This Administration for Children and Families (ACF) letter outlines the Trump-Vance administration’s approach to the TANF pilot project, aligning with its commitment to promoting work and reducing dependency. ACF will release a solicitation for proposals shortly and will work to meet statutory deadlines and select a new cohort of states for the pilot later this year.

The Office of Family Assistance published this Dear Colleague Letter to highlight a previously disseminated letter, Identifying and Ending Welfare for Illegal Aliens, to encourage states to align their programs to Executive Order 14218’s provisions and federal statutes and regulations, concerning restrictions on permitting illegal aliens to obtain cash or non-cash federal public benefits.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) sent a letter to state administrators of the TANF program, reminding them it is prohibited to provide benefits to illegal aliens. This ACF press release highlights the letter, Identifying and Ending Welfare for Illegal Aliens, to inform readers that the Trump Administration is working to identify and cease taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens in contravention of law.

Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) restricts the eligibility of non-U.S. nationals (aliens) for many federal benefit programs. It applies to federal health care, housing, welfare, unemployment, and retirement benefits, as well as many other types of federal benefits. This Congress report explains the PWRORA restrictions on alien eligibility and lists which federal benefit programs are subjected to said restrictions, including TANF.

The FAST-LC Initial Convening was hosted on October 18-19, 2023 in Bethesda, Maryland. The session “Overview of the LI2 Framework with a Focus on the Learn Phase” included a 20-minute plenary presentation on the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework and its roots in implementation science. The presenter also highlighted practical ways for the FAST-LC sites to get started with Learn phase activities.

The FAST-LC Initial Convening was hosted on October 18-19, 2023 in Bethesda, Maryland. This session was presented by Clare Anderson at Chapin Hall, who discussed the history of child welfare and its impact on the economic stability of families who are involved with the child welfare system.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in January 2024 that aimed to provide a better understanding of how TANF dollars are used in Child Welfare and operational considerations for aligning funding with prevention efforts. This session reinforced the ways in which TANF spending in Child Welfare is consistent with the statutory purposes of TANF (particularly the first purpose), to inform FAST-LC participating sites’ action plans, and to learn from peers about how they are utilizing TANF funds for prevention strategies upstream of and within child welfare.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in February 2024, “Road Maps and Road Tests: Strategies to Strengthen Your FAST-LC Initiatives.” The FAST-LC site teams were in the process of designing and implementing new strategies to advance their FAST-LC initiative goals. Drawing on the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework introduced at the October Initial Convening, this session introduced site teams to two key strategies to support the design and pilot testing of new strategies. The session also featured a practitioner alum from the Leveraging America’s Social and Economic Resilience TANF Learning Community, who shared about their site’s experience with road mapping and road testing.

FAST-LC held a virtual event in April 2024, “Sharing Is Caring: Challenges and Solutions to Integrating TANF and Child Welfare Data for Prevention.” FAST-LC site teams were at varying stages of integration when it came to the working relationships and processes between TANF and Child Welfare program teams. Some teams are housed within the same agency or division whereas others are organized under separate departments. The organizational structure had some bearing on the extent to which data sharing exists between TANF and Child Welfare as well as the possibilities for further interagency sharing of such data. Yet, most FAST-LC teams have identified the topic of data sharing and integration as an area of focus and need for support. This event was designed to (1) offer guidance and tips in response to top-of-mind issues and questions related to TANF-Child Welfare data sharing and (2) share two novel case studies from the field.