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Policy Implications
Overall, the policies included in the ACT demonstration did not assist most participants to achieve independence from welfare through employment, training, temporary assistance and support services. These findings suggest the following implications for future changes in Texas TANF policies:
- Texas time limits policies should be simplified and the groups to whom they apply should be re-examined.
Current policies confuse everyone, including eligibility staff and TANF recipients. Texas is the only state in the nation that combines periodic limits for the caretaker with lifetime limits for the entire family. As discussed above, the interaction of these dual time limits will result in the most disadvantaged families being the first to reach lifetime limits on TANF receipt. This was not the intent of the Texas legislature when it enacted HB1863 and should be corrected.
- In their current form, personal responsibility agreement penalties in Texas have little value as a behavior modification tool for affected families and should be reevaluated.
The process evaluation documented that TDHS staff members spend a significant amount of time explaining the PRA, collecting documentation related to its provisions, and administering penalties. Yet, in those instances where behaviors governed by these penalties could be compared for both experimental and control groups, the impact analysis found that these policies did not change client behavior (with the possible exception of child support). Possible reasons for the limited impacts of these policies might be their current structure, an unavoidable lag time prior to their application, the large number of items for which clients can be penalized, or clients’ focus on present-day family needs rather than the longer-term implications of such policies. All of these factors could contribute to clients’ confusion.
Changes to the current PRA that could be enacted range from eliminating some or all penalties not mandated by federal law to strengthening the severity of the sanctions as a stronger incentive to follow TANF rules. While states have adopted a number of different policy approaches in this area, little research evidence exists as to whether any of these options would result in increased compliance with the PRA provisions. Further study is needed on this topic because it is clear that current Texas policies in this area are consuming limited staff time and confusing clients for little apparent gain.
- The implications of the increasing number of TANF ‘child-only’ cases on low-income families and TANF-related policies should be explored.
Child-only cases now make up 36 percent of the Texas TANF caseload, a figure that has increased greatly since the beginning of welfare reform. While child-only cases have also been increasing in other states, the Texas increase is influenced largely by Texas state time limit policies. As currently structured, Texas time limits create child-only cases when the caretaker is removed from the TANF grant due to reaching state time limits. Under current Texas law, families in which the adult does not receive TANF have no work or Choices program participation requirements. Also, enforcement tools for requiring such families to cooperate with child support enforcement are limited. It is also harder to collect child support for these families. In reviewing Texas time limit policies, the possible effect of these policies on programs that are operated by other Texas agencies, such as the Texas Workforce Commission and the Office of the Attorney General’s Child Support Division, should be considered.
- Existing TANF policies should be examined to assess whether they meet the needs of long-term TANF recipients and those with more limited workforce qualifications.
During the evaluation of this demonstration, a descriptive analysis of the caseload showed that a growing share of the TANF caseload was composed of long-term recipients who had received more than 30 months of TANF receipt at entry. This trend could have occurred because of stronger impacts for short-term recipients, diversion policies, or the strong economy that was present throughout the evaluation period. Current reports from TDHS indicate that this trend may be changing as a result of the recent economic slowdown. Even so, given the prospect of lifetime limits, TDHS should assess whether the share of persons projected to reach lifetime time limits will be greater than the number who can be exempted from federal time limit provisions. Also, given that the most negative impacts from this evaluation were found for Tier 3 recipients, the current policies should be re-evaluated to assess the degree to which they meet the needs of families who have fewer of the skills traditionally valued by employers.
In general, the findings from this demonstration have expanded our knowledge of the degree to which state time limit policies and the personal responsibility agreement as implemented in Texas influence the behavior of TANF recipients. Even though many of this demonstration’s policies produced little or no impacts, much has been learned as to the reasons for these small impacts. Also, the interaction of these policies with federal time limits may produce some unintended and unusual effects. This new information provides an excellent opportunity to re-examine the rules governing the Texas TANF program, both those requiring legislative action and changes that can be achieved through agency rules.
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