View Research by Author - Lynne Fender

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

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.

This report classifies the wide variety of TANF and supportive services policies across states in a way that facilitates cross-state analysis linking welfare reform policies to outcomes. Specifically, the study: (1) developes typologies of state welfare (and related) policies around six key outcomes; (2) developes a public-use database with measures of 80 welfare policy variables, state economic and demographic variables, and the key outcome variables that they are hypothesized to affect; (3) uses factor analysis to create policy summary variables; and (4) uses cluster analysis to provide preliminary answers to questions about the relationships between state policy choices.

Collaboration between welfare and child welfare agencies is important because there is significant overlap in the clients the two agencies serve. This "dual-system" population struggles with both poverty and child abuse or neglect. Based on visits to county agencies in 13 states, the authors provide specific examples of three types of collaborative efforts: casework practice (collaborative efforts on the front line), program development (joint efforts to create new programs and services), and organizational infrastructure (how the system supports collaborative casework and programs). The seven factors that affect collaborative efforts include agency history and politics, leadership and policy direction, resource availability, information systems, colocation of workers from both agencies in a single office, staffing and workload, confidentiality, and palpable payoffs to workers.

In 1996 and 1997, the Urban Institute conducted case studies in 13 states that provided a baseline for understanding changes emerging from welfare reform. This set of state updates describes changes occurring between 1996-97 and 1999-2000 based on a second set of case studies completed in 1999 and 2000. Programs covered include income support through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, employment and training supports for low-income welfare and non-welfare families, child care, and child welfare. It also looks at interactions among these programs.

The paper examines the links between the cash assistance and child welfare systems. Interviews with more than 350 child welfare administrators, researchers, supervisors, legislative representatives, and advocates in 13 states found no evidence to suggest that welfare reform had significantly increased the number of families referred to child welfare agencies. The authors conclude that concern for dual-system families may be well-founded as many respondents noted the challenges faced by families involved in both systems. The authors review the few studies that address the effects of welfare reform on child welfare concluding that research on this topic is limited.

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