From the Urban Institute, this issue brief is part of the Perspectives on Low-Income Working Families series. Author Sheila R. Zedlewski discusses lessons learned since the welfare reform of 1996, which changed welfare from an entitlement program to a time-limited, employment program. Drawing from a series of research briefs, this article is a synthesis of research on TANF that provides a background on the TANF program as well as recommendations for strengthening the TANF program.

This brief presents findings, and lessons for policy and practice, from MDRC-conducted studies of five programs that provided earnings supplements and that have been rigorously evaluated using a random assignment research design: the Canadian Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP), the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), Milwaukee’s New Hope Project, the Texas Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) program, and the United Kingdom Employment Retention and Advancement (UK ERA) program. The evaluations primarily focus on the effects of the programs on single parents. SSP, MFIP, and New Hope operated some time ago (primarily in the 1990s), but long-run follow-up data are available only recently. In addition, relatively new evaluation results are available from the more recent Texas ERA and UK ERA programs.

This brief discusses key findings from evaluations of these earnings supplement programs and then provides lessons for both policy and practice that have emerged from these initiatives. While each program had its own set of unique circumstances and lessons (and none is currently operating), the focus here is on common themes across the initiatives. (author abstract)

Many parents receiving assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) face serious barriers to employment. Sometimes called the “hard to employ,” these parents typically require enhanced assistance to prepare for, find, and keep jobs. Health issues and disability, substance abuse, criminal records, domestic violence, limited education, and responsibilities for disabled children or parents all stand in the way. Federal TANF rules influence state policies toward the hard to employ. Yet states vary considerably in approaches to serving this population. (author abstract)

Nearly a decade has passed since Indiana began planning its approach to welfare reform. In January 1994 Governor Evan Bayh announced an initial plan, called the “Partnership for Personal Responsibility.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved a revised plan in December 1994 and, in May 1995, Indiana randomly assigned its entire welfare caseload (more than 60,000 families) to one of two groups for purposes of evaluation. The first was subject to the State’s new welfare reform rules and the other to its previous welfare policies. The goals of the program, as specified in 1995, were to increase clients’ employment and decrease their reliance on welfare, to make work more financially rewarding than public assistance, and to encourage responsible parenting.

Since 1995, Indiana’s welfare reform goals and approach have been consistent. Under Governor Frank O’Bannon, the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) made policy changes in 1997 and 2000 intended to strengthen welfare reform, but these changes were consistent with the program’s original goals and most of the original policies remain in place. Relatively minor changes were required as a result of enactment of welfare reform at the federal level, in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

Despite the consistency over time in goals and approach, both Indiana’s welfare caseload and the State’s economy have fluctuated substantially since 1995. Indiana’s welfare caseload dropped precipitously in the early phase of welfare reform and continued falling until mid-2000, when it began to increase sharply. The economy has gone from very low levels of unemployment in the early years of welfare reform to a current recession and State budget difficulties.

In the face of these changes, and given the time that has passed, it is important to assess Indiana’s approach to welfare reform. The key question is: How has Indiana’s welfare reform program affected participating families, and have those effects changed over time? Especially relevant given the current budget situation is a second, related question: Has the program been cost-effective?

The answer, provided in this report, is that the program has had real effects on participants, increasing employment and decreasing their use of welfare. The size of these effects is generally in the middle range of impacts found for welfare reform programs in other states. Indiana’s program also has been cost-effective, with the savings in welfare payments outweighing the costs of providing additional child care and employment services. The observed impacts, however, have not on average resulted in increased income for families. By that measure, therefore, the program has not made families substantially better off financially. (author abstract)

*managed by OPRE, funded by Indiana Family and Social Services Administration

A central component of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is its emphasis on work. Adult TANF recipients, with some exceptions, must participate in work activities as a condition of receiving cash benefits. This brief focuses on the federal work requirements and state strategies for meeting them, especially since passage of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, the recession that began in December 2007 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The brief documents the multiple strategies that states use to meet the participation rate requirements. (author abstract)

Over the past two decades, federal and state policymakers have dramatically reshaped the nation’s system of cash welfare assistance for low-income families. Through national legislation and state-initiated reform and experimentation, policymakers transformed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which became Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1996. During this period, state approaches to welfare reform have varied considerably. Nevertheless, almost all reform efforts have encouraged adult welfare recipients to work more and, as a result, to reduce their families’ long-term reliance on welfare benefits. In addition, many state welfare pro-grams have incorporated financial incentives that have encouraged work and supplemented the incomes of employed TANF recipients, and have also experimented with ways to help workers—employed TANF recipients and those who leave the TANF rolls with employment—retain employment and advance in the labor market. (author abstract)

In this paper, we examine how policy and structural changes states made in response to the DRA may influence the level and composition of the TANF caseload. This paper grew out of a 50-state survey Mathematica Policy Research conducted on diversion programs which revealed that states were providing cash assistance to some families with children outside of their TANF programs in order to meet the higher effective work participation rates established by the DRA (Rosenberg et al. 2008). This paper also draws on field visits Mathematica conducted to state and local welfare offices to study innovative strategies states were employing to increase the number of recipients participating in work activities (Pavetti et al. 2008). All analyses of caseload data rely on the official TANF caseload numbers published by the Administration for Children and Families. The audience for this paper includes researchers, policy makers, and program administrators who use TANF caseload data to assess the functioning of the program. The primary aim of the paper is to provide readers with background information that can improve their ability to interpret changes in the TANF caseload (or more broadly in the receipt of public cash assistance), especially during these challenging economic times and as policy makers consider the reauthorization of the program.

We start with a description of state cash assistance caseloads for families with children prior to the DRA, which provides important contextual information for understanding state responses to the DRA and their potential influence on TANF caseloads. In the second section, we describe the DRA provisions directly related to TANF. In the third section, we describe policy and structural changes made in response to the DRA and discuss their influence on state TANF caseloads. The final section offers our conclusions. (author abstract)

This resource guide was authored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, its Child Welfare Information Gateway, the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, and the Center for the Study of Social Policy—Strengthening Families. The guide was designed to help community-based service providers better work with parents and children to prevent child abuse and neglect, and authors provide information on protective factors, how to engage the community, why child abuse and neglect occurs, and tips on strength-based approaches for working with parents and caregivers.

On March 13-14, 2012, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) convened the Promising Pathways Initiative Innovation Institute in Washington, DC. The Promising Pathways Initiative provides technical assistance to state and local TANF programs and nonprofit organizations to promote successful outcomes for low-income families, and seeks to address the knowledge needs of the TANF field through an evidence-informed practice approach. The Initiative is grounded in the research on evidence-based practices. The Promising Pathways Initiative supported ten selected sites from the ten OFA Regions by building capacity of the sites to identify practice and program components; develop and document evidence; and articulate the resulting “story” about the effectiveness of the program or practice. The Innovation Institute focused on capacity-building for evidence-informed practice through identifying and sharing innovative approaches to service delivery for TANF families and low-income populations. Nine of the ten Promising Pathways sites from Regions I through X participated in the Institute. The goals of the Institute were to: (1) Provide cross-site networking between Promising Pathways sites leading to increased capacity to implement evidence-informed practice; (2) Provide interaction and dialogue between Promising Pathways sites surrounding innovative approaches and supportive technical assistance resulting from participation in the Promising Pathways Initiative; and (3) Discuss and examine processes and tools that can be institutionalized in Promising Pathways sites to support sustainable evidence-informed programming for TANF and low-income populations.