An empowerment model for social welfare consumers: its effectiveness and implications for welfare reform

There is no uniformly accepted social work case management treatment model for use with impoverished consumers of social welfare services. Differences in intervention models vary greatly across the spectrum of social welfare agencies. There is even marked variance among providers within these agencies. This article summarizes the results of a study of the effects of an empowerment model with public welfare consumers based upon task-centered case management practice. The results of this intervention were assessed over a period of 7 months using ten professional social workers and a sample of 174 public social welfare consumers. The basic research design was a two-group field experiment. Community adjustment was conceptualized and operationalized along eight problem areas. Repeated measures, multivariate analysis of variance identified improvement in six of eight areas of community adjustment when the task-centered case management model was implemented. Given both time parameters and required outcomes of the efficacy of welfare reform under the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the task-centered model facilitates rapid involvement of public welfare consumers with a systematic, outcome-oriented process.