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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