Marge Randle wasn’t expecting the welfare revolution that would soon draw President Bill Clinton to town that day she first walked into Gayle Hobbs’ midtown Kansas City office some 30 years ago.

All Randle knew was that she had orders tumbling down from the upper echelon of Missouri state government to work with Hobbs and her fledgling non-profit organization.

Randle, then a newly promoted supervisor in the state’s Family Support Division, sat in a folding chair across the simple card table serving as Hobbs’ desk and opened with a question something like:

Just what is LINC anyway?

“And Gayle started laughing,” Randle said, recalling that first meeting. “I don’t think Gayle even knew where this was going.”

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'Historic' decline in child poverty ties to LINC's Caring Communities legacy with FEC

LINC — the Local Investment Commission of Kansas City — was still developing what was designed to be a community-driven mission, said Hobbs, who’d been hired out of state government to run the non-profit.

LINC, the brainchild of its founder, Kansas City businessman and civic leader Bert Berkley, and Missouri Department of Social Services Director Gary Stangler, was in ongoing dialogues throughout the community to identify how it would leverage government funds and build partnerships to strengthen Kansas City families and neighborhoods.

Despite the awkward opening that first meeting, Randle and Hobbs quickly knew something special was happening. (Years later, after her retirement, Randle would join LINC’s Commission in 2019.)

“When we met it was like lightning,” Hobbs said. “She (Randle) had political savvy.”

For Randle, Hobbs and the creative concept of LINC was “a breath of fresh air,” she said. “It opened windows for families.”

The work that they tackled, impressing Clinton and others worldwide, reformed the way Kansas City supported families and individuals on welfare.

LINC and Randle’s local office of the state’s Family Support Division teamed up with the Full Employment Council and its director, Clyde McQueen to develop strategies with employers that helped people on welfare gain the skills and confidence to break free of dependence on government aid.

By 1996, Clinton would visit Kansas City and convene a community work session to boost his administration’s efforts to get a welfare-to-work reform bill through Congress.

“These people in Kansas City know what they are doing,” Clinton declared. “It’s miraculous what they are doing.”

The achievements of the state, LINC and the FEC deserve recognition again after a nationwide study by Child Trends and the New York Times showed that child poverty in America had dropped by more than half since the early 1990s.

Several factors contributed to what the researchers called “an astounding decline.” Among them were historical efforts in welfare-to-work reform nationwide that helped parents, especially single mothers, persist and thrive in the workforce.

Kansas City’s reform model obtained waivers adapting welfare regulations so that employers that hired workers from welfare roles could have the value of their paychecks diverted to the business to subsidize higher wages.

And workers hired off of welfare could keep benefits such as Medicaid and child care support that otherwise were forfeited when welfare recipients found employment.

Kansas City’s team of the state, LINC and the FEC also intensified training to help keep new workers in their jobs, focusing on soft skills and post-employment case management.

If it sounds simple, it wasn’t.

They were diving into systems that weren’t conditioned for rapid change. There was so much to be learned, so many challenges as each new idea led to new barriers.

It was both daunting and thrilling for Hobbs and Randle and members of her team.

“We were working into the night on changes we wanted to make,” Randle said.

Changes like putting available services into menus that ease the stigma many clients felt in receiving aid. Adding flexibility to provide lump sums of benefits for clients with major up-front needs. Building creative internship opportunities with companies to give clients soft-skills experience.

“Sometimes clients needed an alarm clock,” Randle said. “We’d get them clothing for interviews. We’d jump in and try anything.”

All along the way, LINC was affirming its approach to social services — working through schools, neighborhood associations and community groups, localizing data and information.

“We worked with Ad Hoc (Group Against Crime),” Hobbs said. “We worked with Project Neighborhood. Before that, everything was top-down models.”

The welfare reform work relied on swift collaboration with employers. Soon on, the Kansas City effort recognized the need for intensified training — both in preparing work places for the workers coming from welfare, and in giving the new workers better skills to stay in their new jobs.

Kansas City began working with esteemed consultant Dr. Beverly Ford, who had great success nationally in helping families thrive and rise from public housing.

As Randle became aware of the need to help struggling families with housing issues, she essentially created her own internship experience, embedding in a public housing office.

The leadership of LINC — its director and the members of its commission — were hungry for new ideas and then became powerful influences in helping them happen, Randle said.

And the innovations came at uncommon speed.

“It was not bureaucratic at all,” Randle said. “We could change things and not worry about calling Jefferson City. We were making headway . . . You could make decisions knowing that if it didn’t work we could make it right.”

Other cities began sending teams to Kansas City to observe their work or they summoned Kansas City’s team leaders to come and talk at seminars and work sessions. Ideas were shared nationwide and even internationally, as Kansas City partnerships included the work with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Israel.

More than once, President Clinton came as he aimed to make welfare-to-work reform a signature part of his legacy, eventually signing legislation in August 1996.

The community-driven, reactive and personal approach to services continued for the local state offices and at LINC in the years that followed.

The state’s case managers were seeking to understand their clients in ways they hadn’t before, Randle said. They weren’t just “paper pushers looking for income records.” They learned to get to “the soul” of their needs.

“Our staff grew affectionately fond of our clients,” she said. “It felt like parenting. We rejoiced over their accomplishments.”

For LINC, the lessons learned have thrived as it established its Caring Communities model of service that is anchored now at more than 50 schools in the Kansas City area, and reflected also in the LINCWorks program, contracted specifically with the state to support families who are receiving TANF funds — Temporary Aid for Needy Families.

LINCWorks’ team of advocates help parents build career and life skills to break free from dependency.

LINC has subsidized legal aid for families, helping them get ahead of housing crises and staving off evictions. LINC has also helped hundreds of households get access to rent and utility bill assistance to help them stay in their homes and their children stay in school.

So goes the work, always adding new chapters in answer to that question — What is LINC? — from 30 years ago, building a legacy of leadership and change.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer