It’s been five years: Is welfare reform working?

Dr. Deborah Frank, Director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center, might have some doubts.

Last May, Dr. Frank and her colleagues treated 75 malnourished children under age 4 in her clinic. A third of them were excluded from their mother’s transitional assistance benefits, or were the siblings of such children.

That should be a warning sign that one important aspect of the 1995 changes in the way Massachusetts distributes public assistance is severely flawed.

Riding the waves of widespread but ill-informed public opinion at the time, the state legislature in 1995 embarked on a remarkable program of social engineering. Welfare recipients would get no extra benefits for additional children — the idea being that the cutting of benefits would teach the poor to stop having babies.

Responding to the pre-Christmas report by Boston Catholic Charities on the effects of welfare reform on families and children, Department of Transitional Assistance Commissioner Claire McIntire politely said that the Cellucci Administration still has "a difference of opinion" with the Catholic Church on the so-called family cap.

That was a major understatement.

The church was never against welfare reform. Unlike some advocacy groups invested in the old system, we support efforts to establish reasonable work requirements, and even eligibility time limits for many recipients.

But these measures have to be fine-tuned with better training opportunities, assistance for day care and transportation, and a multi-track approach that recognizes that some on welfare have severe barriers to employment.

The state also needs to give a new impetus to affordable housing programs, especially in higher-priced housing markets like eastern Massachusetts and parts of western Massachusetts.

And the church cannot support so-called reforms that are driven solely by their political popularity rather than facts.

At first glance, the reduction in state welfare rolls from 103,000 to 44,000 recipients in five years seems to be tremendous news. Yet the poverty rate for the state’s families stays at a dismal 14 percent. Since welfare reform began, childhood poverty has risen from 16 to 18 percent. So much for the idea that those who left welfare are now moving up the economic ladder in a booming economy.

To their credit, the governor and the legislature have already expressed openness to some adjustments to the Commonwealth’s anti-poverty programs and if the recently enacted state income tax reduction is slowly implemented, there should be funding to pay for them.