Wisconsin’s Fragmented Safety Net: Who Administers Welfare and Workforce Development?

The Fragmentation of Welfare and Workforce Development in Wisconsin

For Wisconsinites struggling to get back on their feet, help is available. The problem is figuring out how to get it.

A parent who loses a job may need health insurance, help buying groceries, child care, temporary cash assistance, and employment training. Those needs are closely connected, but the Wisconsin programs that address them are not.

The state of Wisconsin’s public assistance and workforce development system is spread across several state departments, as well as county and tribal governments, income maintenance consortia, private contractors, nonprofit organizations, technical colleges, and public housing authorities. Often enough, multiple departments attempt to provide similar forms of assistance, whether it be occupational preparedness, food benefits, or financial assistance. The federal Government Accountability Office calls this “fragmentation,” meaning circumstances in which more than one agency or organization is involved in the same broad area of need.

Fragmentation doesn’t automatically mean wasteful spending is happening. Programs may perform genuinely different functions or assist different groups. Often enough, there is a separate legal basis for the purpose and funding of many of these programs, which requires them to be administered separately. Still, fragmented and overlapping programs make government more difficult to coordinate and navigate. They also make defining metrics for success and evaluating the performance of these programs incredibly difficult. And they waste money. Increased administrative redundancy increases costs.

When case management and participant databases are fragmented across agencies, opportunities for improper benefit receipt can also arise. While applicants are legally required to provide complete and accurate information, separate databases can create gaps that make potential abuse harder to detect.

Regardless, the complexity of the system does little to help vulnerable individuals efficiently get the assistance they need to regain self-sufficiency. As the Alliance for Opportunity argues, “every hour a safety-net recipient spends finding their way through the system is an hour they can’t spend finding their way out of it.”

The Example of One Household

Consider a single mom with two kids who loses her job. She may start with Wisconsin's ACCESS system, a website and app that brings together various public assistance and workforce development programs, and apply for FoodShare, BadgerCare Plus, and other benefits.

If she needs cash assistance, employment planning, or work-related training, she may have to contact a Wisconsin Works (W-2) agency (in some cases, this is done through ACCESS itself). She may also seek help from shelters, nonprofit organizations, and state grant recipients.

If this mom starts working again, attending school, participating in W-2, or meeting other qualifying requirements, she may qualify for the Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy. Although Wisconsin Shares is supervised by DCF, eligibility is handled through county or regional public assistance offices.

If she needs occupational training, she might be referred to a Wisconsin Job Center, technical college, FSET contractor, W-2 provider, or the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, depending on her eligibility, disability status, and location.

Taken together, these services don't function as one program with one caseworker responsible for tracking her progress. They function as separate programs with different eligibility requirements, limited data sharing, and individual case managers.

The Wisconsin system is complex, but those hoping to understand its current structure need look no further. The following is an extensive, though not exhaustive, overview of how welfare and workforce development are managed in Wisconsin.

Primary State Departments

Though there are a number of state departments that administer public assistance and workforce development programs, a small number do the heavy lifting.

The Department of Health Services (DHS)

DHS administers the state’s biggest health and nutrition programs for more than one million Wisconsin residents.

Medicaid and BadgerCare Plus - Medicaid is a joint federal-state health care program. Wisconsin’s Medicaid system includes BadgerCare Plus, which provides Medicaid coverage to low-income Wisconsin residents under age 65.

FoodShare - FoodShare is Wisconsin's version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It is financed by the federal government but eligibility is typically determined by county consortia.

FoodShare Employment and Training (FSET) - FoodShare Employment and Training is attached to FoodShare but offers job search assistance, resume development, occupational training, transport assistance, work clothing, education in some cases, and other support services. Participation in this program can help some recipients satisfy the FoodShare work requirements.

The Department of Children and Families (DCF)

DCF oversees a number of programs that include child care, child support enforcement, employment services, and refugee assistance.

Wisconsin Works (W-2) - Wisconsin Works is one of the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. It provides employment preparation, case management, supportive services, and cash assistance in some cases.

Emergency Assistance - Emergency Assistance is a TANF-funded program that distributes one-time payments to qualifying families facing a fire, flooding, natural disaster, energy crisis, homelessness, and other emergencies.

Wisconsin Shares - Wisconsin Shares helps qualifying working and low-income families pay for child care.

The Department of Workforce Development (DWD)

DWD runs a number of programs to deliver services to Wisconsin workers, employers, and job-seekers.

Unemployment Insurance - Unemployment insurance provides temporary income to those eligible. DWD directly administers claims, makes eligibility determinations, controls payments, and conducts fraud investigations

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act - The federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) was signed into law in 2014 and acts as a federally funded framework to tie together various employment services. While this Act didn’t directly create a “WIOA benefit,” it funds several programs that help people find work or gain the skills needed to do so.

In Wisconsin, DWD coordinates WIOA implementation, though the Wisconsin Technical College System helps administer adult education. Most services are delivered through local workforce development boards and Wisconsin Job Centers.

WIOA is divided into four main titles covering different parts of the workforce.

Title I funds employment and training services for adults, dislocated workers, and eligible youth. Title II funds adult education, literacy and English-language instruction while Title III funds Wagner-Peyser employment services, which connect people searching for jobs with employers. Title IV funds vocational rehabilitation services that help people with disabilities find jobs.

Wisconsin Fast Forward - Wisconsin Fast Forward is a state-funded grant program that primarily reimburses businesses for specialized occupational training.

These are among the state’s most prominent public assistance and workforce development programs, but they are far from the only ones. Other agencies, such as the Department of Administration and Department of Public Instruction, administer their own programs that overlap with Wisconsin’s broader welfare and workforce development system.

The Layers of Administration

While public assistance programs are often named by the state department responsible for them, there are layers of administration that determine how funding that was dictated by law actually reaches Wisconsinites in the form of benefits.

1. Legal and Policy Administration

A state department is designated as the official administrator. It interprets the federal and state requirements, depending on how the program is structured. These departments write manuals, maintain databases with participant information, distribute funding, contract with the public sector and nonprofits, monitor compliance, and report to federal agencies.

2. Eligibility Determination

Eligibility decisions aren’t always made by the state administrator. DHS partners with counties and tribal agencies to process applications for programs like BadgerCare Plus, Medicaid, and FoodShare. Wisconsin has 72 counties. These counties are grouped together into 11 county consortia agencies. Those agencies hold interviews, review a participant's documents, determine eligibility, and often answer questions about the benefits themselves.

This is not the case for all programs. W-2 eligibility, by contrast, is determined through separate W-2 agencies under DCF. Emergency Assistance is decided the same way.

3. Service Provision

The entity that determines eligibility normally doesn’t directly provide the service. For example, medical care is given by hospitals, pharmacies, physicians, nursing homes, and others as part of the Medicaid system. Workforce services could be given through Job Centers, technical colleges, nonprofits, W-2 agencies, and other providers.

4. Payment Delivery

Depending on the type of benefit, a fourth entity may deliver the payment.

FoodShare benefits are accessed through the Wisconsin Quest electronic-benefit-transfer (EBT) card. Wisconsin Shares subsidies are placed on a MyWIChildCare EBT card. Those on Medicaid may use another card. Housing and energy funding could be paid through local governments, landlords, utility companies, etc.

Each of these layers serves a genuine purpose. The complexity comes from the fact that the process looks different for almost every program. Eligibility might be decided by a county consortium for one program and a state agency for another, while the actual services and payments may come through another provider.

Conclusion

Wisconsin has made efforts over the years to better integrate its welfare and workforce development programs- and to make the system easier to navigate through tools like the ACCESS website- but the system is far from streamlined.

Administrative redundancy slows the process of connecting Wisconsinites with assistance and, ultimately, helping them become self-sufficient again. It also costs taxpayers money that could otherwise go toward direct services and creates additional vulnerabilities. This fragmentation makes it difficult to determine how effective these programs are as a whole. Housing assistance, food benefits, health care, and occupational training may be administered separately, but are typically a part of the same effort to regain stability for those receiving them.

The next article in this series will compare Wisconsin’s public assistance and workforce development systems with those of other states that have taken different approaches.