"It's building on strength, building self-confidence, giving people a good feeling about themselves."

J. Jean Rogers
Director, Department of Workforce Development

Our interview with J. Jean Rogers took place in the back seat of a car cruising through Milwaukee, as the Director of Wisconsin's W-2 program toured a number of W-2 service agencies.

Question:
Start by telling who you are and what your job is.

J. Jean Rogers:
Okay. A little background on me personally. I am a native of Illinois, but I have lived more than half my life in Wisconsin. I came here to graduate school. My father grew up here and so we spent vacation times in the state and I loved it and so I stayed in Wisconsin.

I'm an undergraduate early childhood education person and my graduate work is in behavioral studies. I am very much a person who is focused on behavioral outcome, which is what this program (W-2) is all about.

Usually, the typical background that people come into this work with, is social work. Social work basically looks at where people are in the light of barriers that would keep them from moving to a another place. When you take a behavioristic concept, you say, "here's the behavior that I would like to see." Now I am going to build a program to help people get there.

That is what W-2 is all about. That's what welfare-to-work focuses on. Identifying where you would like to see people be and where you have confidence that they have some ability to get, and then finding a way to help them get there.

So, I've had an opportunity to take my professional background and my enthusiasm for believing in people and use it in work that is something that I love. That same aspect, believing in people, is something that is very much a part of Governor Thompson's feeling of why this program is so important. Because he is the eternal optimist.

He sees every living human being in the state of Wisconsin as a resource for Wisconsin and their families and, boy, he's going to figure out how to build on that. That's where he gets the concept of high expectations that W-2 grew out of. That, coupled with the fact that he traveled around the state years ago and asked the citizens what they were interested in seeing him address if he got to be governor. And this was high on the list.

Question:
So is this kind of the opposite of the social work approach? When you look at people's problems and try to fix it?

J. Jean Rogers:
Yes, I would say. And if that sounds like just wordsmithing, the reason it's not is the same reason if you have children, you know that you can address an issue in two ways. You can say, "Johnny, I told you three times not to do X." Or you can say, "Johnny, you were doing Y really well and I'd liked to see you doing more of Y."

It's building on the strength, building self-confidence, giving people a good feeling about themselves, little bits of hope. Like the young man we saw today that was, in a very subtle way, given a wonderful pat on the back by that teacher saying "Oh, you've found a new creative way to do this task and you can put this on your resume." The boy puffed up and he was so proud of himself. And that's the difference.

The old program, when someone came into the door, literally, it was a "hi, how are you and will you tell us what your problems and your barriers are, so we can see what you are exempt from, what we don't have to expect of you." That was the focus.

Now it's the reverse. It's "hi, how are you and we have a host of opportunities for you and we are going to help you build on all of them because we think you can do it." And people rise to that. You would, I would. You are going to respond better to a pat on the back then you are to a spanking.

Although in my family from time to time, spankings were in there too. That's where the sanctions come in. Because the sanctions are tied to giving people clear instruction about what is expected of them and giving them a whole host of help to meet those expectations. But if they overtly don't cooperate then there's a consequence.

Just like in life. If you don't show up for work, pretty soon your employer is not going to pay you because you didn't show up. Or if you showed up and did nothing while you were there but sit and paint your nails or comb your hair, whatever, pretty soon your employer wouldn't pay for that either.

So we are trying to focus W-2, in terms of the way we run the program, in a way as much as possible to emulate a real-life experience. The old programs weren't real-life. They were so full of artificiality that it was no surprise that as soon as one stepped out of that dependency, they had a greater likelihood of failure because their experience wasn't real world.

Question:
Sometimes, do caseworkers try to get the client self-motivated by not letting them know all the things that they are eligible for? We've heard this approach called "Light Touch."

J. Jean Rogers:
We have had a lot of both discussion and struggles within trying to make sure we are explaining the position properly when we talk about "Light Touch."

I liken it to the smorgasbord table. I should never go near a smorgasbord table. I can do it with the best of intentions, but when you put 40 pounds of food in front of me on a large plate and tell me that I can go back as many times as I want, I will overeat and I won't like it. I will understand that I am doing it, but the temptation is too great.

That's what we did with the programs before, we would go so far out of our way to sign people up. Someone would come in for some tiding-over food stamps, and they would go out with every available cash assistance, housing assistance, you name it. The ease with which dependency forms is too much.

Now that doesn't mean you withhold information. You do tell people about the various programs that are available. And you, through reasonable assessment, help them to connect with the ones that right then they need. But not to the point where you make it so easy for them not to help themselves.

Hundreds of times I have heard clients say, "Boy I sure didn't like these programs...but you got me up off the couch, I needed the push, I needed you to pull me out of where I was. My kids like life better, me better, themselves better now that I'm not just sitting home all the time."

Question:
We've been doing poverty work for 15 years and have never heard of a single person say that they liked being AFDC, ever.

J. Jean Rogers:
That's right. Often fear manifests itself as anger. People don't tend to tell you "I'm afraid, I'm afraid to step out of the house." What's the name of that phobia – agoraphobia –
sometimes it's literally at that level because they've done so little interfacing with society. That's one of the biggest, just sad situations of the old system.

You were creating a whole segment of society that was disenfranchised in the very basest way. They did not have a clue how to interface, and new things are scary. We all think change is wonderful, but for you not for me. They need that push, hold their hand, but give them a push.

Question:
Can you talk to me about Milwaukee County? Transportation seems to be a big problem, but also we interviewed a couple of guys who said most of the people in this neighborhood just don't even have a clue how to fit into the "White world." It's like they're on Mars and so they go out there and they try to function in a job with White people in that world and they just can't handle it.

J. Jean Rogers:
That's part of the learning situation, when we talk about life skills and soft skills, that's part of it. You've just identified one aspect and an important one. And it's not unique to Milwaukee County. I've just spent time in Green Bay.

In Green Bay, 21% of the student population is minority. Now it's a mix of different minority types. Some long time from that region, Native Americans. But as recently as yesterday one of the adults in the room talked about the fact that after 30 years of interface he was still more comfortable in the Native American community than he was in a room full of whites.

This is something we teach. Part of soft skills is learning that, there are appropriate roles for management...and your managers aren't necessarily going to be Black if you're Black, Hispanic if you're Hispanic, Hmong if you're Hmong.

We are going to do a lot to help with culture knowledge in the employer community, but you the worker have to realize that you have to be multi-cultured too. This is the greater world, we are a melting pot and so we have to be sensitive of each other. It doesn't mean I'm trying to make you White if you're black or you're trying to make me Black if you're White. But we've got to learn a little bit about each other, enough to respect each other and be able to work together.

For people who want to advance, which is most people – most people once you give them a thread of an idea that maybe they have a reason to hope – they want to learn these things. It is not an insurmountable condition, it's one that people are anxious to learn how to work with because they know it's the route to success.