Spring, 1998, Vol. 4, No. 2

Third Place: Colver-Rosenberg Award

Increasing the Burden: Decreased Welfare Benefits May Increase Child Welfare Caseloads

By Bridget Freisthler, a second-year SSA student with a concentration in administration. Her field placement is at the Federal Administration Children and Families.

With the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, AFDC was replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Before widespread implementation of this legislation began, many professionals were concerned with how time limits and sanctions on those receiving cash assistance would affect child welfare caseloads. Now that states are well into the process of implementing TANF, the intended and unintended consequences can be assessed. Dennis Zeller comments that "from caseworkers to administrators, there is broad-based expectation that full implementation of TANF will lead to increases in reports of abuse and neglect, a rise in foster care admissions, longer lengths of stay in foster care, and ultimately, a larger number of children waiting for adoptive placements" (1997).

Enacting time limits as a way to move people off welfare rolls may have the dubious honor of increasing child abuse and neglect. Already it has been found that low-income families are at higher risk of being reported for abuse or neglect. Common occurrences of neglect include no food in the home, filthy living arrangements and lack of supervision. Cutting benefits for these families will increase the chance that they will act in neglectful ways by virtue of not having enough resources to adequately provide for their children.

Supporters of welfare reform argue that the opposite will occur. They maintain that because parents are now expected to take responsibility for their employment, they will do so in all other areas of their lives. However, in Michigan, where a federal waiver was granted to experiment with the use of sanctions and time limits, it has been found that families who lose cash assistance benefits due to sanctions are about 50% more likely to be involved with Child Protective Services (Colville, et al, 1997).

What does this mean in the wake of current welfare reform? Even if only a small percentage of families losing cash assistance find themselves involved with the child welfare system, child welfare caseworkers who work with abused and neglected families will be overwhelmed. In 1995, almost 5 million families, (9 million children) received AFDC cash assistance. In that same year, there were 483,000 children placed in out of home care through the child welfare system (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Even if 1% of the children formerly receiving TANF are removed from their homes, participation in the child welfare system will increase by 18%.

An increase in reports of child abuse and neglect is not the only concern for child welfare professionals. Child welfare caseworkers can not knowingly return a child to a parent unable to care for that child's needs. Without adequate financial resources, these parents will not be able to provide for the basic needs of their children. Caseworkers will need to help these parents secure and maintain full-time employment. If this does not occur, these caseworkers may need to begin the process of terminating parental rights in order to find a permanent adoptive home for these children. However, poverty cannot be a cause for termination of parental rights. It is likely that these children will remain in out of home placements indefinitely.

Many children who are already in the child welfare system are placed with non-parental relatives who in the past have depended on public assistance. Requiring these relatives, who are often grandparents, to work may make it impossible for them to continue to care for these children. Thus, child welfare caseworkers would need to find alternative placements for these children. States do have the option to exempt these families from the time limit rule, but at this time, few states have explicitly done so in their TANF plans.

Florida began experimenting with time limits in 1993 under a federal waiver. In their plan, they examined the effects that moving families off welfare rolls may have on child welfare caseloads. It was decided that termination of full AFDC benefits should not occur if doing so placed the children in immediate danger of being removed from the home. When a family approached the point where they should have their benefits sanctioned, a team of child welfare professionals assessed the family's living conditions. If it was determined that the children were in imminent danger of being placed in a foster home, a third party would receive an AFDC payment on behalf of the child. The AFDC (now TANF) payment would be paid to someone other than the parent to ensure that the child's basic needs were met.

While this approach seems like it may be a solution to the problem at hand, it has not met with much success. One problem is that these families may not be in immediate danger of abusing and neglecting their children. Once TANF benefits are lost, families will turn to relatives and agencies to help them care for their children. It is not until these families have depleted all of their resources that they will be likely to engage in abusive or neglectful behavior. The second problem is that Florida admits they are having a difficult time identifying responsible people to take on the third party role (Bloom et al, 1997).

Proponents of welfare reform often cite cost savings as a positive aspect of the new legislation. Introducing time limits to ensure that people do not receive cash assistance indefinitely reduces the amount of money that will be paid to a family. Sanctions and time limits will save public aid offices money because less people will be eligible for TANF benefits. However, if some of those who are no longer receiving TANF enter the child welfare system, those savings will be lost.

The average welfare family (one adult and two children) receives about $365 a month in TANF benefits.The cost to care for these same children in foster care is on average, $890 a month. This does not include the additional costs of providing services to the family (HHS, 1997).

Many states and government officials are reluctant to talk about this issue. It requires that they acknowledge that welfare reform may have a negative impact on child welfare caseloads, which will in turn, undermine the positive effects of welfare to work. This is not an issue that will go away. In fact, as more children enter the child welfare system, less money will be saved by moving people off of TANF rolls.

REFERENCES

1. Bloom, Kemple, & Rogers-Dillon. The Family Transition Program: Implementation and Early Impacts of Florida's Initial Time-Limited Welfare Program. May 1997.
2. Colville, Moore, Smith, & Smucker. A Study of AFDC Case Closures Due to JOBS Sanctions. May 1997.
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Maltreatment 1995: Reports from the States to National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997).
4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Web Page: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov Zeller, D. Welfare Reform Impacts on Child Welfare Caseloads: A Research Agenda. 1997.

Bridget Freisthler is a second-year SSA student with a concentration in administration. Her field placement is at the Federal Administration Children and Families.

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