However, these policies do not exclusively harm Black families: all families facing a crisis or struggling to pay for their basic needs are harmed when they cannot access the support they need. These policies have created a weak cash safety net that disproportionately leaves Black families without cash assistance. More than a century of false and harmful narratives - such as Black women are unfit mothers - and paternalistic policies that sought to control Black women’s reproductive behavior and compel their labor have led to many aspects of TANF’s current design. is steeped in a legacy of racist ideas and policies. States define what constitutes a “needy” family for the first and second purposes and do not have to limit assistance to needy families for the third and fourth purposes.Ĭash assistance policy in the U.S. States can use federal TANF and state MOE dollars to meet any of the four purposes set out in the 1996 law: (1) assisting families in need so children can be cared for in their own homes or the homes of relatives (2) reducing the dependency of parents in need by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage (3) preventing pregnancies among unmarried persons and (4) encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. TANF’s funding structure differs greatly from AFDC, where the federal government contributed at least $1 in matching funds for every dollar that states spent. In order to receive federal funds and avoid a fiscal penalty, states must also spend some of their own dollars, known as “maintenance of effort” (MOE) spending. The programs go by different names in states, for example, CalWORKS in California. Under TANF, the federal government provides a fixed block grant to states, which use these funds to operate their own programs. Income supports help families in poverty maintain stability and promote children’s healthy development, a large and growing body of research finds. Congress created the TANF block grant through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, as part of a federal effort to “end welfare as we know it.” TANF replaced AFDC, which had provided income support in the form of cash assistance to families with children in poverty since 1935.

100 good things cannot counter 1 bad