"Even among women who were on aid themselves, the most typical answer was that 25 percent of the federal budget went to welfare," Kennedy says. "There's been so much media attention to how [welfare recipients] were the 'gimme-girls' women who were lazy and had children just to get on welfare and where secretly driving Cadillacs."

Expert Opinions

Those who have studied welfare say many factors hinder recipients from becoming self-sufficient.

"Some people are going through psychological barriers-lack of self-esteem, lack of education, and the paperwork is an obstacle," Duehay says.

Kennedy says many of her students may be forced to drop out or may not be able to enroll in the first place due to the new time limits.

Kennedy, herself a former welfare mother who was arrested in a December governor's office protest of the time limits, tells of one of her students who dropped out recently.

The woman, according to Kennedy, has two teenage sons, one of whom has a learning disability and requires extra tutoring, and a toddler daughter. Though she had a daycare voucher, the woman had repeated difficulties with getting the government-provided van to pick her daughter up at the agreed-upon time. Eventually she had missed so muchschool that she was forced to quit for the time being.

Kennedy says she believes laziness is not a reason that women remain on welfare.

"There is very little that you can turn around in two years," she says.

Kennedy also discredits the notion of prevalent welfare fraud.

"To make ends meet on that income you have to be incredibly clever," Kennedy says. "You have to be working very hard. Nobody is going to stay on it if they can get off."

Other experts concur that even the most hopeful and hardworking woman may have trouble getting herself back on her feet.

"There is a cycle of poverty in this country that is very hard to break," says Andres E. Bermudez, community service coordinator for the Just-a-Start YouthBuild program.

Lisa Dodson, a fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute and co-author of a report on welfare in Cambridge and Boston, blames the lack of interest in DTA workshops on the program's futility rather than the clients' bad habits.

"People have been pushed for years to go to training programs and workshops that have not resulted in jobs," Dodson says. "If a route to economic independence was provided, people would flock to it."