Policy and Practice February 2017

After 20 years since the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), it is time for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to be modernized to better support 21st century children and families in achieving self-sufficiency. In 2015, APHSA’s Center for Employment and Economic Well-Being (CEEWB) and the National Association of State TANF Administrators (NASTA) initi- ated a special work group on TANF reauthorization and modernization. Since then, this diverse group of TANF experts has worked together with APHSA CEEWB staff, Russell Sykes and Kerry Desjardins, to identify TANF’s strengths and areas for improvement, and to develop a set of legislative, regulatory, and admin- istrative recommendations to make the program more client- and family- centric; and modernize it to align more productively with elements of other workforce programs. After months of intense discussion and consensus building, the work group released its recommendations in November 2016, in time to share with the incoming Administration and Congress.

What follows is an overview of those recommendations.

Photo illustration by Chris Campbell

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February 2017   Policy&Practice