Community Service and the Temporary Assistance Program

A nice op-ed (in the WaPo no less!) by Noah Zatz on the Administration's decision earlier this year to limit the definition of "community service" in the Temporary Assistance program:

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Traditional forms of community service—including many of those that are most beneficial to people in need—don't count anymore, unless they are "designed to improve the employability" of those performing the services. But enhancing our own job skills is not the primary purpose of ladling soup for the hungry, beautifying our public lands, consoling the sick, bringing joy to the elderly and mentoring the young. Serving others is.

The administration's interpretation not only mocks the spirit of public service but also mangles the law. The statute has other provisions for training and work experience. The regulations render the separate inclusion of "community service" superfluous.

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I agree with Zatz—community service, while it almost always involves the use of skills, is certainly about much more than "improv[ing] ... employability." To the purposes of community service Zatz lists, I'd add community participation and inclusion, and the development of what the National Service and Community Service Act calls "citizenship values." According to that Act, community service programs should "engender a sense of social responsibility and commitment to the community."

That said, community service is a somewhat uneasy fit with the current Temporary Assistance program, the purposes of which include the "promot[ion of] job preparation, work, and marriage" (Sec. 401a), but not the promotion of service or civic participation.

It's worth thinking about how Temporary Assistance could be reformed to include a greater emphasis on meaningful service and civic participation. An obvious first step would be to include the promotion of community service as a basic purpose of the program. And States could provide educational and other benefits to parents who provide community service—although to really make this happen, the federal law would need to be changed to encourage, if not require, it.

More generally, Temporary Assistance needs to be understood not as a stand-alone "social contract with the poor" as conservatives (including conservative Dems) have often described it—Zatz alludes to this conservative framing when he notes that "the work requirements of the program were sold to the public as a 'social contract'"—but as an element of the American social contract. The idea of a specific and separate social contract with "the poor"—if conceived of as a static and non-contributing group having little in common with other Americans—makes no more sense than the idea of specific and separate social contracts with blacks or women.