Temporary Assistance For Needy Families Program Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is a federal program that provides cash assistance for low-income, single mothers; individual states set income limits and grant award levels. TANF recipients are usually eligible for other federal programs, including food stamps and medical assistance. Past and current domestic violence may affect women’s ability to comply with welfare reform provisions made in 1996. In that year, TANF placed a lifetime limit of 60 months for receipt of welfare funds and required that recipients be placed in “work activities” whenever the state determines they are ready to do so or after 24 months of cash benefits, whichever occurs earlier. To avoid federal financial penalties, the law also set state minimum caseload percentages that had to be involved in work activities. Research finds that some women use the work requirement to successfully escape violence, while for others domestic violence prevents them from working and causes them also to lose their welfare benefits, leaving them even more financially dependent upon their abusers.

Between 1995 and 1997, the Chicago-based Center for Impact Research (formerly Taylor Institute) demonstrated for the first time that large numbers of women on welfare were current and past victims of domestic violence. This finding might be because trauma from past violence affects women’s abilities to obtain or sustain employment; for them, welfare serves as a financial safety net or enables them in the first place to escape the violence. The partners of many current domestic violence victims, underemployed or unemployed themselves, are threatened by their efforts at education, training, and work, actively sabotaging their efforts at economic independence and forcing them to rely on welfare. Later, formal research samples established consistent percentages of domestic violence in welfare caseloads; about two thirds of women on welfare were found to have been victims of domestic violence in the past and between 20% and 30% were currently victims of domestic violence.

As a result of this research, Senators Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) and Patty Murray (DWashington) successfully amended the proposed TANF legislation with the Family Violence Option. States choosing this option and screening applicants for current or past domestic violence could, without federal financial penalty, temporarily exempt them from work activities and other TANF requirements, such as establishing child support or paternity and the 60-month time limit, if the women could not safely comply due to the effects of domestic violence.

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that all but three states had adopted the Family Violence Option or a comparable policy, meaning that most states screen for domestic violence. Because the GAO discovered that data on the number of waivers issued were limited, to date, evaluation of these state efforts has remained impossible. Research studies with TANF caseloads over time have found that the work requirements have encouraged many domestic violence victims to escape the abuse through employment, while others, usually the victims of more current and severe abuse, find it difficult to sustain work over time and will need more support to overcome the effects of violence than they have been receiving.

Bibliography:

Raphael, J. (2000). Saving Bernice: Battered women, welfare, and poverty. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
S. Government Accountability Office. (2005). TANF: State approaches to screening for domestic violence could benefit from HHS guidance (Report to Congressional Requesters). Washington, DC: Author. Available at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05701.pdf

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