After a Scandal and the Failure of TANF as a Safety
Net Before and During the Pandemic, Major Reforms are Needed to
Turn the Tide. MLICCI Report Reviews 25 Years of TANF.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, is a federal block grant that awards Mississippi nearly $100 million/per year in federal funds intended to serve poor families. TANF is administered by the MS Department of Human Services (MDHS). Unfortunately, federal TANF rules give states wide discretion, and Mississippi abuses this discretion and has done nothing to reduce poverty.
Mississippi’s TANF caseload reached its lowest point during COVID-19, with only 176 adults served in May 2021. Mississippi’s cash assistance is a pittance, and certainly not enough to mitigate poverty. Though the state legislature increased the amount of TANF cash assistance in 2021, the change barely made a dent given the few people on TANF and the low amount. It would take the average family of three a total of 352 years of full TANF payments each month to receive as many TANF funds as one famous quarterback received in one sub-grant.
Mississippi’s TANF program is filled with bureaucratic red tape and punitive sanction policies:
- People don’t lose TANF because they move out of poverty or because they’ve exhausted the assistance they are eligible for.
- MS opts for the strictest sanction policies allowed under federal law for things as simple as missing an appointment with a case worker.
- Reasons other than employment and earnings account for 69.2-percent of closed TANF cases.
- Mississippi lso punishes the whole household with full family sanctions.
Mississippi diverts TANF funds to the Department of Child Protective Services to pay for state failures and leaves almost half of its TANF funds unspent rather than pay for child care and reducing poverty.
What can we do to change course? Here are our suggestions:
- Make TANF cash assistance a major spending priority and drastically increase the cash assistance caseload.
- Prioritize TANF spending on child care.
- Stop using TANF funds to fix Mississippi’s child protective services failures.
- Invest TANF funds in program models that are designed to provide resources to families in need and move them out of poverty.
- Two examples that work are the Moore Community House Women in Construction program and MLICCI’s Employment Equity for Single Moms program, which provide child care and pathways to higher-paying jobs for single moms.
- Eliminate punitive state-set policies that deter and obstruct access to TANF.
- Eliminate drug testing, upfront job search, and other punitive requirements.
- Reform state-set sanctions that kick too many families off TANF.
At the end of the day, the millions that Mississippi receives through TANF should reduce poverty. The strategies are proven and simple: adequate assistance to provide a real safety net for our poorest families, child care, and pathways to higher earnings that move families out of poverty.
Read the entire report – Click to access MS-TANF-at-25_October-2022.pdf