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Welfare Implementation: A Checklist For Action
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The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) repealed the entitlement of poor children
to cash assistance, created a state-run block grant system to
assist struggling families, and imposed other significant changes
affecting children. The law left many important decisions to
each state's governor and legislature.
As each state continues to develop and implement its welfare program, policymakers, child advocates and community residents
should take immediate and united action to ensure that children
are protected from harm and their families are assisted to the
greatest extent possible.
The following checklist highlights and elaborates on selected
policy actions that should be supported in state capitols, legislatures
and county commissions.
Funding For Child Protection And Family Support Activities
Emergency Assistance (EA), formerly a separate program under Title
IV-A of the Social Security Act, permitted states to provide assistance
for needy children and families to avoid the destitution of the
child or to provide living arrangements in a home for the child.
A number of states have used EA funds to pay for crisis intervention
and family support services for abused and neglected children
involved with the child protection system. The new welfare law
repeals the EA program and allows states, at their option, to
use Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant
funds for these services.
 Ensure that funding previously available for child protection activities under the Emergency Assistance program will continue
under the new TANF block grant or that new resources are identified.
States will decide whether to use any portion of TANF funds for
child protection activities.
States may transfer up to 30 percent of their federal TANF block grant funds to the Child Care and Development Block Grant and
the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). States in need of additional
resources for child protection activities should consider transferring
TANF funds to SSBG for this purpose. If transferred to SSBG,
these funds will not count toward a family's 60-month lifetime
limit on receipt of TANF funds.
Ensure that federal support for families in need is not diverted
to serve other populations or purposes. Some states may be tempted
to use the TANF-to-SSBG transfer to shift dollars intended to
help very poor families with children to other populations, such
as the elderly and families well above the poverty line. The
overall effect could be a reduction in the number of work slots
for very poor families, cuts in cash benefit levels for these
families, still-shorter time limits, or some combination of each.
Children With Disabilities
The new law makes SSI eligibility more restrictive, and many children
who now qualify may no longer be eligible. More than 275,000
children currently receiving assistance will need to be reviewed
for redetermination under new standards of eligibility, and the
Congressional Budget Office estimates that upwards of 250,000
children will lose benefits. In many states, the children's SSI
program has provided support for a significant number of foster
and adopted children with special needs, some of whom qualified
for the program under criteria that have been eliminated or changed.
Retain Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility for children in out-of- home care. Create a state program to continue eligibility
for children in foster care who are no longer eligible for SSI. Make sure that children in foster care who lose their SSI can
qualify for other foster care payments. Track the number of children with disabilities who come to child protection agencies for services
because they are no longer eligible for SSI.
Relative Caregivers
Many relative caregivers who care for children who cannot live
at home and might otherwise be in foster care currently receive
support through Title IV-E foster care or, at a lesser amount
with fewer requirements, through the former AFDC program. Under
TANF, the latter option is changed significantly: States will
be permitted but not required to provide benefits to support children
in the care of relatives; new, more stringent work requirements
and the maximum five-year time limit on assistance also will affect
the interest and ability of relatives (who receive TANF family
assistance themselves) to care for children in need of safe homes.
Continue benefits to relatives who care for children who cannot
live safely at home and otherwise would be in foster care; exempt
grandparents and other caregivers from the new law's time limits
and work requirements.
Minor Parents Living At Home
The new law bans TANF assistance to teen parents and their children
not living with a parent, legal guardian, or other adult relative,
subject to limited exceptions.
Child protection agencies should help make decisions regarding the appropriateness of a home for a minor parent and her child.
The state agency charged with determining whether a teen parent
may live safely with a relative or in another adult-supervised
setting is the state agency assigned to administer the TANF block
grant. Because many teen parents have suffered abuse, attention
should be given to ensure that child protection agencies are involved
in such decisions, especially in states where separate agencies
direct welfare and child welfare programs.
Minors Absent From The Home
TANF funds cannot be used to provide assistance to minor children
who have been absent from the home for a period of 45 consecutive
days. States have the option of continuing TANF funds to families
whose children are out of the home for up to 180 days.
Exempt families who have children in foster care from the 45-day
TANF absence rule. Families whose children enter foster care and
for whom reunification is the plan, should be exempted from the
45-day absence rule. Families that have been separated but are
working successfully toward reunification with a defined time
frame may be placed in greater crisis if income assistance is
withdrawn. States may establish good-cause exceptions to this
provision in their state plans and should be encouraged to do
so.
Legal Immigrants
While certain aid (food stamps, SSI) must be ended for legal immigrants
as soon as they are recertified, states will decide whether to
provide, deny, deem or otherwise limit Medicaid, TANF and Social
Services Block Grant (SSBG) assistance for legal immigrants already
residing in the United States before August 22, 1996. After the
five-year bar on most federal means-tested benefits to legal immigrants
arriving on or after August 22, 1996, states decide these immigrants'
eligibility for Medicaid, TANF and SSBG (legislative intent is
unclear as to whether states can waive the counting of sponsor's
income after five years for these three programs).
Continue Medicaid, cash assistance, and social service coverage for legal immigrants. States have the option to provide or bar
state-funded programs for current and future legal immigrants.
Child welfare service providers should collaborate to make sure
immigrant children and families receive the services they need,
and they should track the increase in numbers of immigrant children
and families who come to the child protection system for help
because they can no longer receive other aid.
Obtain federal permission to extend the Food Stamp reconsideration
period for legal immigrants. As soon as legal immigrants are
recertified, they must be cut off from food stamps. States can
delay the harm of this provision, and give legal immigrants time
to pursue citizenship, by applying for an extension of the reconsideration period.
Persons With Substance Abuse Problems
Opt out of the restriction that denies TANF assistance and food
stamps for life to any individual convicted of any felony after
August 22, 1996 which has as an element the possession, use or
distribution of a controlled substance. A state legislature must
pass a law in order for a state to opt out of this provision in
its entirety, or for categories of individuals, and may also elect
to limit the period of prohibition of assistance. This is a major
issue for many families in child welfare in which chemical dependency
is a serious problem, especially for young people who experiment
with drugs and get into trouble but who recover and go on to do
well.
Provide a safety net for families disqualified from receiving benefits due to drug related convictions, if that family is in
recovery and can be reunified with their children.
Child Care
The new law ends the child care entitlement for families receiving
assistance and families in first year transition from welfare
to work. It replaces these two programs and the program that
provides child care help to families at risk of falling into crisis
and dependency, with a single child care block grant with no guarantee
of sufficient child care support for parents who must work.
Assure child care for parents of children under age 13 when
they participate in work activities. The law would allow a state
to require parents with children six years or older to work without
assuring child care. No parent should be required to choose between
work and providing supervision for her children.
Fully utilize child care resources. States can only receive
their full share of the $6.6 billion in new federal child care
dollars by maintaining 100 percent of their current state investment
in child care and by providing new matching funds. Without drawing
down the maximum child care funding, states cannot realize the
goals of placing parents receiving assistance in jobs and helping
working poor families stay employed and able to care for their
children.
Parenting
Exercise the state option to exempt parents with infants under age one from work requirements, remove these parents from calculations
of work participation rates, and ensure participation in parenting
training. Most states lack the capacity to provide quality child
care to large numbers of infants.
Income Assistance
The new law ends the federal entitlement to cash assistance (AFDC)
for poor children and families and replaces it with a flat block
grant to states, giving them primary control over eligibility
and benefits.
Retain the guarantee that all eligible families are served.
Each state decides eligibility for assistance under its block
grant program. States can choose, for instance, to deny aid to
families with teen parents or to one-parent or two-parent families. A state should not remove eligibility for any category of families
that was eligible under the old AFDC program. Each state should
commit to the principle that children will be protected from destitution.
Do not impose a shorter lifetime limit on federal welfare assistance. The law sets a 60-month lifetime limit on a family's use of federal
TANF program funds used for income or emergency assistance, job
training, workfare, non-cash assistance such as vouchers, or any
other purpose. After 60 months of assistance (even if spread
out over different segments of a family's life), a family may
no longer receive federal TANF aid. With improved job preparation,
job search, and work experience, many families may not need five
years of assistance over their lifetimes. However, parents facing
extra barriers like disability or residence in remote or depressed
economic areas are far less likely to find stable employment after
a short period. States may impose a lifetime limit of any length
shorter than 60 months, but in the interests of the children involved
should not do so.
Exempt families from time limit restrictions where continued
aid is necessary due to hardships, domestic abuse or other problems. Each state is permitted to exempt up to 20 percent of its welfare
caseload from the 60-month federal lifetime limit. States can
exempt families from the time limit for hardships or if the family
includes an individual who has been battered or subjected to extreme
cruelty.
Provide state-funded assistance to families, especially those
who have reached the 60-month federal lifetime limit. Months
of receipt of solely state-funded assistance do not count against
the 60-month federal limit. States should especially use their
own funds to help families cut off by the federal time limit,
rather than allow those families to become destitute. It will
be less expensive to provide financial assistance to keep families
together than to provide foster care for children who enter the
foster care system because the parent has neither a job nor cash
assistance.
Do not impose a family cap. States may establish a child exclusion policy that denies or limits income assistance to a child born
to a family already receiving such help, but should not do so.
The evidence does not support that this strategy reduces births
to mothers on assistance. A family cap, however, will hurt the
parent's ability to care for her child.
State Spending
States should maintain their own welfare spending at 100 percent
of their historic level. A state has to spend only 80 percent
of its "historic State expenditures," and this requirement
will be reduced to 75 percent if the state satisfies work participation
rate requirements. If every state were to spend only what is
required to receive its full block grant allocation, state funding
over the next six years would fall nearly $32 billion (33 percent)
below the level that the Congressional Budget Office projects
states would have spent under the prior law.
Ensure that new flexibility in federal spending is not used to replace the state's funding for families in need.
Evaluation
The new law will result in enormous and varied changes in policies,
practices and impacts on children and families across the country.
Attention, advice and advocacy are required at all levels for
implementation and further reforms.
Ensure state, local, and national monitoring of the changes,
to document impacts, to organize efforts to implement the law
and minimize potential harm, to educate the public and policymakers
about what works and what doesn't, and to take corrective actions
as necessary.
Implementation
Ensure that a broad range of people concerned about children
are actively involved in decisions about implementing the new
law. States should follow a thoughtful planning process to discuss
state legislative options. The new law requires that local governments
and private sector organizations must be consulted about the plan
and design of welfare services, and must have had at least 45
days to comment on the state's plan. However, many state plans
are simply "place holders" designed to initiate block grant funding; in those states, many substantive decisions will
be made through the state's legislative process. Governors and
state legislators should hold public hearings and supplement these
hearings with other forms of outreach.
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