Welfare-To-Work Programs

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Temporary assistance for needy families Demetrica Williams SW 3520 Temporary assistance for needy families Families First, Tennessee’s welfare reform program, began in September 1996, under a federal waiver and replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. The federal waiver expired June 30, 2007. We currently operate our program in compliance with the Federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF provides temporary cash benefits to families who have children and are experiencing financial difficulties. These benefits are time-limited to 60 months in a participant's lifetime. To be eligible for the program, participants must agree to follow a Personal Responsibility Plan (PRP). As part of…show more content…
Although the designs of these programs have varied across the states and over time, they typically incorporate such features as assessment of basic skills, structured job search, and training and education. These programs also sometimes provide subsidized jobs in the private or public sector and, more recently, financial incentives to work. Most programs have also been mandatory, welfare recipients who did not cooperate could have their grants reduced or, in some cases, terminated. Welfare-to-work programs have played an especially important role in the TANF program which provides cash assistance to families with children in the United States. Over time, increasing funding has been channeled to welfare-to work programs for AFDC recipients, and increasing pressure has been put on states to have the recipients partake of the services provided by these programs. Consequently, the mandatory feature of cash-assistance programs has been increasingly enforced. Today, many states throughout the country have enacted mandatory welfare-to-work programs for TANF recipients. Given the increasing emphasis on work requirement provisions within the AFDC program, it seems reasonable to anticipate that they are effective in meeting their goal of putting AFDC recipients to work and…show more content…
Yet, a recent study showed that participation in Food Stamps and AFDC/TANF was not closely related to each other at all (Leete and Bania 2003). Huffman and Jensen found that labor participation and participation in AFDC/TANF and Food Stamps programs were significantly related. In particular, Food Stamps and TANF participations were positively related to each other. Mills (2001) looked at the relationship between Food Stamp and TANF participation using the panel component of the 1997-1999 Current Population Survey, their results suggested that leaving the TANF program in the second year of the survey has a significant positive effect on the exit of Food

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