This article from the Journal of Public Child Welfare explores the experiences of families involved in both the child welfare and public assistance systems. The study indicated that families who lose their TANF support or who have sporadic public assistance support are less likely to be reunified with their children who have been removed. It concludes that policies that support coordination for families across systems can be beneficial economically and promote family stability and reunification.

The annual conference of the National Association of Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) took place from July 30 – August 2, 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This year’s theme was: “Moving Forward to Reduce Poverty, Increase Opportunity, and Improve Human Service Delivery.” Presentations from the conference are now available through links in the conference agenda.

When TANF became law in 1996, welfare recipients were required to engage in work participation activities, and states were required to have 50 percent of their TANF cases meet these participation requirements. The intention of requiring individuals to engage in these activities was to assist individuals in gaining employment and becoming economically self-sufficient. However, the rates at which TANF recipients meet the participation requirements and transition into employment consistent with economic self-sufficiency are disappointingly low. This chapter provides an overview that begins with a more detailed characterization of these issues to provide a context that highlights the importance of the questions this research seeks to answer. The data used in this research essentially constitutes a census of first-time TANF recipients in Utah, and some of the aspects of this data set are subsequently described. Finally, the TANF population is compared to the general population in Utah for the purpose of illustrating the significant differences between these populations.

Senate Resolution 2013-62 (Appendix A) directed the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to consider the effect of major federal and state programs in assisting low-income families to achieve self-sufficiency and reduce the number of families living in poverty. In particular, the Committee was asked to determine if and how such programs mitigate the “cliff effect.” “Cliff effects” occur when program benefits are not phased out on a sliding scale basis, or increased earnings are not sufficient to cover the full cost of the lost benefit. With one exception, the Committee focused on programs available to all that apply and meet eligibility requirements: TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), SNAP/Food Stamps (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), several federal tax credits, and Pennsylvania’s Special Tax Forgiveness Program. The one exception, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), is a discretionary federal program offering child care subsidies for low- income families, with the number of eligible individuals served limited by available funding.

It has been 20 years since the U.S. Congress passed welfare reform, and throughout these two decades, Maryland has provided cash assistance to families whose incomes do not meet their basic needs. In this way, the Temporary Cash Assistance program (TCA, Maryland’s welfare program) provides a valuable service to vulnerable families. For most families, however, this is a short-term solution to the challenges of living in poverty. The annual report series, Life after Welfare, examines outcomes of families who left cash assistance. The series focuses on families’ characteristics, employment and earnings outcomes, and the receipt of other public benefits. The 2016 update includes a sample of 11,737 families who left the TCA program between January 2004 and March 2016. Trends were examined over time by separating these families’ case closures into three cohorts: (1) Mid-2000s Recovery—a declining caseload between January 2004 and March 2007; (2) Great Recession Era—an increasing caseload between April 2007 and December 2011; and (3) Great Recession Recovery—a declining caseload between January 2012 and March 2016.

The goal of workforce development efforts serving individuals in poverty is to provide them with the skills and credentials they need to increase their earnings in the labor market and advance to self-sufficiency. It is important for workforce stakeholders to understand that low-income families’ household income is often partly comprised of public benefits (such as supports for housing, child care, and health care) that phase out as increases in earnings are made through higher wages and/or more hours on the job. Rapid phaseouts of benefits – what are known as “benefits cliffs” – can have the effect of canceling out large portions of a family’s earnings gains, or even make a family substantially worse off from a self-sufficiency standpoint that prior to its earnings gains. This latest research by the Seattle Jobs Initiative examines the impact of benefits cliffs on low-income Washington families. The goal is to support workforce and social service providers in their efforts to better help these families to navigate the potential loss of benefits as they assist them to make earnings gains.

On August 14-16, 2017, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) hosted the 2017 Linking TANF Families to Employment and Economic Opportunities Meeting, which brought together TANF administrators, stakeholders, and leaders to discuss the current successes and challenges facing TANF programs. For those who were unable to attend, OFA livestreamed the meeting’s plenary sessions to ensure that the vital information and promising practices were shared to a wider audience.   

 

Plenaries streamed included Reimagining TANF and the Human Services with remarks by Steven Wagner, Assistant Acting Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, and The American Safety Net – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, which featured a panel comprised of Clarence H. Carter, Director of OFA, Robert Doar, Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies for the American Enterprise Institute, and Susan Dreyfus, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities.

 

Mr. Carter also moderated the Examples of Employment Excellence plenary discussion, which featured four organizations from across the nation that have successfully increased employment outcomes for various hard-to-employ populations. Finally, the meeting closed with the TANF/WIOA Integration – State and County Innovation in Action plenary, highlighting the efforts of three states (Maryland, Massachusetts, and Missouri) to develop workforce partnerships that help meet the needs of individuals, families, and employers.

 

 

Under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), public workforce programs were encouraged to make stronger partnerships with TANF. In this report, the Center on Law and Social Policy detailed the findings of a survey conducted in 2016 on the degree of coordination between TANF and workforce programs during the early implementation of WIOA. According to the survey results, state officials were very interested in improving coordination between WIOA and TANF, but only modest changes had taken place. The coordination strategies that states used most often were shared job resource rooms and braided funding, and they used team case management least often.

This fact sheet examines 2015 spending data to understand spending patterns nationally and to examine the wide variations across states in how TANF/MOE funds are used.