Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/TerriThompson

Implementation of Family Assistance (FA), the New York TANF program, has resulted in significant reductions in FA caseloads and increased county discretion in implementing local FA-related policy. New York is one of only seven states that offer payments to families beyond the 60-month federal lifetime limit, using state and local funds. The state also offers a generous earnings disregard that provides a substantial incentive to working. Though the state consolidated child care subsidy resources into a single funding stream at the state level, and substantially increased the level of funding, some counties still had waiting lists for child care subsidies. Local spending for child welfare services increased four times more than state spending increases between 1996 and 2000, owing largely to the creation of a state block grant for child welfare services that capped state spending.

The Screening and Assessment in TANF/Welfare-to-Work study involved a review of the issues and challenges faced by TANF agencies and their partners in developing strategies and selecting instruments to identify substance abuse and mental health problems, learning disabilities, and domestic violence situations among TANF clients. The issues and challenges identified through that review are presented in Ten Important Questions TANF Agencies and Their Partners Should Consider. The second phase of the study involved case studies of a limited number of localities to further explore how TANF agencies and their partners responded to the issues and challenges identified during phase one. The findings from the case studies are presented in this report.

Washington's history of experimentation with welfare continues with WorkFirst. The state provides a generous safety net, while implementing time-limited cash assistance and a work-first philosophy. WorkFirst shifts the focus of services associated with cash assistance receipt from skill-building to rapid attachment to the labor market. The state has also taken steps to assure that important supports for poor working families are in place, including child care and health insurance for children. Washington was one of the only states studied that did not have a waiting list for child care subsidies. Respondents in Washington reported, however, that many eligible families either did not know about subsidies or knew about them but did not apply. Increased funding for child welfare was used to provide more and different services, including additional resources for foster parents and less intensive family preservation services, as well as continued funding for the state's intensive family preservation services.

Changes to the welfare system brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), and state and local welfare reform efforts, carry serious implications for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TNF) recipients with disabilities and barriers to employment. Specifically, work participation and time limit requirements are two key provisions of the federal welfare law which provided a new sense of urgency encouraging states to develop strategies to assist clients with their transistions from welfare to work. As a first step in this process, TANF agencies are considering strategies to identify the barriers that are inhibiting or prohibiting this transition. PRWORA offers unprecedented flexibility to develop such strategies and design programs and services to assist with the transition from welfare to work. This paper is merely a first step in considering some of the many challenges associated with identifying unobserved barriers to employment.

This study examined key operational issues and implementation challenges related to serving hard-to-serve welfare recipients with disabilities—limiting physical conditions, substance abuse and mental health problems, and learning disabilities. The report is based on site visits in four localities — Phoenix (AZ), Chicago (IL), Providence (RI) and Portland (ME) — and describes various approaches used to identify, assess and serve welfare recipients with disabilities.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) allows states greater flexibility in designing welfare-to-work program participation and exemption policies than previously provided. This report provides a 50 state review of about state TANF work program participation, exemption, and time limit policies as they apply to welfare recipients with disabilities or caring for family members with disabilities.

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