This Q&A document discusses common questions concerning acceptable and unacceptable uses of TANF to provide short-term, emergency assistance, eligibility redetermination, cost sharing, and other policy issues.

Managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the LIHEAP program assists eligible low-income households with their heating and cooling energy costs, bill payment assistance, energy crisis assistance, weatherization and energy-related home repairs. Certain states elect to use Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) and TANF funds to provide emergency energy assistance to TANF participants on LIHEAP.

The Administration for Children and Families has provided information to TANF agencies to clarify the appropriate application of 409(a)(7)(B)(i)(II)(aa) of the Social Security Act (the Act) and 45 CFR 263.5(b), commonly known as the “new spending test,” which limits a state’s ability to count state maintenance-of-effort (MOE) expenditures for certain programs that existed in fiscal year (FY) 1995 to the amount that exceeds the FY 1995 expenditures.

The Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative (CPI) uses TANF funds to provide support services to over 30,000 qualifying students enrolled in occupational programs at Arkansas community and technical colleges. This issue brief from the National Skills Coalition highlights key elements of the successful model, as well as challenges that may impact these types of career pathways programs.

Ramsey County, Minnesota’s welfare counselors draft long-term employment plans for their clients. Instead of pushing clients into getting the first available job, they create plans that are broken down into manageable steps. This article from Governing Magazine highlights this innovative approach and its benefits.

This five-minute video from the Urban Institute briefly discusses important facts related to child poverty. For instance, poverty affects children of all races, but in terms of persistent poverty, the racial gap is more apparent. The video concludes by providing strategies to break the cycle of poverty among children.

This report presents findings from the Systems Change Analysis of the 27 non-tribal HPOG grantees funded in 2010, which operated 49 programs. This study addresses the major research question: What changes to the service delivery system are associated with program implementation? This report considers the following topics:

•  Inclusion of partners and stakeholders in HPOG networks;

•  Roles and responsibilities of partners and stakeholders;

•  Changes in collaboration within HPOG networks during the grant period;

•  HPOG networks, local labor markets, and employer perspectives;

•  Effectiveness and sustainability of programs and network relationships; and

•  Lessons and policy implications.

The Systems Change Analysis represents one of the first efforts to evaluate comprehensively the systems that can support career-pathways-based training programs for low-income adults. While this analysis is exploratory, it takes an initial step toward understanding systems change for training programs and offers some key lessons for future efforts as well as policy implications. (Author abstract)

In this podcast from MDRC, researchers discuss behavioral science and how it can be used to improve the effectiveness and impact of social programs. They discuss these insights with a particular focus on child support programs.