摘要:Ending Welfare As We Know It follows six welfare mothers over the course of a year as they struggle to comply with new work requirements, find reliable child care and transportation, battle drug addiction and depression, confront domestic violence, and try to make ends meet in the new era of welfare reform. By profiling families living in Wisconsin, Florida, and New Jersey, states that implemented their own reforms before the passage of the federal bill, the program offers the public a preview of welfare reform as it unfolds throughout the rest of the country. Each of the states featured has reduced its welfare caseload by imposing strict new rules which include work requirements, time limits, and special provisions for teen mothers. Some states offer job training, education, child care subsidies, life skills classes, and more. But which measures are most effective? More importantly, what has become of the people who have left the welfare rolls? While the documentary reveals that the new work requirements and time limits are motivating many welfare recipients to go to work, it also finds that many of the people we are pushing off welfare are not landing on their feet. As this program reveals, there are no pat answers, and the solution to welfare dependency are as complex as the reasons people turn to welfare in the first place.
