Hope and Change: an Analysis of the Expectations and Actual Experiences of Students in Welfare to Work Programs: a Community College Case Study

In the late 1990's President Bill Clinton moved Welfare Reform to the forefront of the national agenda. Community colleges were challenged as never before to develop programs and practices to respond to the mantra of "work first." Individuals who may have developed a multi- generational relationship with the welfare system were now mandated to find employment. Moreover, they were given time limits to get off of welfare. Craig Follins carefully and courageously walks the reader through the lives of several welfare recipients as they move from welfare to productive educational and employment situations. Craig's narrative of hope, challenge, chance and change is a window with which to examine public policy and the role community colleges play in impacting lives. Craig listens and documents the unimaginable and severe hardships in this important case study of women that have rewritten their narrative and woven new stories of optimism and success. This is a page turning discussion of how education and training are truly transforming lives in the most dire of circumstances. This is an important book in the welfare reform global dialogue.