By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Staff Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
Families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in Washington, D.C., are starting to see an increase to the child support payments they receive. According to Meridel Bulle-Vu, managing attorney for Legal Aid D.C.’s Family Law and Domestic Violence Unit, the D.C. Council law that became effective on Oct. 1 is a step in the right direction.
The increase means the portion of child support that the government returns to the family, known as the pass-through, is higher. This money is provided to the family in addition to their regular TANF cash assistance.
“We already had a pass-through of $150 a month,” said Bulle-Vu. “The change makes it up to $200 a month—that’s an additional $50. It’s the first step towards correcting the cruelty of our cost recovery system that the federal government has imposed on states and the District of Columbia. It’s making sure that more money gets back to the children for whom that money was paid in the first place.”
TANF is a federally funded, state-run program providing temporary financial assistance to families in need across all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam, though implementation varies by state. In the District, the program supplies families with help in various ways, including monthly cash assistance, short-term aid for specific needs such as buying a crib, and access to wraparound services like child care subsidies for before- and after-school care.
According to Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center, 13,701 families were enrolled in TANF in Washington, D.C., helping 25,446 children. Those enrolled mainly live in Wards 7 and 8, which are majority Black areas of the city.
The cost recovery system
Bulle-Vu noted that D.C.’s child support system for TANF families is intricate and based on an approach referred to as cost recovery.
This system originated in 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law, effectively ending the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replacing it with TANF. Along with the change came additional work requirements and time limits on welfare assistance, shifting it from a guaranteed income system to a temporary benefit with numerous conditions.
“The state had to require the family, when they accept the TANF benefit, to cooperate with the state in going after the other parent for child support,” said Bulle-Vu. “There was this mistaken assumption that there was another parent out there who could have been supporting their child and because they weren’t, the state was doing it instead.”
Bulle-Vu explained that through this process the government could intercept those payments for cost recovery. When the state collects child support from the parent without custody of the child, the funds are required to go to the government to reimburse the state and federal government for the cost of the TANF benefits.
Advocates push for full pass-through
TANF families can expect more legislation on this topic in the near future coming from the D.C. Council, which is working to make sure D.C’s most vulnerable children are getting the child support that is due them instead of it going to the city’s pockets. Advocates like Bulle-Vu are looking for the D.C. Council to implement a full pass-through, meaning TANF families will receive all of the child support money, even arrears.
To essentially eliminate the cost recovery system in D.C., it would cost the city $5 million to complete.
“We need to do more to make sure that money from low-income parents is not going to fund our government and is not being sent to the federal treasury when kids in D.C. really need it,” she said.
Bulle-Vu is hopeful that laws around TANF will be addressed by the council as early as this fall.