The report identifies strategies to improve young people's access to public benefits, including targeted outreach, benefit navigation, partnerships, eligibility expansion, and administrative efficiency.
The flexibility of the TANF block grant allows states to use TANF funds to provide cash to families through additional mechanisms, at least for brief periods, with fewer requirements.
This report presents a menu of strategies that have the potential to increase access to individual public benefit programs or a package of benefits. It focuses on Illinois, but the strategies identified are relevant throughout the country.
This resource examines how improvements in customer service experiences in public benefit programs like Medicaid, CHIP, and TANF can help better meet enrollees’ needs and build trust in government.
This report describes the human services landscape within state governments and uses case studies to show the range of approaches state governments take in structuring their human services systems. It also explores some implications of these structures for alignment and coordination within human services and with the health care sector.
As the US economy shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state administrators for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the nation’s primary program for helping families with low incomes meet basic needs while supporting their transition to economic mobility through work opportunities—faced new challenges operating the program and meeting their clients’ needs. For families previously or newly receiving TANF, the pandemic made it harder to meet the work and activity requirements necessary to continue receiving benefits. Many state TANF administrators and agencies responded to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders by adjusting their policies to meet their states’ and families’ unique situations, needs, and challenges. In this brief, we describe how some of these agencies adapted their policies during the early months of the pandemic.
This Urban Institute report explores the impact of benefit cliffs, plateaus, and trade-offs on families receiving public assistance, examining how changes in earnings affect access to essential benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and housing subsidies.
This Urban Institute article argues that poverty is driven by structural barriers rather than individual choices and advocates for safety net programs that address systemic inequities.
This brief describes the current state of SNAP benefit delivery through the electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card, identifies the features necessary for SNAP benefit delivery to ensure consistency with principles of equity and inclusion, and explores how future SNAP benefit delivery can keep up with rapid changes in commercial payment infrastructure.
