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February 2017
Policy&Practice
17
After
20 years
since the
enactment
of the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
(PRWORA), it is time for Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
to be modernized to better support
21st century children and families in
achieving self-sufficiency. In 2015,
APHSA’s Center for Employment and
Economic Well-Being (CEEWB) and
the National Association of State
TANF Administrators (NASTA) initi-
ated a special work group on TANF
reauthorization and modernization.
Since then, this diverse group of TANF
experts has worked together with
APHSA CEEWB staff, Russell Sykes
and Kerry Desjardins, to identify
TANF’s strengths and areas for
improvement, and to develop a set of
legislative, regulatory, and admin-
istrative recommendations to make
the program more client- and family-
centric; and modernize it to align more
productively with elements of other
workforce programs. After months
of intense discussion and consensus
building, the work group released its
recommendations in November 2016,
in time to share with the incoming
Administration and Congress.
What follows is an overview of those
recommendations.
Photo illustration by Chris Campbell