Report Says ‘Charitable Choice’ Is Making a Difference in Delivery of Social Services

The landmark 1996 federal welfare law that established new rules for the cooperation of government and faith-based organizations has had a “modest, though notable” impact, according to a new report published by the Center for Public Justice, a Washington policy research and education organization.

“Religious groups accepting government funding are not having to sell their souls, and clients’ civil rights are being respected,” said the report, “The Growing Impact of Charitable Choice,” which was based on a nine-state study sponsored by the Center for Public Justice.

“Charitable choice’s most important effect thus far is that it has made collaboration plausible for those within government and the faith community who had previously assumed such partnering was somehow outside the bounds of constitutionality,” the report said.

Not all observers agree, however. Members of Congress are fighting over whether to expand the concept of “charitable choice” to other federal programs beyond welfare. And two advocacy groups are suing a Kentucky religious group over its use of government money to run homes for abused and neglected children.

In 1996, Congress changed the federal welfare law to specifically invite churches and other religious groups to seek government money and a key role in providing services to welfare recipients through a provision called charitable choice.

The goal of the charitable-choice provision was to remove barriers that prevented religious groups from receiving government money. The provision permits recipients of federal aid to require their employees to be of a particular faith, and it allows those groups to keep religious icons on their walls when providing social services paid for by the government. But the provision specifically prohibits the use of government dollars for proselytizing or for subsidizing the cost of running religious services.

From 1996 and through last summer, the period covered by the study by the Center for Public Justice, faith-based groups in nine states entered into 84 financial agreements to help governments, ranging in value from $5,000 to more than $350,000, said the report, written by Amy L. Sherman, senior fellow of the Hudson Institute’s Welfare Policy Center. During that time period, an additional 41 nonfinancial arrangements between states and non-profit groups were created in which congregations and faith-based groups helped government welfare agencies by providing specific services, such as “mentoring or life-skills classes” to welfare recipients, the report said.

“Although a grand total of 125 new financial and nonfinancial collaborations in nine states appears a small number,” the report said, “it reflects a significant amount of activity, involving hundreds of congregations and faith-based organizations and thousands of welfare recipients.”

The report said that the new efforts either emerged specifically as a result of charitable choice or “blossomed under the hospitable climate for such collaborations created more generally by welfare reform.”

In most cases, government officials took the first step by approaching religious groups for help, the report said. Government agencies in all nine states held meetings with private-sector organizations to educate them about welfare reform and about how families needed help moving from welfare to work.

More than half of the arrangements involve faith-based groups that previously had no ties to government, the report said. “As a result of charitable choice, we are now seeing religious groups that, for the first time, are receiving government funds to underwrite their social services. In short, the traditional social services network is being broadened with the inclusion of ‘new players.’ ”

Stimulated by changes in welfare laws, many congregations have started providing social services that they had not offered previously, the report said. “Many have moved from ‘commodity-based benevolence’ (operating food pantries and used clothing centers) to ‘relational’ ministry (mentoring families going from welfare to work or providing intensive job and life skills classes),” the report said.

While the survey turned up “considerable enthusiasm among government and faith representatives for these new collaborations,” the report cautioned that “interviews also revealed that few people in either community are well-educated about the specifics of charitable choice.” At the state level, the report said, “much remains to be done to bring government administrative procedures and procurement policies into sync with the letter and spirit of charitable choice.”

The states surveyed for the study were California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Supporters of charitable choice say that churches and other religious organizations have often been told by government officials that they must play down their religious character before they are eligible to receive government funds to provide social services.

To try to prevent that from happening with programs not covered by the federal welfare law, some members of the House and Senate have inserted similar language into bills now pending in Congress that cover a variety of other programs, including adoption, aid for fathers, literacy, and drug prevention in schools. The House recently passed a bill, known as the American Homeownership and Economic Opportunity Act, that included an amendment to allow religious organizations to compete for some federal housing money.

But opposition to federal financing of faith-based organizations remains strong. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in what it calls “a ground-breaking case that will test the boundaries of tax aid to church-run social services,” has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children.

The two advocacy groups argue that the Kentucky charity violated the U.S. Constitution by allegedly using government money to advance its religious beliefs. At issue is the Baptist group’s firing of an employee who is a lesbian and who believes that she lost her job because the charity objected to homosexuality on religious grounds. The children’s home has denied that it did anything illegal. It told the woman she was let go because her “admitted homosexual lifestyle is contrary to the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children core values.”

Copies of the report are available by writing the Center for Public Justice at P.O. Box 48368, Washington 20002-0368. The price, which includes shipping and handling, is $10 a copy.