(YOUR LETTERHEAD)

Date
Honorable ( )
Governor ( _)
Address

Dear Governor ( ):

This is a very important time for our city and our state as Congress debates the reauthorization of the 1996 welfare law. (YOUR AGENCY) has been working in (YOUR COMMUNITY) (DESCRIBE YOUR WORK- ESP WITH LOW INCOME AND WELFARE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES). We have a chance, if we combine our voices and forces, to ensure that Congress allocates the resources and provides the flexibility for our state, our communities and our human needs agencies. We must use what we have learned from the last 6 years of welfare policy to improve the system and make sure it provides the multiple support services and workforce benefits that are necessary to reduce welfare and eliminate poverty.

We have contacted Senators and Representatives, but we believe that you, as the elected leader of our great state, have a unique and powerful role in this debate. Please continue to work with our Congressional delegation and push for flexibility, improved benefits and meaningful work programs and fight against expanded and punitive mandates and sanctions.

We are a proud member of the Alliance for Children and Families, a national association of nonprofit, human service organizations that serve almost four million families in over 6,500 communities. Our research on the experiences of individuals affected by the welfare legislation has been compiled in Faces of Change: Personal Experiences of Welfare Reform in America. The stories represent families from a broad diversity of cultural, regional and economic backgrounds who have relied on the public welfare system for support in their times of crisis. Their quest for self-sufficiency has many common themes and our analysis of the Administration’s welfare plan and our recommendations for improvements in the welfare law are based on these themes:

• Ensure that the definition of work includes job training and post-secondary education;
• Recognize that child care is an essential work support by increasing funding to the Child Care Development Fund to expand the number of children served and improving the quality of care.
• Provide incentives to the states to tailor job training, job placement and job retention strategies to the multiple and diverse talents and needs of the participants;
• Provide local flexibility and adequate monetary support for program implementation and funding allocation;

• Request that states keep track of their former recipients and provide follow-up job assistance and assessments to ensure that the workers and their families are on the path to leaving poverty, not just off the welfare rolls;
• Establish new temporary waivers that "stop the clock" for recipients who cannot meet work or looking-for-work mandates:

• When chronic physical and mental health conditions of the recipients and their children temporarily prevent them from working;
• When childcare, domestic violence, housing or transportation emergencies temporarily prevent them from working;
• When unemployment is high or when available jobs require advanced skills that the welfare recipient has neither the talents nor training to qualify for these positions.

We ask that you carefully review both the successes and the multiple barriers faced by the recipients of public welfare as they juggle their responsibilities of parenting, working, keeping their families healthy and safe, and providing food, clothing, shelter and a decent livelihood for their children. Like many of us, welfare recipients have their own personal challenges which limit their success, including substance abuse, domestic violence, learning disabilities, short-circuited education training and homes that are many miles from day care and employment sites. Transitional support services that address these challenges merit not only your support, but your championship.

Please feel free to contact the Alliance for Children and Families (www.alliance1.org) if you have further questions about our recommendations or to request a copy of our collective Response to the Administration’s Welfare Proposals.

In the meantime, thank you for your consideration of this request, for your leadership and compassion. Please feel free to call on me or my staff at any time for more information or to schedule a visit to our agency and see our important "ground zero" work first hand

Sincerely,

(YOUR NAME AND TITLE)