Pennsylvania, which administers the program for state residents, paid $514 million for TANF programs in the 2019-20 time frame, $107 million more than the minimum requirement, according to Pennsylvania DHS.Īlong with cash assistance and job and education programs, individuals on TANF have access to child care. In 2019, TANF cost nearly $31 billion in combined federal block grants ($16.2 billion) and state contributions ($14.7 billion), federal figures show. Historians say TANF was meant to appease critics who believed that the old system fostered dependency. Unlike AFDC, the new initiative was a block grant rather than a steady-state payment, and it imposed on recipients work requirements and cumulative time limits of five years. TANF was created in 1996 after Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), formulated in 1935, was ended.

Next Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of so-called welfare reform, which produced the program of cash assistance known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). “Now, imagine a woman of limited literacy, possibly fleeing domestic violence, in poverty with little children, trying to do it.” “I never had one of them fill it out correctly,” said Amy Hirsch, a managing attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, who conceived of the exercise.

The idea was to see whether Ivy League graduate students could figure out the confounding paperwork. Not long ago, the first assignment for many incoming law students at the University of Pennsylvania was to fill out an application for federal cash assistance - welfare.

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