Temporary Assistance For Needy Families: More Accountability Needed to Reflect Breadth of Block Grant Services

Nationwide, states have used Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant funds not only to provide cash assistance, but also to provide noncash services, such as job preparation and work supports for low-income families and aid for at-risk children. Among our 10 selected states, job preparation and work activities included help with the job search process, skills training, and subsidized employment. California generally provides such services to families receiving cash assistance while the other nine states extend some of them to other low-income families. Florida and Utah provide such services in coordination with the Workforce Investment Act one-stop center system. Work supports among these states mainly include child care subsidies for low-income working families. Services for at-risk children include child welfare activities, such as child abuse hotlines, investigative and legal services, child protection, and preventive services. TANF has allowed states to make funding decisions based on state priorities, particularly as cash assistance caseload declines freed up funds for non-cash services. However, according to officials in three states GAO reviewed, state decisions to fund a broad array of services can create tensions and tradeoffs between meeting cash assistance and other service needs. TANF's accountability framework provides incomplete information on how states' non-cash services are contributing to TANF purposes. Plans that states submit to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) outlining how they intend to run their TANF programs provide limited information on goals and strategies for non-cash services. In addition, past HHS reports and selected states identified some weaknesses in TANF expenditure reporting. For example, officials in one selected state noted that the use of TANF funds for child welfare services is not clearly identifiable in HHS's reporting categories for TANF expenditures. HHS is working to revise reporting categories, with a goal of implementing them for fiscal year 2014. No reporting requirements currently mandate performance information specifically on families receiving non-cash services or TANF's role in filling needs in prominent spending areas for TANF funds, like child welfare. These reporting gaps limit the information available for oversight of TANF block grant funds by HHS and Congress. Generally, HHS has limited authority to impose new TANF reporting requirements on states unless directed by Congress. While GAO's previous work on grant design highlights several features of grants, such as broad and varied purposes, that pose challenges to the development of performance information and measures, it also lays out accountability principles that can help address these issues for TANF.