Street roots., April 25, 2014, Page 10, Image 10

Street roots
, April 25, 2014
Temporary Assistance fo r Needy Families (TANF) by the numbers:
■ In 1997, the maximum payment for a family of three was $503. That figure w0UJd
have had to rise to $730 by 2013 to keep up with inflation. Instead, it rose $3 to $506
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■ TANF covers roughly one in 40 Oregonians: More than 95,000 Oregonians from
35,000 families. One of the highest coverage rates in the nation.
■ About one in three Oregonians receive some form of public assistance, such as
TANF, food stamps and Medicaid (according to most current records).
■ Federal contribution: $170 million to Oregon. State Contribution: $90 million. For
total 2013-15 biennium: $500 million state budget.
■ The number of single parent families in the TANF program almost doubled from
2007 to 2013, and the number of two-parent families increased fivefold.
Source: Oregon Secretary o f State TANF audit, April 2014
creative partnerships in here. The
Coordinated Care Organizations (Oregon’s
low-income health care network), that’s
pretty intuitive, and they’re moving in that
direction. And working with the BOLI
Apprenticeship Program. Our labor
commissioner is interested in getting more
women into the trades. It seems like a
perfect match. It’s not going to fit a ton of
clients, but it will fit some.
The other one was within the Department
of Human Services; there is the Vocational
Rehabilitation Services. They have slots
available. When there are families on TANF
with parents who have disabilities, those
folks should be specifically moved toward
vocational rehab. The audit mentions some
really good recommendations about where
the agency should go moving forward. But
it’s all contingent upon resources.
J o a n n e Zuhl.: Which is in part contingent
upon the Legislature.
Welfare woes
Secretary o f State K ate Brown
addresses her bureau's hard-hitting
a u d it o f the state 's welfare system
BY JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF W R IT E R
t’s 2008, and the recession has settled ;
upon Oregon. Unemployment skyrockets,
the housing market takes a dive, and
families are losing their homes and
livelihoods.
Faced with rising numbers of people
falling into poverty and needing assistance,
Oregon responded with broad shoulders.
According to the Secretary of State’s
office, Oregon — m ore than any other state
in the nation — took the approach to
reinforce the safety net and keep families
together. Over the next five years, the
number of people signing on to the state’s
primary assistance program, the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families, nearly
doubled. The number of two-parent families
oh assistance increased nearly five-fold.
Today, TANF, as it’s called, covers roughly
one in 40 Oregonians: More than 95,000
Oregonians from 35,000 families. It’s one of
the highest coverage rates in the nation.
Meanwhile, the downward pressure oh
wages, the labor market and state resources
has been unrelenting.
It has taken its toll. An audit of the state’s
TANF program, released this, month from
the Secretary of State’s office, strongly g
criticizes TANF for overloaded case
managers and poor outcomes in getting
people back to work. Clients were not
getting back to self-sufficiency, the audit
states. None of this occurred in the vacuum
of the state’s Department of Human
Services, which runs TANF. And in term s of
solutions, the audit casts a wide net that,
includes legislative policy, staff flexibility g
I
and restored resources. We talked with,
Oregon Sec. Kate Brown about the audit
and its message, starting with the overall
situation of who and what is to blame for the
poor outcomes of the TANF program .. ,
K ate Brown: The reason why we’re at "
this critical juncture right now is the budget
challenges that the agency faced and the
récession — the combined impact of the two.
The budget impacts resulted in the huge
caseloads, for example — caseworkers having
200 families on their caseload. That is
absolutely unrealistic in term s of providing
any type of individual service. The other
piece — and I think this is extremely
important — is that the budget cuts resulted
in slashes in services. We know that folks
are on the TANF program because, •
obviously? they are in poverty, they have
children, but many of them have barriers.
They have drug and alcohol issues or mental
health issues, or they don’t have a high •
school degree. When you slash the funding
for those wraparound services, whether it’s
child care, transportation, drug and alcohol
assessment, or a navigator to get them to
those things, i t is impossible for these
families to overcome the barriers and move
toward self-sufficiency.
Those are two major challenges that the
audit addresses.
I think that the other piece — and this is
chicken or,egg — is it realistic when
somebody has 200 families on their caseload
to have an extensive case plan? I don’t know
the answer to that. But what the audit lays
out is a roadmap where the agency can go
moving forward. There are some fairly
K B .: And the economy. It’s both. We’re
in this bad spot because of the economy. I
th in k th e L eg islatu re totally m a d e th e right ,
the job market, but you can’t forget about
our more vulnerable folks either.
J.Z.: So what does your office ask o f DHS
and TANF workers to address that? How do
we get people back to work? The economy isn’t
cooperating with us.
K B . For me, it comes back to the other
pieces that we’ve done. We did an audit of
the GED program in Oregon about a year
ago, We made some specific
recommendations in that report that I think
would benefit the TANF families as well. For
example, right now, Oregon is one of only a
few states that don’t pay for the cost of GED
testing. We should provide specific funding
for GED testing, and we should be providing
the funding for services for people to
overcome the barriers to complete their
GED. For example, child care and
transportation those costs should be
subsidized for people who are on the TANF
program who want to get their GED.
J.Z.: They used to be. Is that a message to
lawmakers?.
d ecisio n (to ex p an d coverage) w h en th e y did
because, they provided more money to more
families to stabilize them.
J. Z.: The audit really foctises on the work
aspect o f TANF. It does much more than that.
It invests in families, keeping them together
through hard times and preserving. Is the
work measure, given the employment
environment, the right measure o f whether this
program is doing the right things? Where’s the
measurement o f how many families were
spared homelessness? How many kids stayed in
school?
»
K. B.: My assessm ent of the major
purpose of the TANF program is to make
sure that children are successful. That is the
major purpose, And you make children
successful by stabilizing their family living
situation. That’s the primary purpose in my
mind.
The reality is that the cash assistance is
not adequate for people to live on. So do we
get people into the workforce immediately
so they can barely make endsm eet, or do'
we invest in these parents, they’re mostly
women, so they can be successful moving
forward, as opposed to always being on the
edge. I think it makes more sense to invest
in these parents, to invest in thèse women
to invest in these families.
J.Z.: The imperative in returning parents to
the workforce has led the agency to prioritize
job status for people. The audit says those
clients with the greatest barriers are usually
placed in the leastready category and offered
limited services at best. The people who need
the most receive the least?
K B .: For me, the recommendation about
partnering with Vocational Rehab really
spoke to me. I don’t think we should be
serving people who are less job ready or
challenged with special needs. I wouldn’t put
them on a low priority list simply because
they’re less likely to be ready in the
marketplace. I think wë should be providing
everybody services to fit the needs of that
particular person or that particular family. I
understand the focus on getting people into
K B . Yes. Let’s fund these wraparound
services so people can get the basic
certifications and the basic tools they need
to be successful in the workforce.
The other piece is we’re the only state in
the nation that doesn’t have categorical
funding for other GED programs. Provide
categorical fuhding — direct funding for GED
programs — so it doesn’t come out of the
community college budget Essentially it’s a,
more holistic approach.
J.Z.: There are consequences to the state
financially for not performing well, in addition
to the human consequences.
K B . That’s one of the realities of the
programs. If we don’t m eet federal minimum
requirements we get penalized as a state.
J.Z.: A nd we’re coming close to that,
correct?
K B .: That is correct. They are doing a
workaround with the jo b Participation
Incentive. Sincet2011, DHS has chosen to
make up the gap by finding clients receiving
food stamps who work enough hours to
m eet federal participation guidelines. T he
program adds $10 a month to food stamp
benefits. Because TANF funds cover the
payments, the recipients are considered
TANF clients, which substantially increases
Oregon’s TANF work participation rate.
State Auditor Gary Blackmer is w o rk in g
at the federal level on a GAO (G o v ern m e n t
Accountability Office) committee to really
take a look at federal rules and regulations
when they don’t make sense. And one of the
reasons you see a lot of recommendations at
the federal government is because some of
the federal rules don’t make sense. It’S hard
to say w hether a state like Oregon can make
changes, but we’ve got Sen, Ron Wyden in a
very powerful place. It makes sense to me
that we make the push.
There were three federal
recommendations, including allowing clients
more time: We know from the 2010 Census
See Holliday, page 11