PROVIDENCE —State-funded safety net programs for the poor have grown into an expensive and sometimes chaotic system that doesn’t always effectively serve the neediest residents, according to a report to be released Thursday by the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council and the United Way

The result of a year-long study, the report combines data with analysis by an advisory council made up of anti-poverty advocates, union officials, clergy and members of the business community, who see first-hand the effects of these programs.

Rhode Island, that data suggests, spends an a steadily increasing amount of money on its safety net programs –– 46 percent of total spending in the current year’s budget.

As part of that increase, Rhode Island, along with other states, has shifted much of that spending from cash assistance and other services, to health programs, namely Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor, the elderly and the disabled. In Rhode Island, Medicaid spending accounted for almost 90 percent of the increase in overall social service spending between 1992 and 2006, the report says. Close to one out of every five residents receives services through Medicaid.

Even more striking, close to 80 percent of those Medicaid dollars are spent on just 30 percent of Medicaid enrollees.

These facts are not new, the study’s authors say, but rarely have they been brought together to illuminate such trends.

“Seeing those numbers is fairly dramatic,” said RIPEC policy director Susanne Greschner, who wrote much of the report. “We probably knew we were spending a lot on Medicaid but to see that percentage, everyone was surprised.”

The data also shows that almost 60 percent of Rhode Island’s workforce (people ages 25-64) have only a high school diploma, several percentage points higher than either Massachusetts or Connecticut. Those statistics become critical when considering another major piece of safety net spending, unemployment insurance, which has tripled in cost over the last year, the study says .

Such facts help sketch a detailed picture of the state’s safety net programs, which allowed the study’s advisory board to give a preliminary assessment of the system’s effectiveness, and should help inform policy discussions, said John Simmons, executive director of the business-based RIPEC, and Anthony Maione, United Way of Rhode Island President and CEO.

Among the board’s conclusions:

* Rhode Island has three separate need-based populations: those who are fully dependent on the system for food and shelter based on dire financial need; those who rely on services for stabilization purposes, and those who temporarily utilize the system for workforce development or financial help.

*Navigating the system can be a challenge for people in all three groups.

*The system that provides social services is sometimes fractured, which can dilute the effectiveness of certain programs. “For example, programs of the safety net are administered by multiple offices of state government. Even within agencies, access to multiple programs often requires multiple applications,” the report finds.

*The lack of educated workers and limited workforce development programs poses a barrier as the state tries to help its neediest become self-sufficient.

*The system lacks a “cohesive vision.”

To be released Thursday morning, the report has not yet made it into the hands of lawmakers who RIPEC and the United Way hope will use it.

But one member of the report’s advisory board, Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count (an organization that has for years compiled its own statistics about children and families in need), calls the new study “an important tool in terms of seeing trend lines and levels of some services that can be used as predictors.”

“Yes we’ve seen data for children and families, but this takes it to a broader level, including people of all ages as well as the disabled,” she said. “I believe it is the first time all people who use the state’s safety net system have been [assessed] in one study.”

The study stops short of offering solutions, a task the authors acknowledge is a much greater undertaking. “The findings in the report illustrate that we need to rethink what we are trying to accomplish with the social safety net programs” Simmons said. “…We need to set a common vision and purpose for what the social safety net should accomplish.”

A full text of the report will be available at www.ripec.com by midday Thursday.

cneedham@projo.com