Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

Children and Welfare Reform

Feb 26, 2002

With TANF up for reauthorization this year, federal and state lawmakers
have an opportunity to ensure that welfare-to-work policies help, not
hurt, children in low-income families. The research on welfare reform?’s
impact on children, summarized in this Packard Foundation report, finds
that moving mothers from welfare to work does not guarantee positive
outcomes for children. The picture overall shows neither widespread
harm
nor benefits to children, but unfavorable impacts tended to cluster
among
teenagers, families with less economic progress, or among families new
to
welfare. Favorable impacts for school-age children were contingent on
improved family finances.

While overall child poverty rates have declined, a significant segment
of
families are worse off financially -- in part because after leaving
welfare many families do not receive other government supports designed
to
help them. Researchers noted that the most effective way for states to
promote better parenting may be through better work supports.
http://www.futureofchildren.org/newsletter2861/newsletter_show.htm?doc_id=102832


The Future of Children has posted a companion guide for policymakers
and
the press, which reviews key issues, promising programs and important
resources including experts and Web sites.
http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2845/pubs-info.htm?doc_id=102673

**TANF Reality Check ?– Time Limits
Families losing welfare benefits because of time limits face more
barriers
to gainful employment and more severe hardships. Many are working but
unable to earn enough to cover basic family needs. This issue brief
from
the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support has local data and
illustrations.
http://www.nationalcampaign.org/Download/tlissuebrief.pdf

**Initial Impacts of Child Support Reforms
Using data from the 1997 and 1999 National Survey of America's
Families,
this report from the Urban Institute finds that child support outcomes
have improved significantly for low- and middle-income children whose
mothers have never married, but children with divorced, separated, or
currently married mothers have not seen significant gains in their
child
support.
http://newfederalism.urban.org/html/discussion02-02.html

**Sanctions and Welfare Reform
According to this Brookings policy brief, more families have been cut
off
from TANF assistance due to sanctions than due to time limits, but
there
is little systematic research on the numbers, circumstances and effects
of
such full-family sanctions. Since sanctioned families tend to have more
barriers to employment, the authors recommend that expanding
work-related
activities that count toward a state?’s participation rate in the TANF
reauthorization would encourage states to devise employment plans for
particularly disadvantaged clients and thereby avoid the need for
sanctions.
http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/wrb/publications/pb/pb12.htm

**The Needs of the Working Poor
According to Congressional testimony on behalf of the Economic Policy
Institute, 70 percent or one in five single parents working full-time,
with two children, cannot afford basic necessities for their families.
Two-parent working families are struggling also?—60 percent of families
that fall below family budget levels have two parents.
http://www.epinet.org/webfeatures/viewpoints/boushey_testimony_20020214.html


**TANF Reauthorization: Implications for Healthy Families America
Poverty often exacerbates factors leading to child maltreatment, so
with
TANF, the major federal antipoverty program, up for reauthorization
this
year, Prevent Child Abuse America wants to make sure that the new
legislation sustains the resources for prevention programs such as
Healthy
Families America that depend on TANF dollars.
http://www.healthyfamiliesamerica.org/downloads/tanf.pdf

**Changes in Children's Living Arrangements in Low-Income Families
This Johns Hopkins study of low-income urban families offers good news
?–
the percentage of children living with a single mother declined after
1999, reversing a decades-old trend of increasing single-mother
families.
The bad news is that the formation of stepfamilies, through remarriage
or
cohabitation, accounted for nearly all the increase in two-parent
households. The high level of ?“churning?” in family relationships
disruptive to children could offset the advantages of having a second
adult in the family.
http://www.jhu.edu/~welfare/
________________________________

PUBLIC OPINION SHIFTS ON WORKING POOR FAMILIES AND WELFARE

**New Poll Shows Public Support for Helping Working Families
Americans want welfare reform to do a lot for working poor families;
they
are therefore ambivalent about calling welfare reform a success just
yet,
according to a new poll from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.
A
majority want public policies that help welfare parents get education
and
skills to land better paying jobs. They also favor extending help
temporarily beyond the five-year time limit and helping parents find
quality care for their children while they work. According to the
poll,
improving children?’s well-being is an important barometer for the
public ?–
those that believe that welfare reform has hurt children are welfare
reform?’s harshest
critics.http://www.futureofchildren.org/newsletter2861/newsletter_show.htm?doc_id=102827


**Americans Want Welfare Reform to ?“Raise the Floor?” for Families
According to a poll for the Raise the Floor initiative of the Ms.
Foundation, Americans want a lot of things from welfare reform --
giving
people the skills needed to become self-sufficient (30 percent),
providing
a safety net (22percent), moving people out of poverty (18 percent),
moving people off welfare and into work (16 percent), and providing
people
opportunities to get ahead (10 percent). Few Americans believe the
principal goal of the welfare system should be to promote marriage and
discourage out-of-wedlock birth, even among born-again Christians.
http://www.raisethefloor.org/press_pollresults.html