Tom McLaughlin is quoted in news stories on his research on Maine's welfare system and presents his findings in Press Herald opinion piece

Thomas Chalmers McLaughlin, Ph.D., UNE professor of social work, on Jan 26 and 27, 2011 was quoted or noted in stories on a new study on Maine's welfare system on Maine public (MPBN) radio, WCSH and WLBZ television, Village Soup and Bangor Daily News. The study on the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program, known as TANF, was conducted by McLaughlin and professor Sandra Butler of the University of Maine for the Maine Women's Lobby, Maine Equal Justice Partners and the Maine Children's Alliance.

McLaughlin told MPBN that rather than making a conscious choice to go on TANF, program recipients enroll as a last resort and are usually employed right up until the time they began to receive benefits. "What we learned is that people are on TANF because of their inability to find and maintain stable and secure employment," McLaughlin said. "We also learned that families come on TANF because of family health problems that limit the parents' ability to work. We found that family-related crisis stemming from divorce separation or domestic violence also mean that people come on TANF. Many families turn to TANF when they can't find work or struggle to sustain employment in sectors of the labor market where low wages are predominant."

The study also found that most TANF families are headed by women raising young children on their own, the median age of a child receiving TANF is just younger than 2 years old and the median length of time that families reported receiving TANF was 18 months.

The release of the study was also covered by the Portland Press Herald, which also published a Maine Voices column by McLaughlin in which he discussed the findings of the study.

He writes, "while there are abuses in any system and there's room to make TANF more effective, our research shows that this program is focused on young children, single moms and families dealing with disability. They are among the most vulnerable people in our community and need help not because they don't want to work, but because they are caught in the turbulence of a global economic recession, wages that can't make ends meet, fractured families and abuse. As lawmakers move forward with proposals to change Maine's TANF program, they have an obligation to understand whom their decisions are affecting and what the outcomes might be."

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