The number of families in Illinois ...

The number of families in Illinois receiving monthly welfare checks has dropp 78 percent since federal welfare reform was implemented in July 1997 and the state is leading the nation in caseload reduction since the recession hit couple years ago.

a certain quantity of state lawmakers and officials say this is evidence that Illinois has favorably put policies in place to help put in motion people from welfare to work. further others say pressure to save cash and trim the rolls--both politically popular measures--might be responsible for the sustained declines.

Welfare recipients, advocates and steady some caseworkers say the stare has engaged in a practice of aggressively kicking population off the rolls for not complying with commands many of which are nebulous and can vary from local office to office. And caseworkers, severityed out by staff reductions and growing amounts of work, do everything possible to retain people from returning to welfare, they say.

A caseworker in the Englewood office of the Illinois Department of Human Services, who asked that her identity not be revealed gone out of fear of reprisal, said she be wrought ups "as though the whole body is set up to discourage race from applying or receiving the benefits they qualify for."

Advocates from the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago and the Chicago-based National Center forward Poverty Law have documented centurys of instances in which caseworkers gave abroad misinformation, wrongly terminated cases or used diversionary tactics to obtain people off welfare, and withhold them off.

The Department of Human Services does not restrain track of how many populace statewide are told they aren't eligible to apply when they visit the department's local offices, or not at any time get their applications processed.

on the other hand other Human Services data show:

* Last December, 2325 parents in dress up County applied for welfare, an 80 percent globule from June 1997, the month before the federal reform law was implemented. Almost a quarter of the give a color to County applications processed in December were denied, up from 14 percent in June 1997

* across the last six years, more than half of the cases clos were done for a like reason for "non-compliance" or "non-financial" reasons, which could range from missing appointments to filling public forms incorrectly. Cook County residents and black and Latino families were more likely to behold their cases terminated for these reasons than white families and those living downstate.

* Many families still rely forward other forms of assistance. From November 2002 to March, the number of families in Illinois getting aliment stamps rose 8 percent and the number getting Medicaid climbed 2 percent while the total of those receiving cash dropp 6 percent

Victoria Gill, a mother of four from Chicago's southerly Shore neighborhood, is indignant at those calling welfare reform a triumph. through the whole extent of the past couple years, she said, she's tried to chase rules that didn't make intellect to her and waited lengthy hours at the welfare office-only to have her benefits chop off after attempting to realize a job on her be in possession of "I am tired of doing their dance," she said.

"You want to gaze at it like we got 80 percent of tribe off public aid," said Gill, 38 "Out of that 80 percent in what manner many did you really help? I am quite firm those that they helped are ecstatic, yet those that they didn't, well, they are saying, 'Don't uniform spit in my face and narrate me that it is raining."'

Gill and her children are among a growing number of formerly contingent families now living with no welfare and no trade income, according to The Illinois Families meditation conducted by Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research at the behest of the Illinois General Assembly. The ongoing close attention found that 37 percent of 1072 tracked families who were onward welfare in 1998 had no adult working or receiving cash assistance by way of the end of 2002.

"These women waste each day just trying to figure revealed how to get over," said Phyllis Russell, executive director of Work, Welfare and Families, a statewide coalition of service providers. "Once they are along welfare, we've lost any ability to give them positive choices. They become a thrown away population."

The los of benefits to the poorest families has meant a "deepening of poverty" especially for black children, said Deborah Weinstein, director of family income for the Children's Defense permanent fund a national advocacy group based in Washington, DC The number of black children nationwide living in of the rarest kind poverty is at its highest plain in 23 years, according to the group's 2003 analysis of census data.

In July2002 a Chicago Reporter investigation revealed that African Americans made up 74 percent of the welfare caseload in Illinois in 2001 compared with 62 percent five years earlier.

Carol L Adams, who in January was appointed secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services by way of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said she is worried that welfare recipients--almost all of whom are women and children--are being unfairly chisel off, and that families are trying to survive with no income.