The report underscores the problems that states face as the nation moves closer to the five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits required by the 1996 federal welfare law. Despite a strong economy that has sharply reduced welfare rolls, states are struggling to place long-term welfare recipients in jobs.
"The success so far has been with people who face few or no barriers," said Melville Miller, president of Legal Services of New Jersey, a nonprofit group that provides free legal services to the poor.
To Miller, the "most striking" finding in the report was the problem among many long-term welfare recipients of dealing with depression - a condition, he noted, that "can shut down the human body's ability to function."
Among its other recommendations, the report calls for expanding state services and training caseworkers to identify people with mental-health problems.
The findings are similar to those of other studies throughout the country.
In a February report, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington cited studies that found a significant number of welfare recipients in 24 states suffering from an array of mental and physical disabilities. In Utah, for example, two-fifths of the people on welfare for more than three years suffer from major clinical depression, the report said.
The center also found that long-term welfare recipients face problems of low IQ, learning disabilities, and substance abuse.
"There is a high incidence of disability," report author Eileen Sweeney said. "Often they're not things that are so disabling that they could never work but things that require . . . some additional supports."
Jacqueline Tencza, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, said that the Legal Services report was similar to a recent state study, and that the department had already begun to enact many of the recommendations made by Legal Services.
