Social-Service Groups Urged to Link Workers With Government Safety-Net Programs

The National Human Services Assembly has an ambitious goal. The umbrella group for social-service nonprofits wants charities to screen whether their low-wage workers qualify for government safety-net programs, such as food stamps or child-care subsidies, and help them apply for benefits.

The assembly’s new Bridging the Gap program, which features an online system to help human-resources departments screen employees, has received nearly $1-million from the Ford Foundation.

The effort is just getting started with affiliates of Catholic Charities USA, Goodwill Industries International, and United Neighborhood Centers of America testing the approach in four cities. So far 220 employees have requested screenings and have qualified for $100,000 in benefits.

The goal is to help low-wage nonprofit workers who often struggle to make ends meet—and to help charities cut down on expensive turnover. The assembly plans to measure the program’s effect in keeping employees, reducing absenteeism, and lifting morale.

To persuade other charities to adopt the practice, the program needs to prove that “this is the right thing to do and this is the right thing to do from a business perspective,” says Karen Heller Key, vice president for programs at the assembly.

Mixed Feelings

Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, one of the charities participating in the test, often hires people from its job-training programs, but the pay is low. For instance, starting wages for a sales associate in one of the nonprofit’s thrift stores is $8.52 an hour.

At those wages, employees need government benefits, says Lisa Rusyniak, chief executive of Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake: “They really need more assistance in becoming independent and self-sufficient.”

The tone of outreach materials is positive and hopeful, says Ms. Key. “Our goal is to figure out how to make people comfortable,” she says. “This is not about blame, about whose fault it is. It’s about helping people to move toward really thriving.”

But not everyone is sold on the Bridging the Gap approach.

Dorie Seavey, director of policy research at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, which advocates for better working conditions for nursing assistants, home health aides, and personal-care attendants, says she has mixed feelings about the program.

On the one hand, her group’s research has found that 47 percent of direct-care workers live in households that receive one or more government benefits, and Ms. Seavey says she’s seen the difference benefits can make for employees. But she worries that those benefits do nothing to solve the underlying cause of workers’ struggles: low wages.

“We’ve created a work force that is underpaid, and the way it survives is that we backfill these low wages with public subsidies,” she says. “I look forward to a day where workers don’t have to rely on the earned-income tax credit or other subsidies.”

Changing the way wages are determined is a vital issue to tackle, but for now, government benefits are a critical tool to help low-wage workers stay in their jobs, says Chauncy Lennon, a program officer at the Ford Foundation. Too often, he says, transportation, child-care, or health crises push those employees out of the work force.

“But if you can connect to public services, that gives you the resources to stay connected to your job,” says Mr. Lennon. “By staying connected, you gain the skills and work experience that let you move on to a higher- quality job.”