Welfare reform provides New York state an opportunity to examine all its programs affecting families, children and work, but to benefit from that opportunity, programs need to be carefully planned and evaluated using state-of-the-art research, a Cornell University expert told a state panel last month.

Charles McClintock, associate dean of Cornell's College of Human Ecology, gave invited testimony on Jan. 23 before the New York State Assembly Joint Public Hearing on ways Cornell faculty members can lend their expertise to issues facing legislators and executive staff.

McClintock, professor and chair of the Human Service Studies Department, and Elizabeth Peters, associate professor of consumer economics, have been spearheading the college's Policy Perspectives Series to help Albany legislators, executive staff and state agencies make use of Cornell faculty expertise across a variety of topics including child well-being, family policy and program evaluation. In October, Cornell faculty presented research-based seminars on topics requested by executive staff in Albany. These included the demographic trends affecting children, families and work; child-care policy issues in the face of welfare reform; and the effect of sources of support for children (receiving welfare vs. child support). The policy seminar was presented to legislative and executive staff and was coordinated with a similar effort on child-care policy that was broadcast via satellite to 28 sites around New York.

In addition, a program on evaluation slated for the spring is being planned with the Governor's Council on Children and Families.

"Welfare reform gives us an opportunity to examine state policies related to children and families in a fresh way, but this opportunity will be wasted if the state does not implement careful monitoring and research efforts to examine the effects of new federal and state policy at county and state levels, " McClintock testified. "As part of New York's land-grant university, we are uniquely poised to assist state and county groups with the task of designing, implementing and evaluating how welfare reform is working."

The reason, McClintock said, is because Cornell's College of Human Ecology has numerous multidisciplinary experts committed to providing knowledge for policy-makers and citizens on issues ranging from economic, family, food and nutrition to health and community. And through the network of Cornell Cooperation Extension, Cornell faculty help operate research-based programs in every county and New York City borough.

"We urge legislators and policy-makers in Albany to turn to us -- one of their greatest resources -- for help in applying findings from research, designing research and monitoring efforts to allow the state to carefully develop and examine the effects of its new policies under welfare reform," said McClintock, who noted that the welfare reform legislation has no evaluation requirement as it did in the past. Thus, state and county agencies have no systematic way to assess the strengths and weaknesses of new programs.

Evaluation research, however, can help in three ways, McClintock said:

-- by helping to re-think assumptions and conceptions of policy issues, such as how public policy should be shaped now that the effects of divorce on poverty and child rearing are more fully understood;

-- by providing data to help with short-term problem-solving applications for specific decisions and program management decisions, including "best practices" management efforts and innovative programs such as the CAP welfare-to-work program piloted in several New York counties;

-- by building support for or against a specific policy direction, such as the longitudinal studies previously done in the College of Human Ecology on the benefits gained from Head Start.

Already, many Cornell faculty work with national networks of policy-makers in the areas of welfare and evaluation, McClintock said, and could serve as a bridge to federal policy-makers and inform state agencies on evaluation efforts in other states.

"A state agency, for example, generally does not know how to monitor changes going on at the county level. Yet college faculty routinely design evaluation studies, needs assessments, program delivery audits and policy analyses to assess the effectiveness of welfare reform policies and outcomes for individuals and families. We could build on these models quickly and establish resources for state and county officials, community groups and citizens," McClintock concluded.

"We need solid evidence and analysis for the kinds of far-reaching changes that welfare reform is triggering. We hope that policy-makers will find ways to join in partnership with us and other New York research universities to carefully assess, develop and evaluate public-policy issues that are so fundamentally important to our state's families, children and future."

The papers from the October Policy Perspective Series seminar may be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.human.cornell.edu/.