Policy and Practice | June 2022

from the field By Babette Roberts

TANF Agencies’ Critique and Aspirations for the Future

T emporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is important—it provides millions of parents and care givers with the economic supports to help them meet their basic needs; employment and training skills to earn family-sustaining wages; early child hood care that fosters development during children’s formative years; and services that prevent and mitigate childhood stress and trauma. TANF was established more than 25 years ago with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Since then, we have learned a lot about what works—and what does not—to create communities where everyone has an opportunity for economic mobility and the tools to support the physical, social, and emotional well-being of our families. However, in the last 25 years, the structure of the TANF program has remained largely unchanged. While TANF’s structure as a block grant gives states broad flexibility, federal law sets forth a policy framework that shapes the way state and local agencies design and implement their programming. The current federal framework for TANF emphasizes work requirements, time limits and penalties, and incen tive structures that reward reductions in the number of families receiving assistance regardless of progress in helping them achieve family sustaining wages. In fact, the last reauthoriza tion of TANF, in 2005, reinforced an emphasis on work compliance and verification, which actually reduced states’ ability to leverage the flexibility built into the law.

n Work requirements have been a core tenet of TANF since its incep tion and are set up as a condition for receipt of cash assistance. They must be fulfilled through employment and training activities, are time limited, prioritize immediate work over longer-term career opportunities and family development, and require close monitoring for compliance. n Required lifetime limits cut off assistance regardless of a family’s success in transitioning to living wage employment and the structural and historic barriers that may have made that transition more difficult for some families than others.

n Performance metrics, and the penalty and incentive structures that frame them, reward reduc tions in the number of families receiving assistance regardless of whether progress is made in helping them achieve living wage jobs and encourage sanctioning families who are unable to meet strict compliance with program requirements. This policy landscape diminishes the reach of TANF over time. Indeed, for every 100 families in poverty, the number receiving TANF basic

See TANF Future on page 25

Illustration by Chris Campbell

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June 2022 Policy&Practice