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Paper #9 in the series "Low-Income Working Families"
Abstract
Many low-income parents with personal challenges that make work difficult (sometimes called the "hard
to employ") seek help from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, but many
do not. The most effective TANF programs offer cash assistance along with services that alleviate barriers
and help clients find jobs. Other federal-state programs offer help by providing either generic employment
services or specialized services that address particular challenges. Hard-to-employ parents probably
fare best when they enroll in TANF and receive a holistic set of supports. A redesigned system should
marshal all program resources to provide an integrated system that addresses barriers and supports work
simultaneously.
Historically, antipoverty efforts in the United States sought to improve the well-being of children and
their families by providing cash assistance (or “welfare”), primarily through the Aid to Dependent Families
with Children (AFDC) program. The 1990s saw a major transformation in this focus toward new
goals of limiting dependency and promoting work. A major part of this change was the replacement of
AFDC with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program in 1996, with its requirements
and incentives for work and time limitations on benefit receipt.
Many families that turned to AFDC and now turn to TANF for assistance have personal challenges that
make employment difficult without specialized services to address those challenges. TANF’s work focus
and the needs of many TANF families have expanded the discussion of the safety net for hard-to-employ
parents to include other federal and state programs that have traditionally addressed physical and mental
health problems and skill challenges, including the workforce development system, vocational rehabilitation,
mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence services.1 The discussion also includes
the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides cash assistance payments to those
with severe disabilities.
This array of support programs especially comes into focus with the recent reauthorization of the TANF
program. New federal rules, passed as part of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005, require states
to increase the shares of their TANF caseloads participating in work activities and limit the amount of
barrier-removal activity that can count as work activity. States must meet a 50 percent work participation
rate that applies to nearly all adults on TANF, including those often referred to as “hard to employ.”
This group generally includes parents with poor mental or physical health, substance abuse issues, learning disabilities, language barriers, limited work skills, other substantial barriers to work, and combinations
of these barriers.
States will need to marshal all program resources to address barriers to employment and move a greater
share of hard-to-employ parents into work activities. The reauthorization of TANF presents a timely
opportunity to review how the entire set of safety-net services works for hard-to-employ parents. This
review addresses four key questions:
- Who are the hard to employ, and how many need specialized services?
- How do states’ choices about the structure of their TANF programs affect hard-to-employ parents on
welfare?
- What other service programs potentially address the needs of hard-to-employ parents? And how much
do other federal cash assistance programs for people with disabilities fill the gap? Does TANF serve
as an effective gateway to other services and disability benefits?
- Now that fewer low-income families enroll in TANF than under the prior welfare system, do we need
to think harder about ways to connect families to a broader set of nonwelfare support services?
This paper begins by describing the general caseload size and characteristics of hard-to-employ parents
with welfare experience and those that remain outside this cash assistance program. The distinction
between hard-to-employ parents with and without a recent welfare connection is important because families
outside TANF often do not receive services that address barriers to employment. Next, the paper
describes how states’ TANF programs approach the needs of hard-to-employ parents. While it is impossible
to fully understand or describe the nuances of 50 different state programs, national program data
and surveys of states’ approaches help generally describe some key variations in program characteristics.
The paper then describes other safety-net service programs that support adults with employment challenges
and how these programs typically coordinate with TANF in varied ways. It concludes with implications
for thinking about how the safety net for hard-to-employ parents could be improved.
(End of excerpt. The entire paper is available in PDF format.)
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Disclaimer: The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
