This article describes a community-engaged, mixed-methods research project to identify barriers to TANF among families with young children in Illinois which examined TANF sanctions related to child support enforcement. The study, which used TANF administrative data analysis and included semi-structured interviews with TANF customers, explored demographic differences in sanctioning and sanction types; it found that Black families were more likely than families of other races to be sanctioned. Mothers who were survivors of intimate partner violence voiced particular challenges with child support compliance. The article proposes policy recommendations that include shifting to alternative cash assistance models and removing pass-through funding so that families receive the full child support benefit.

On August 6, 2026, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Family Assistance issued IM-26-02: Anti-fraud Best Practice—Closing Long-term Out-of-State EBT (CLOSE). OFA is recommending that states adopt the CLOSE process as a best practice for meeting an existing statutory obligation: ensuring Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds are spent only on eligible, resident families and are safeguarded against fraud, as required under PRWORA and Section 408(a) of the Social Security Act.  

OFA will host an Office Hours session on September 15 at 2:00 p.m. ET to give TANF programs an opportunity to learn more about this recommended practice, including: 

• An overview of the CLOSE process and its core components; 
• A review of the foundational statute and existing policy behind it; 
• Clarity on what is, and isn't, being asked of states; 
• State examples of CLOSE-related practices already in place; 
• Lessons learned and implementation considerations; and 
• Facilitated peer exchange and discussion. 

If you have questions related to this topic you would like addressed during the session, please email us at: starinfo@blhtech.com. 

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) non-assistance funds flow through workforce boards, employment program providers, and community partners—but data about service delivery often lives in separate systems. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified this as a core program integrity challenge: without cross-agency data infrastructure, TANF agencies struggle to assess provider performance, identify service gaps, and connect spending to participant outcomes.

As a result, the Office of Family Assistance’s State and Tribal Technical Assistance and Resources (STAR) team developed the TANF Program Integrity Office Hours as a series of topical peer learning sessions where TANF agencies can share what's working, explore real challenges, and walk away with practical strategies they can use to address the challenge identified by GAO.

This recording includes key takeaways from the July session, highlights from peer discussions, and an overview of how to use and navigate the companion resource, which can help TANF programs assess and strengthen their own provider contracts and accountability structures.

In April 2026, the Office of Family Assistance launched the TANF Program Integrity Office Hours: a series of topical peer learning sessions where state agencies can share what's working, explore real challenges, and walk away with practical strategies they can use. This webpage hosts session recordings with companion tools, lessons learned, and helpful resources.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced that it has recovered more than $512 million in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims and returned those funds to the U.S. Treasury. This release highlights this ongoing federal effort to identify improper payments after they occur while also improving systems to prevent fraud in future claims. For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) practitioners, the value lies in the approaches being used to identify and freeze suspicious funds—data matching, audits, and recovery mechanisms that demonstrate how large-scale program integrity systems operate in practice. These strategies offer useful reference points for TANF agencies working to strengthen oversight, improve payment accuracy, and coordinate more effectively with workforce and unemployment insurance systems.

The Acting Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor is urging governors to take immediate steps to address ongoing risks of unemployment insurance (UI) fraud, signaling continued concern about vulnerabilities in state-administered benefit systems. This release underscores the expectation that states must strengthen oversight, improve identity verification, and act quickly when suspicious activity is identified.

For Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs, this reinforces a broader shift toward tighter program integrity practices across interconnected public benefits systems. Many TANF agencies rely on shared eligibility data and cross-program verification tools, so improvements in UI fraud controls can strengthen the reliability of information used to determine eligibility and reduce improper payments across programs serving similar populations.

Many programs attempting to improve employment outcomes for low-income adults use financial incentives or sanctions to motivate participants to obtain and/or retain a job. This brief describes the employment and earnings impacts of 12 interventions, identified by the Employment Strategies for Low-Income Adults Evidence Review, that used financial incentives or sanctions as a primary strategy. It also highlights four promising interventions and their impacts in more detail. (author abstract)

This report presents findings from an intervention designed to increase the number of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients who “reengaged” in Los Angeles County’s welfare-to-work program.

Two behaviorally informed notices went out to different groups of participants:

• A notice highlighting the losses they might face by not attending the reengagement appointment; and
• A notice highlighting the benefits they might receive by attending.

A third control group did not receive either behaviorally informed notice.

Participants received the notice one week before their appointment. The test found that receiving a behaviorally informed notice increased the percentage of group members who engaged in the program within 30 days of their scheduled reengagement appointment, with the increase driven by the loss notice (author abstract).