The
Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA), P.L. 100-485, contained much-heralded changes
in the employment and training requirements for Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC)
recipients,
and in the types of support services for which states could receive federal
financial participation. The FSA is the latest in a series of amendments to
the AFDC program designed to replace welfare benefits with employment.[68]
The FSA requires that each state set up a Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program by October 1, 1990, and have it available throughout the state by October 1, 1992. Mandatory participants are required to enroll in JOBS as a condition of retaining their welfare grants.[69] Failure to participate without "good cause" results in the loss of the individual's share of the welfare grant.[70] The state must include a variety of work and training programs in its JOBS program, but the extent to which any particular component is available is left to state discretion. The issues of who must participate and the services that are to be provided are discussed below.
The general rule is that all AFDC recipients who are 16-59 years of age and are not disabled or already working 30 or more hours per week must participate in the JOBS program.[71] There is an exemption for individuals who are more than three months pregnant.
A number of provisions treat teen parents differently from older parents. Parents age 20 or older are required to participate in JOBS if they have a child over the age of three (or over the age of one at the state's option). In contrast, the FSA requires all teen parents aged 16-19 who receive AFDC benefits and who do not have a high school degree to participate in education and training activities, regardless of the age of the teen parent's child, as long as state resources permit. A teen parent who is in school full time is exempt from the requirements, as is a teen parent who is ill or incapacitated, or who is needed at home because her child is ill or incapacitated. Parents who are age 20 or older and are personally providing care to a child under six cannot be required to participate more than 20 hours per week. In contrast, parents who are age 16-19 may be required to attend school full time (as defined by the educational provider).
Under the FSA, states are required to give priority to four target groups:
| * | Parents under age 24 who have not completed high school and are not enrolled in high school or its equivalent; |
| * | Recipients who have gotten AFDC for at least 36 months during the last 60 months; |
| * | Parents under age 24 with little or no recent work history; |
| * | Members of a family in which the youngest child is within two years of becoming ineligible for AFDC because of age (16 or 17, depending on whether the state ends AFDC eligibility at 18 or 19). |
Most AFDC teen parents will be members of at least one of these target groups. Within a target group, states must give priority to volunteers, who are then entitled to supportive services.
States must meet federal "participation rates" or their federal reimbursement will be reduced. These participation rates are set at 7 percent in fiscal year 1990 and gradually increase to 20 percent by fiscal year 1995. In calculating the rate, the denominator is the number of AFDC recipients in the state who are not exempt from JOBS participation; the numerator is the number who are actually participating. In calculating the numerator, only those individuals who attend at least 75 percent of their scheduled hours (with no "good cause" exception for missed hours) may be counted. Therefore, states have an incentive to deny "good cause" exemptions for missed hours. Welfare officials estimate that they must enroll 40 percent to 50 percent of AFDC recipients in JOBS to get 7 percent that will meet the participation requirements (Kosterlitz, 1989). As states increase enrollments in JOBS, costs are expected to rise disproportionately as more needy and less-willing clients will be requiring services. Education, training, support, and monitoring costs will escalate, yet federal funding for JOBS is capped.
Each state is required to include certain components in their JOBS program: high school education or high school equivalency education; basic literacy education; education in English as a second language; job-skills training; job-readiness activities; and job-development and job-placement activities. In addition, each state must have at least two of the following: job search (with clients required to bring in weekly proof of a specified number of job-seeking contacts with businesses); on-the-job training; work supplementation (subsidized jobs in which the state pays all or part of the wages); and community work experience (work relief in which clients are required to work off their grants, dividing the amount of the grant by the minimum wage and requiring that number of unpaid hours of work for a public or nonprofit agency). The state may also offer vocational or technical school, or college.
There are vastly different costs involved in implementing each component and in the numbers of recipients assigned to each one. There is no requirement that any particular component be available to all JOBS participants or to any specific percentage of JOBS participants. A state has enormous leeway in determining the availability (and therefore the cost) of any JOBS component.
Under the FSA requirements, most 16- and 17-year-olds must be assigned to educational activities (high school or its equivalent).
States are required to "guarantee" child care and transportation for any participant in JOBS who is making "satisfactory progress," whether their participation is voluntary or mandatory.[72] Although the state is "not required to provide child care directly or to otherwise create child care services," it cannot require an individual to participate in JOBS if necessary child care is not available.[73] This child care requirement has the potential to vastly increase the availability of child care resources for teen parents. But such expansion is not guaranteed by the FSA, as states can simply exempt teen parents by declaring that child care is unavailable. The state has a wide variety of choices about how to provide child care under the FSA. It can make payments directly to providers or to the AFDC recipient (either in advance or as reimbursement), provide the care directly, arrange for free care through volunteer community groups or other agencies, or make any other arrangements it deems appropriate. The state must allow parents to choose among available types of child care (center, family child care, or in-home), and must have at least one method of payment for self-arranged child care. The FSA is clear in its intent to make available child care accessible and appropriate. It specifies that the state must
take into account the individual needs of the child, including the reasonable accessibility of the care to the child's home and school, or caretaker's place of employment or training (based on normally accepted standards in the community or state), and the appropriateness of the care to the age and special needs of the child.[74]
The federal Department of Health and Human Services expressly rejected proposals that would have required states to provide on-site day care for the children of teen parents, choosing instead to allow states, and presumably parents, more discretion in the delivery and use of child care services.[75]
States must respond to a request for child care "within a reasonable period of time," but no particular time frame is specified. There is no required time frame for responding to a request to enter JOBS or to perform an assessment to determine a JOBS assignment. This may cause a problem for teens who need to arrange child care in advance of the school year. Additionally, states may choose to pay for child care for up to two weeks while awaiting the beginning of a JOBS component or for up to a month where child care arrangements would otherwise be lost and the subsequent activity is scheduled to begin within that period. Although potentially helpful in minimizing disruptions in care, this option may not be sufficient for teens who need to retain a day care slot during the summer to have child care available when school resumes in September.
States may choose to pay actual costs for child care up to a statewide limit but not in excess of local market rates. The local market rate is defined to allow payment up to the 75th percentile cost of care in the local area.
States are required under the FSA to coordinate their child care activities with existing child care resource and referral agencies, and with early childhood education programs in the state, including Head Start programs and other school and community-based programs. States are also required to coordinate other supportive services with related services provided by other agencies.
States are also required to consult and coordinate their JOBS activities with the state agencies responsible for the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), with the state employment service, with adult education/vocational education, and with child care and public housing. The state and local welfare agencies must also consult with the Private Industry Councils (PICs) established under JTPA concerning the types of jobs available, or likely to become available, in the area, and on the development of arrangements and contracts for JOBS programs.
States have tremendous leeway in implementing the FSA. The state can emphasize voluntary participation or can maximize sanctions. States can choose to emphasize voluntary participation by making the program attractive to participants, by conducting outreach to encourage participation, and by focusing on services and opportunities. In contrast, states can choose to maximize sanctions by emphasizing the punitive aspects of the program, relying on sanctions to coerce participation (or reduce expenses by decreasing the numbers of welfare recipients), rather than making the program attractive enough so that recipients will want to participate. These latter states are likely to focus their programs around less-expensive components, such as job search, rather than on more expensive skills training. The state can offer large numbers of educational slots, ranging from basic literacy to college programs, or can simply refer large numbers of participants to GED programs and "job search." Greenberg (1988) lists ten key choices:
| 1. | Exempting adult parents with very young children. |
| 2. | Choosing the number of participants: serving fewer with better support or mandating more participants and giving each one less. |
| 3. | Including participant categories other than those prescribed by federal law. |
| 4. | Maximizing opportunities for volunteers, i.e., among the categories of mandatory participants, the state can either choose to serve only volunteers or can require that all recipients in those categories participate. |
| 5. | Maximizing opportunities for basic and remedial education. |
| 6. | Rationing the more expensive components, e.g., private vocational education. |
| 7. | Building in safeguards to minimize sanctions. |
| 8. | Supplementing the incomes of participants taking low-paying entry-level positions if these could have payoffs in the future. |
| 9. | Providing child care at the market rate: alternatively, states can exert significant pressure on recipients to arrange informal child care and transportation, thereby avoiding the cost of providing these services. |
| 10. | Providing two-parent grants on a time-limited basis or for as long as needed. |
[68]The prior programs included the Community Work Experience Program and the Work Incentives Program. These programs, and the history leading up to the FSA, are described in Handler (1987).
[69]AFDC grant levels vary from state to state, although no state has a benefit level that meets the federal poverty guidelines. In 1987, benefits ranged from 13 percent to 79 percent of the federal poverty guidelines (Axinn and Stern, 1987). As of 1987, 35 states paid less than 50 percent of the federal poverty line (VandeVeer, 1987).
[70]The sanction for failure to participate in the JOBS program is loss of that individual's share of the grant. Assume (using Pennsylvania's grant levels) a parent receives benefits for herself and for one child. A grant for two persons is $316/month. If the parent is sanctioned, the grant is reduced to $205/month, the amount of the grant for the child only. Similarly, if there were three persons on the grant and one were sanctioned, the grant would be reduced from $403 to $316/month.
[71]There are complicated rules for exemptions and for "good cause" failure to participate in JOBS activities in certain situations.
[72]Although the statute provides that child care must be guaranteed to persons "satisfactorily participating" in a JOBS activity, and that transportation and other supportive services must be provided to "any individual participating in the program," the preamble to the federal regulations requires that an individual be making "satisfactory progress," to be eligible for child care, transportation, and other supportive services. The regulations define "satisfactory progress" in an educational program as dependent upon the educational institution's written policies and includes "both a qualitative measure . . . such as a grade point average, and a quantitative measure . . . such as a reasonable time limit by which a student is expected to complete her studies" (45 C.F.R. 250.1). This imposition of a more stringent requirement in the regulations than in the statute may result in litigation on behalf of participants who are denied supportive services on the basis of unsatisfactory progress.
Under the regulations, if a state reduces or terminates child care, the recipient has the right to appeal the termination but is not entitled to continuing child care while her appeal is pending. An individual who is denied necessary child care has "good cause" for failure to participate in the program.
[73]Fed. Reg.42217 (October 13, 1989).
[74]54 Fed. Reg. 42189 (October 13, 1989).
[75]Although on-site child care centers are generally the only child care option available to teen mothers in school-based teen parent programs, some have argued that such care is not optimal for infants. Group care is associated with increased morbidity (Johansen, Leibowitz, and Waite, 1988) and the need to transport infants considerable distances may also reduce attendance (Marx, 1989).