The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources has awarded a research team at West Virginia University a $40,000 grant to study the effects of welfare reform in the state.

The interdisciplinary team of faculty members from the University’s Institute for Public Affairs, Department of Political Science and School of Applied Social Sciences will examine the lives and prospects of former West Virginia welfare recipients who have exhausted their 60 months of program eligibility.

The grant will be used to survey former welfare recipients about their perspectives and experiences when they were on and then when they went off WV WORKS , West Virginia’s version of welfare. The state Department of Health and Human Resources will use the survey results and information gathered from four in-depth focus group sessions with former WV WORKS recipients to improve the administration of its current programs and to shape the direction of future programs.

The Interdisciplinary Research Task Force on Welfare Reform at WVU is comprised of faculty members in political science, public administration, social work and sociology.

The Institute for Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science and the School of Applied Social Sciences are units within the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, WVU ’s largest college.