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Welfare Reform & Peoplewith Disabilities

ISSUE:

The Wisconsin Works (W-2) program has been in effect for more than three years, and there continues to be improvements that are needed to support families caring for a member who has a disability or a chronic health condition.

This includes families where the parent has a disability and families caring for a child with a disability. During the last legislative session, an increase in the Caretaker Supplement monthly grant, and in child care assistance to older children with disabilities, helped many families. Increasingly, however, the families remaining on the W-2 program are families where a disability impacts their ability to move up the W-2 ladder of self-sufficiency.

POSITION:

WCDD supports policies and practices that help low-income families who are headed by a parent with a disability as well as parents who are caring for a child with a disability at home to remain intact.

LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES:

WCDD supports the following legislative initiatives:

• Eliminate the two-year time limit for the W-2 Transition category and end the state policy that all extension decisions must be approved by the Department of Workforce Development.
• Establish a process for a pre-sanction review of adults on W-2. Prior to sanctioning a person who has not complied with W-2, a process would be used to determine if the adult had understood the requirements or if there is another barrier to complying that is out of the control of the individual.
• Restore the state-only Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit at an approximate cost of $904,000 plus administrative costs.
• Extend the Caretaker Supplement benefits for the child of a minor child when both live with the grandparent who is on SSI. The costs for this increase would be paid by federal TANF dollars.

Back to WCDD Home Page > Introduction

1. Introduction
2. Birth to Three
3. Campaign Finance Reform
4. Children's Long Term Care Redesign
5. Community Aids
6. Community Integration Program
7. Community Options Program
8. Dental Care Access
9. Direct Service Workforce Shortage
10. Education of Students with Disabilities
11. Employment
12. Family Care Program
13. Family Support Program
14. Independent Living Assistive Technology
15. Medicaid Card Services
16. Mental Health: Fairness in Insurance
17. Mental Health: Services & Supports
18. Protecting People with Disabilities from Abuse
19. Respite Care
20. Specialized Transportation
21. State Centers for the Developmentally Disabled
22. Voting Reforms
23. Welfare Reform & People with Disabilities