Action Center    TANF Work Requirements

Action

Urge your state and federal Senators and Representatives to provide meaningful, tailored help to grandparents and older relatives raising grandchildren.

Background

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was signed into law in 1996. This Act dismantled Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Before 1996, welfare was an entitlement program. This meant that welfare funding would expand to meet needs. After 1996, states receive a block grant: the federal government does not necessarily match a growing need with greater funding. The block grant gives states broad flexibility to design their own rules for their cash assistance programs, and to use the funding for other programs.

Rules

TANF emphasizes participation in a ‘work activity’ as a qualification for receiving assistance. ‘Work activities’ include job search, rehabilitation, service, education, and certain types of child supervision, as well as regular employment. States are required to track work participation rates of families receiving TANF and federal aid is reduced if the work rate of TANF families falls short of the federal requirements.

Following the 2006 reauthorization of TANF, states must meet a 50% participation rate for all families receiving assistance and a 90% participation rate for two-parent families. The new regulations also cut some state flexibility by further limiting the set of work activities that can count towards participation rates.

For many grandparents and other older relatives raising children, TANF is the only source of financial support available to allow them to provide for the basic needs of the children in their care. TANF rules adversely affect these caregivers by applying rigid work provisions to a population for whom the requirements are not relevant.  For example, adults who take in young children are subject to the same 60-month limit on benefits as other TANF recipients, regardless of the needs of their families. 

Funding

As part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (passed July 2006), Congress reauthorized the TANF block grant program through 2010. However, authorized funding levels remain unchanged from 1996. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of children living in families with cash incomes below half the poverty line rose by more than three-quarters of a million. Over the same period, the number of children getting assistance from TANF actually fell.  While other safety net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid provided assistance to increasing numbers of individuals as the labor market weakened and poverty rose, TANF did not.  Since the 1996 law was enacted, the proportion of families eligible for state TANF assistance that actually receive assistance has fallen dramatically.

The funding freeze makes it more likely that the gap between funds and needs will continue to widen. It also threatens other social welfare programs. In most states, TANF dollars are used to supplement the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG).  Some of these TANF funds are used in support of kinship placements – this option is vital in light of a lack of other federal supports. 

Connect

If you are a grandparent or other relative raising grandchildren, you can get information about the resources that exist to help you from GU’s website, as well as from the Department of Health and Human Services Child Welfare Information Gateway.

If you are a professional looking for more information about TANF, there are useful resources on the CLASP and CBPP websites.