Vision

The opportunities we envision:

A welfare program that is effective at helping very low income parents get and keep work that moves them and their children out of poverty.

An economic infrastructure that could put the welfare program out of business:

• By making work pay: adequate wages, tax credits for working families, and access to training and education;
• By making work possible: child care, health care coverage and transportation; and
• By preventing destitution when work is not a real possibility: a safety net for the disabled, for children and for the unemployed.

Mission

What We Do

• Develop and advocate for state policy changes each year
• Make information about policy easy to understand and act on.
• Mobilize our members to act.
• Seek out new partnerships.
• Connect allies around a common mission and a coordinated strategy.
• Provide the news media with information, analysis and points of view.
• Mobilize our members to telephone, write, and meet with policy makers and to offer testimony at formal hearings
• Advocate for federal welfare policies that support anti-poverty efforts and state flexibility and innovation

Accomplishments

Since 1997, the members of the Affirmative Options Coalition have successfully advocated for policies related to Minnesota's welfare-to-work program (MFIP), including increased access to education and training and expansion of the Working Family Credit. Affirmative Options has successfully advocated for:

• Policies in the Minnesota Family Investment Program(MFIP), Minnesota’s welfare-to-work program, that:
  • are focused on helping families get out of poverty;
  • include work incentives and job counseling support;
  • provide funding for child care assistance; and
  • allow access to education and training
• Increased funding to provide more intensive services to people with barriers to employment
• Extension of the 60-month MFIP time limit for people with disabilities or who are caring for someone with a disability, or who are working but have not reached a wage above poverty
• Maintaining a strong safety net by ensuring that families continue to receive cash assistance as they transition off welfare
• Expanding access to post-secondary education and training
• Funding increases for the Working Family Credit (Minnesota’s version of the Earned Income Tax Credit), childcare assistance and transitional housing