits;
• Preserving cash benefits from threatened cuts;
• Permissive language in successive state budgets allowing DTA to offer professional assessments of parents' barriers to employment;
• Warding off expansion of the work requirement that would bar recipients from participating in pre-employment education and training programs;
• Expanding the support among state legislators and business leaders for education and training as a goal of state welfare reform;
• Leading a successful override campaign to allow parents of preschool age children to satisfy their new work requirement through participation in an education or training program;
• Leading a successful campaign to change DTA regulations to allow all work required parents participating in an education or training program extensions of their time limited benefits to complete such programs
• Leading a successful campaign to preserve our state disability standards for TAFDC and EAEDC recipients.
• Leading a successful campaign to change our state welfare law so that parents may satisfy their work requirement through participation in education or training activities, or by doing housing search for parents living in family shelter, and by expanding and making clear the circumstances which constitute "good cause" for noncompliance with work requirements or an employment development plan.
• Securing up to $22M in funding for DTA's Employment Services Program for FY05, a 30% increase over FY03 and FY04 funding levels.
• Working with housing advocates to establish the Rental Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) program, funded at $2M for FY05, to enable families to remain in stable housing or transition to such housing from shelter.
   

   

Support For Other Organizations

FEI also provides support to grassroots organizations that work directly with present and former welfare recipients and low-income women living in shelters. Working with the advocates and leaders of these organizations, many of whom are low-income mothers, FEI supports their leadership on welfare reform issues by providing technical information and advocacy materials.