The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the federal agency that oversees the comprehensive welfare reform plan initially created by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) and reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. PRWORA dramatically changed the nation's welfare system into one that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. PRWORA contains strong work requirements combined with supports for families moving from welfare to work, including increased funding for child care, continued eligibility for medical coverage, state maintenance of effort requirements and comprehensive child support enforcement provisions.
HHS has worked to ensure the success of welfare reform. HHS has provided technical assistance to states and communities in implementing the law; created partnerships with the business, faith-based and nonprofit communities to hire and train welfare recipients; invested in moving people from welfare to work; and supported programs to strengthen and support families in need.
Between PRWORA's enactment in August 1996 and March 2006, TANF caseloads for families declined 59 percent, from 4,408,508 to 1,814,040. This is the largest welfare caseload decline in history and the lowest percentage of the population on welfare since 1969.
The welfare reform law was originally scheduled to be reauthorized by October 2002, but was extended by Congress through a series of short-term extensions until re-enacted in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. [PDF, 615KB]. Following are highlights of the changes in the law, which builds on the successes of PRWORA and require states to engage more TANF cases in productive work activities leading to self-sufficiency:
Helping Welfare Recipients Achieve Independence Through Work
Increasing effective work requirements. The caseload reduction credit, which had inadvertently undermined TANF’s work requirements, was recalibrated, replacing the FY 1995 base year with a base year of FY 2005. Without the benefit of a built-up credit, states must place half of all cases with adults and 90 percent of two-parent families in work activities. To the extent that states succeed in reducing caseloads, they will receive credit for reductions after FY 2005. Families receiving assistance in separate state programs, who were previously excluded from the participation rates, are also now included.
Promoting work and accountability. [HHS] is required to issue regulations to ensure uniform and consistent measurement of work participation rates. This includes defining work activities, establishing uniform methods for reporting hours of work, providing guidelines for the type of documentation needed to verify reported hours of work and determining the circumstances in which child-only cases should be included in the rates. States are required to establish and maintain work participation verification procedures reviewed by HHS and are subject to a new penalty of one to five percent for failure to establish or comply with these procedures.
Protecting children and strengthening families
Protecting children continuing historically high child care funding. The Deficit Reduction Act increases the historically high levels of support for child care through the Child Care and Development Fund from $4.8 billion to $5 billion per year.
Improving child support enforcement. Under current law, the government keeps most of the child support paid on behalf of families receiving cash assistance and a substantial portion of past-due child support collections for families that formerly received welfare. The welfare reauthorization provisions made several improvements to the child support enforcement program, including a change that will provide more support directly to families, especially those who have left welfare.
Encouraging healthy marriages and two-parent married families. The Deficit Reduction Act also provides funding of $150 million per year for healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood initiatives. Funds may be used for competitive research and demonstration projects by public and private entities to test promising approaches to encourage healthy marriages and promote involved, committed, and responsible fatherhood. Healthy marriage promotion awards must be used for eight specified activities including marriage education, marriage skills training, public advertising campaigns, high school education on the value of marriage, and marriage mentoring programs. Up to $50 million each year may be used for activities promoting responsible fatherhood such as counseling, mentoring, marriage education, enhancing relationship skills, parenting, and activities to foster economic stability.
