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TANF will not work unless the corporate community and businesses of all sizes step up to the plate and provide job opportunities. Collaboratives can help encourage the business community to analyze its capacity to open up job opportunities.
Collaboratives can help businesses take advantage of the financial incentives that TANF provides. They can also help arrange for the kinds of services and supports employers say are necessary to new employee's success, such as child care, family support, case management, mentoring, and conflict-resolution skills.
Possible strategies
- Meet with local minority- and majority-owned businesses as well as organizations representing small and large businesses to explain how welfare reform will work--and what role the business community must play to make it a success.
- Organize a committee of business leaders to work with the collaborative on welfare reform. A business leader serving on the collaborative might convene such a group. Potential members of the committee could include representatives of businesses in the community with a track record of hiring AFDC participants and business leaders who have been involved in efforts to reform public education. Reach out to critics of the old welfare system from the business community and ask them to help make the new system work by providing jobs.
- Find out what community development corporations (CDC's) have been doing to create employment opportunities in the area. CDC's are non-profit organizations that focus on economic development and housing issues in poor communities. Many have developed strategies to create jobs and help neighborhood residents find employment. The CDC's can be an invaluable asset to state welfare agencies and community collaboratives looking for ways to move TANF families into the labor force.
