Fact Sheet

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Administration of Children and Families
Office of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C.

Welfare Reform: Interim Final Regulations

The 1996 welfare reform law was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The reauthorization requires the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), by June 30, 2006, to promulgate regulations designed to address eligible work activities and uniform reporting and accountability measures.

The reauthorization maintains the original law’s requirement that 50 percent of states’ welfare caseloads fulfill statutory work requirements.¹ It also updates the incentive for states to reduce caseloads, broadens the pool of families subject to the work requirements and creates a new penalty for failing to comply with work verification procedures.

HHS is issuing an interim final regulation on June 28, 2006. Below are some highlights.

TIGHTENING THE FOCUS ON WORK:
• Require education and training to be directly related to a specific job;
• Allow participation in substance abuse, mental health and other rehabilitation services to count under the “job search/job readiness” work category;
• Further simulate work by allowing countable participation to include actual hours and limited excused absences;
• Permit states to count recipients in work experience and community service in the work participation rate when they work the maximum number of hours allowed under the minimum wage requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act but fall short of the hours required by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program;
• Include child-only cases in the work participation calculation when states elect to remove a parent due to a sanction or time limit while their children continue to receive assistance; and permit states to count child-only cases in which parents who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) work or participate in the Ticket to Work program.

STRENGTHENING STATE ACCOUNTABILITY:
• Require all activities to be supervised in order to count toward the participation rate.
• Use federal reviews and the single state audit to monitor state compliance;
• Implement a penalty for non-compliance with work verification plan -- a one to five percent reduction in a state’s grant;
• Ask for comments from states to describe conditions under which they should be granted “reasonable cause” if they are not be able initially to meet the work requirements.

¹To fulfill work requirements, TANF recipients must be participating for 20 hours per week (or 30 hours in cases where the youngest child is 6 years old or older) in one or more of the 12 work activities named in the statute.