Punitive TANF Policies Will Push DC Families with Children Deeper Into Hardship

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a lifeline for DC families, providing flexible cash assistance to more than 16,000 households with children experiencing poverty.^[1] This vital support helps families pay for essential expenses including rent, utilities, and school supplies, enabling them to meet immediate needs and avoid deeper financial instability. Financially stable families are essential to children’s futures and a thriving District.

Despite the program’s proven role in reducing family hardship and supporting child well-being, DC lawmakers approved cuts to TANF in the fiscal year (FY) 2026 financial plan that will reduce cash benefits for thousands of DC families, beginning October 2026. These changes include:

• Eliminating cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for TANF benefits;
• Reinstating time limits for families receiving TANF for 60 months or more; and,
• Increasing sanctions for not meeting work readiness requirements.

These cuts threaten to push families with children deeper into poverty, with the greatest harm falling on Black, women-led households who are disproportionately represented in the TANF caseload. By FY 2029, a family of three that currently receives the maximum benefit of $803 could see that support slashed to just $151 per month in non-adjusted dollars.^[2] These reductions will phase in just as DC enters a local recession, residents face rising costs, and federal and local cuts to health care, food assistance, and other essential supports take effect.

In her new budget proposal, Mayor Bowser doubled down on these cuts by both accelerating and deepening the time limit cut: instead of a partial reduction to benefits that would phase in to a 75 percent cut by FY 2029, her proposed budget would eliminate benefits entirely for families who have received TANF for more than 60 months by FY 2028. She also proposed a significant reduction to the TANF Employment and Training Program (TEP). Her proposal is now before the DC Council for their consideration. The analysis in this report reflects current law—not the mayor’s proposed budget.

To better understand the harm the cuts will have on TANF families, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) conducted focus groups with 16 women living in DC who have reached or are approaching the 60-month TANF time limit. This report draws on participants’ voices and lived experiences to analyze the efficacy of DC’s TANF program and highlight the barriers that limit pathways to upward mobility. Focus group participants reported that:

• Current TANF benefits are insufficient to meet their families’ basic needs. Participants already struggle to cover essential expenses. Reducing or freezing benefits will exacerbate financial hardship, pushing families further to the brink.
• They want to work, and many have extensive work histories, but structural barriers and labor market conditions limit their opportunities. Barriers include difficulty accessing child care, mental and physical health challenges, and limited job availability. Some participants’ education levels and work histories funnel them into low-wage jobs that, combined with the benefits cliff, leave them trapped in poverty.
• TEP’s design limits its ability to support TANF parents’ career goals. While TEP provides valuable skill-building opportunities, it lacks a clear pathway from training to meaningful, sustainable employment. Jobs are not guaranteed, and the available placements often do not align with participants’ interests.
• They have come to associate Department of Human Services (DHS) service centers as places where they must endure dehumanizing treatment, all to receive inadequate support. Criticism of DHS and vendor staff ranged from inefficiency and incompetence to outright disrespect, which helps to explain why some TANF participants remain disconnected from TEP and DHS more broadly.

These findings underscore how the trifecta of TANF cuts will harm DC families and children. The consequences will be immediate and will do nothing to help connect people with work. DC lawmakers should reverse the cuts beginning in FY 2027—and reject the deeper reductions the mayor proposed—to avoid pushing children deeper into poverty and hardship—an outcome that should be an explicit and central goal of any TANF reform. DC policymakers should also implement a series of administrative reforms to better ensure TANF sets up families for success so that they and their children can thrive long term, such as:

• Conducting a formal assessment of the TEP relaunch. Before holding TANF families accountable to stricter sanctions or time limits, DHS must conduct a full-scale evaluation, engaging TEP participants, vendors, and staff to understand how the program is performing.
• Strengthening oversight and accountability for TANF vendors. DHS must conduct rigorous, ongoing quality control across all TANF vendors to ensure consistent outcomes.
• Minimizing administrative burden in the Program on Work Employment and Responsibility (POWER). Expand outreach to identify families who may qualify for POWER, which exempts TANF enrollees with disabilities from punitive measures, and implement strategies to reduce documentation barriers.
• Expanding access to non-traditional child care options and reverse the decision to begin a child care subsidy enrollment freeze. TANF families face persistent barriers to using child care subsidies, including a shortage of non-traditional options, both of which the newly announced child care subsidy enrollment freeze will worsen.
• Improving data collection on work outcomes. DHS should collect and analyze data on employment, earnings, and job stability for individuals who exit TANF.
• Easing the TANF benefits cliff by expanding the earned income disregard. DC should disregard a greater share of earned income to give families time to stabilize and transition into employment without the immediate loss of support.
• Mandating trauma-informed training for DHS and vendor staff. Trauma-informed training would enable staff to respond appropriately to participants’ needs, reduce conflict, and foster respectful, supportive service delivery.

While Vital, TANF Has a Racist Legacy That Mayor Bowser Once Rejected But Now Embraces

In 1996, TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, an entitlement program that served as the nation’s primary cash assistance program since 1935. TANF introduced fiscal penalties to DC and states for not meeting work participation rates and imposed a five-year lifetime limit on federally funded cash aid, among other changes. Punitive policies in US cash assistance programs stem from a well-documented history of anti-Black racism and faulty notion that only some families “deserve” support. Federal lawmakers invoked racist narratives that portrayed Black mothers as “welfare queens” to justify TANF’s design, which has resulted in a weak cash safety net that disproportionately leaves US Black families without cash assistance or a pathway to quality jobs.^[3]

TANF is funded through a fixed federal block grant, supplemented by required DC and state contributions known as Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funds. DC and states have broad flexibility to determine how to spend the funds, how much funding goes to cash assistance, and how TANF programs are designed. In FY 2023, DC spent 51 percent of federal TANF and MOE funds on cash assistance and the rest on supportive services such as work supports and child care to low-income families with children.^[4]

Unlike most states, the District contributes a significant and growing amount of non-MOE local dollars to improve its TANF program, primarily to provide annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to cash assistance and to provide aid beyond the federal five-year limit.^[5] This reflects the significant strides that DC has taken to improve its TANF program over the last decade, making it more accessible and supportive for families in need. The only time that the District has reduced benefits for families based on a time limit was from 2011 to 2017 due to budget pressures resulting from the Great Recession.^[6] As revenues recovered from that downturn, the Bowser administration spearheaded a working group that led to positive TANF reforms and brought together TANF enrollees, advocates, service providers, and Councilmembers.^[7]

Led by DHS, the working group identified ways to minimize the harm of planned program cuts that would have pushed children—most of whom were Black—deeper into poverty. The group not only helped prevent the adoption of punitive policies under consideration but also used the process to advance a range of family-supportive reforms.^[8]

As DC confronts budget pressures and another recession, DHS launched a second working group in early 2026 to inform implementation of the TANF cuts slated for FY 2027. Comprised of many of the same stakeholders, DHS has narrowly tasked the group with developing a hardship extension policy that would allow some households to continue receiving benefits beyond the 60-month time limit, rather than evaluating the full trifecta of policy cuts that will harm families and children and worsen racial equity. (At the time of this publication, the working group had yet to publish its final report.)

The 2016 TANF Working Group Rejected Time Limits and Sanctions Due to Harm and Lawmakers Embraced COLAs

Mayor Bowser formed the first TANF working group in 2016, when time limit penalties and full-family sanctions were already underway but before harsher cuts were set to go into effect that would terminate benefits completely for those on TANF longer than 60 months in FY 2018. She tasked the working group with developing a hardship exemption policy and identifying ways to minimize the harm of the impending time limit.^[9]

The working group recommended rescinding the plan to terminate all benefits at 60 months based on evidence that such punitive measures were ineffective at boosting economic security and disproportionately harm children.^[10] The working group also recommended eliminating the former three-level sanction policy, which included a full-family sanction, and replacing it with a less punitive, single-level sanction of 6 percent.^[11] Sanctions reduce cash benefits when a TANF enrollee does not meet work participation requirements. In the FY 2018 budget, lawmakers adopted both of those recommendations and preserved increases in TANF benefit levels that had been phasing into effect since FY 2015.

Benefit increases were desperately needed because for much of the program’s first 20 years, DC lawmakers froze TANF benefits at levels too low to meet families’ basic needs. A family of three received up to $379 per month from FY 1997 to FY 2007 and $428 per month from FY 2008 to FY 2014 in nominal dollars.^[12] Inflation steadily eroded the value of benefits, diminishing families’ purchasing power by 23 percent (or $130) between FY 1997 and FY 2014. DC lawmakers introduced an annual COLA for TANF benefits in FY 2015 to prevent further benefit erosion and protect children from the long-term harm of growing up in poverty. They also phased in substantial benefit increases from FY 2017 to FY 2019 to make up lost ground in purchasing power over the last 20 years, reducing the depth of family hardship.

TANF Cuts Will Roll Back A Decade of Progress

The trifecta of TANF cuts scheduled for FY 2027 threaten to undo the progress DC made to strengthen assistance and will push families deeper into hardship, despite evidence documenting the harm of these proposals. Families stand to lose thousands of dollars each year, undermining the stability and well-being that past reforms were designed to fortify and protect. For example, a family of three that currently receives the maximum benefit of $803 could see that support slashed to just $151 per month in non-adjusted dollars by FY 2029 (Table 1).

TABLE 1.

Methodology for Focus Groups of TANF Enrollees

Sampling and Recruitment

DCFPI recruited focus group participants using purposive, non-random sampling to target TANF enrollees who self-reported that they had reached or were approaching the 60-month time limit. DCFPI selected this sampling strategy to capture the perspectives of individuals that would be most affected by DC’s proposed changes to time limits and increased sanctions.

DCFPI partnered with community-based organizations and coalitions that work directly with, or are comprised of, TANF enrollees to identify individuals interested in participating. Once referred to DCFPI, potential participants completed a phone interview to confirm eligibility. DCFPI recruited 18 individuals, and 16 ultimately attended the focus groups.

Data Collection

DCFPI conducted two focus groups in December 2025, each with eight participants. The team held the sessions in-person at local DC libraries, and each session lasted approximately two hours. Focus groups followed a semi-structured discussion guide that explored TANF’s role on household finances, barriers to employment, and interactions with the DC DHS (Appendix 1).

Participant Characteristics

All participants were long-term TANF enrollees, with total time in the program ranging from four to ten years. Approximately half reported receiving TANF intermittently rather than continuously, although DCFPI did not ask this question to all participants (so this share may be higher). While participants were not selected based on ward, race, or gender, most participants lived in Ward 7 (31 percent) and Ward 8 (50 percent), and all identified as Black women. These demographics are consistent with the composition of DC’s TANF caseload, which disproportionately includes Black, women-led households residing east of the Anacostia River.^[13]

Limitations

Given the study’s small sample size, these results are not intended to represent the experiences or perspectives of all long-term TANF participants in DC. Instead, this report aims to highlight the voices of a select group of participants, providing insight into how the approved TANF cuts may affect them specifically and how the program’s design is affecting their journey towards economic stability.

Lessons from DC Women Participating in TANF

Current TANF Benefits Provide Flexibility but Fail to Meet Families’ Needs, and Participants Report that Cuts Will Only Deepen Hardship

For most focus group participants, TANF is the primary—and often only—source of income supporting their households. While many also receive assistance from other safety net programs, particularly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), participants emphasized that TANF’s flexibility fills critical gaps that other programs cannot. As one participant explained, “[Other programs] are not going to help me if I have a need that I need to spend cash on.”

Participants described using TANF to cover the most basic and unavoidable expenses: rent, utilities, transportation, groceries, laundry, and storage. Just as critically, many said they prioritize using their TANF benefits for their children’s needs, such as child care, clothes, and extracurricular activities that allow their kids to fully participate in school and in their communities. Some participants described feeling that these dollars are meant first and foremost for their children, even as they juggle competing household expenses. “This money [isn’t] for me to do this or that,” a participant emphasized. “My son is on the spectrum. This money is going to him.”

A small number of participants reported that TANF also supports longer-term goals tied to upward mobility, such as pursuing higher education or improving credit scores. “TANF allows me to go to school and be [a] present parent,” shared one participant who is currently enrolled in college. She emphasized that TANF makes it possible to pursue her goals without the constant fear of falling behind on bills.

Despite the critical support the program offers, participants overwhelmingly reported that benefit levels are far too low to meet their families’ needs. As one participant put it, “TANF helps minimally.” Another added, “TANF is like you’re barely making ends meet.” Quantitative data underscores this reality. In FY 2025, the maximum TANF benefit for a family of three in DC—$781 per month—equaled just 37 percent of the federal poverty level, and some families received less than that amount due to earnings or sanctions.^[14]

Because TANF benefits are so inadequate, participants reported making calculated sacrifices to survive. Many discussed the necessity of meticulously budgeting every dollar, with one participant noting, “Our budgeting skills [are] on a thousand—to be able to make $600 stretch over a month.” To fill the gaps, participants described relying on food banks to avoid hunger and thrift stores to clothe their children, accepting odd jobs, and confronting painful decisions about which utility bills to pay and which to delay. These survival strategies demonstrate that families are already living on the edge, navigating difficult and unsustainable tradeoffs to get through each month.

Parents Rightly Fear that TANF Cuts Could Lead to a Downward Spiral, Harming their Job Prospects and Ability to Care for their Children

Participants emphasized that cuts to their monthly TANF benefits would have devastating consequences on their ability to provide for their children and navigate the tough economy. As one participant explained, “While it’s minimal assistance, we would be drastically affected because that’s all we have right now.” Another questioned the logic of the cuts altogether, asking, “Even at this rate, people are still struggling. So, to reduce that… how does that help anything?”

Specifically, participants expressed deep concern over losing the ability to meet their families’ basic needs, fearing that cuts to TANF could quickly cascade into greater barriers to work, deeper housing instability, and food insecurity. When asked how benefit reductions would affect her, one participant described how losing TANF would jeopardize her ability to pursue employment: “I would not be able to pay my phone bill, which means I cannot… continue interviewing for jobs.” Multiple participants emphasized the risk of losing their homes, with one mom noting that her “rent is literally the amount that [her] TANF is.” Eviction can trigger a broader downward spiral and is linked to prolonged homelessness, mental health challenges, job loss, and disconnection from communities.^[15]

Participants reported being worried about how TANF cuts will harm their children, above all else. Parents emphasized that without TANF, their children would lose access to extracurricular activities that provide joy, structure, and a sense of belonging. At the same time, they noted that the stress of unmet needs would make it harder for their kids to focus in school, let alone attend regularly. As one participant explained, “If my children can’t eat, they can’t go to school and be productive.” Another reflected, “If they have to sleep on the floor in the hallway of some apartment building, what are they going to do in school?” Multiple moms described how even small material differences can become markers of shame for kids, shaping how they’re treated by classmates and how they see themselves.

Participants’ fears that TANF cuts will lead to increased hardship are well-founded and supported by evidence from other states. A Michigan study found that families subject to sanctions were far more likely than non-sanctioned families to experience utility shutoffs and to resort to extreme survival strategies—such as pawning belongings, searching trash cans, or begging.^[16] Meanwhile, a six-city study of TANF enrollees seeking emergency room treatment found that children in sanctioned families were 30 percent more likely to have been previously hospitalized, 50 percent more likely to be food insecure, and 90 percent more likely to be admitted to the hospital at the time of the emergency visit compared with children in non-sanctioned families.^[17]

Participants’ experiences show that TANF families in DC are already struggling under the weight of high living costs and low income. Cutting benefits or allowing their value to erode will not promote self-sufficiency but make it even harder for families who are already doing everything they can to stay afloat.

TANF Parents Report Having Work Histories and Wanting to Work, but Structural Barriers and Labor Market Challenges Limit Their Opportunities

Rather than viewing TANF as a preferred option, nearly all participants expressed a clear desire to work and support their families through earned income.

Focus group findings reveal that participants want to work, but face real barriers such as inaccessible child care, physical and mental health challenges, and limited job opportunities, which make it difficult for them to secure and sustain long-term employment. Even when participants are able to find work, they reported that low wages combined with the benefits cliff have left their families trapped in poverty. The experiences shared by participants stand in stark opposition to racist and misogynistic narratives that wrongly depict people receiving TANF, particularly Black mothers, as unfit, undeserving, and needing a “stick” to compel them to work.

Participants repeatedly stressed that they did not want to be on TANF and turned to it only out of necessity. Several pointed to the program’s low benefit levels as evidence that TANF is not something anyone would willingly choose. As one participant put it, “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘Oh, I want to get on public assistance—which is a fraction of my cost of living!’” Others highlighted the stigma attached to TANF as another powerful reason for wanting to avoid the program: “I didn’t want to be on TANF…we just shame it so much. Growing up hearing that shame, I just never wanted to be on it.”

Rather than viewing TANF as a preferred option, nearly all participants expressed a clear desire to work and support their families through earned income. While most reported they were not employed at the time of the focus groups, many have substantial work histories and described frequently moving in and out of jobs. Several participants explained that they received TANF intermittently as their employment status changed, challenging the notion that all TANF families remain continually on assistance. One participant stressed, “I left TANF! We have not been consistently getting TANF for three, four, or eight years.”

Others described working for extended periods while receiving TANF. One participant voiced frustration that sanctions and time limits fail to account for these realities, focusing only on current employment status while ignoring years of labor: “They’re trying to make big cuts to TANF assistance after five years. They’re not taking into consideration that in those five years, I was working for three years!”

Evidence from other states suggests that most parents participating in TANF work before enrolling and return to work after leaving.^[18] The challenge is that, while many parents are temporarily employed, their work is often unstable or unsustainable.^[19] Low-paid workers—including many TANF enrollees—are more likely than other workers to experience periods of unemployment.^[20] Participants highlighted structural conditions that make stable work difficult to secure and even harder to maintain in DC, such as child care and mental health challenges.

Resources Meant to Address Structural Barriers to Work Are Failing TANF Parents

Child Care: Child care emerged as the most frequently cited barrier to employment. Given their low incomes, all participants are likely eligible for child care subsidies. However, having a voucher—which several participants reported receiving—does not guarantee access to the right kind of care. More than 40,000 children in DC live in households that meet income eligibility requirements for child care subsidies, yet fewer than 20 percent of eligible children used a subsidy in FY 2023.^[21] On May 12, 2026 Mayor Bowser will establish an enrollment freeze in the child care subsidy program, locking thousands of families and children out of affordable care and making it harder for caregivers to find and keep a job.^[22]

Multiple participants explained that the jobs accessible to them rarely align with typical child care hours. Evening shifts, on-call work, and unpredictable schedules make it extremely difficult to arrange consistent care for their children. As one mother described, “Even though, yes, they’ll give us a child care voucher for our kids to go to school in the daytime, what about the nighttime?” Without access to non-traditional child care, participants are unwilling and should not be expected to leave their children at home, alone and unsupervised.

This challenge is compounded by the fact that many participants reported having no one, besides child care facilities, that they could rely on for help. As several shared, “I don’t have a support system. It’s nobody but me,” and “I have nobody to watch him.” The absence of child care options also carries heightened risk for Black mothers, given the disproportionate surveillance and involvement of Black families in the child welfare system.^[23] One participant described fear that leaving children without appropriate care could trigger a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation: “I can’t leave them home. If I leave them home, I’m getting a CPS case and I’m going to jail.”

DHS has acknowledged the child care issues facing TANF families. In its FY 2024 Performance Accountability Report, the agency states that the “the need for non-traditional child care spaces is greater than the available slots and is a barrier for those customers who are employed.”^[24]

Physical and Mental Health Challenges: Multiple participants reported living with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, often rooted in past experiences of trauma, including domestic violence and gun violence. Others described having disabilities themselves—such as learning disabilities and epilepsy—or caring for children with disabilities, such as autism. Many participants reported that managing their own health while meeting their families’ needs is demanding, making consistent employment difficult to sustain. One mother shared, “I [have to] be strong for my kids, but some days I don’t want to get out of bed.”

Many of these participants likely qualify for POWER, which exempts TANF participants with disabilities from work participation requirements and pauses their TANF time limit. Only two participants mentioned being approved for an exemption. Although others did not clarify their status, the fact that they were still actively searching for work suggests that many may not be enrolled in POWER, potentially reflecting gaps in awareness or access to the program.

Only 143 families were enrolled in POWER as of December 2025.^[25] By contrast, 34 percent and 43 percent of TANF enrollees reported suffering from a physical or mental health condition, respectively, that limits their daily activities, according to a 2026 DHS assessment of 9,947 TANF families.^[26] If those rates were applied to the full caseload, that would translate to 5,474 and 6,923 families, far higher than the current POWER population.^[27] National data also shows a high prevalence of health conditions and disability among TANF participants.^[28] Taken together, POWER’s low enrollment suggests that many eligible families are not accessing the program and DHS needs to do a better job of enrolling families into the program.

One barrier is that families cannot apply to POWER directly; they must be referred by a DHS caseworker.^[29] Although caseworkers are legally required to screen for POWER eligibility at application and recertification, focus group participants repeatedly described challenges communicating with and receiving information from DHS staff (discussed further below). Additionally, documentation requirements can create further barriers, given the difficulty of securing formal diagnoses and substantiating less visible experiences such as domestic violence.

Economic Downturns Limit Job Opportunities for TANF Parents

Even when child care is in place and health needs are manageable, participants described hitting another wall: securing a job. Several participants shared that they spent significant time submitting applications and, in some cases, interviewing, but received no offers. As one participant explained, “I’m having a hard time finding a job right now[…] The only thing I’m thinking is that God just got something else for me, because it’s not for lack of trying.”

Difficulties finding work spanned the education spectrum. One participant who did not complete high school described getting a good job as feeling “out of reach.” Meanwhile, a participant with multiple master’s degrees was repeatedly told by employers that she was “too marketable” or “overqualified.” In exasperation, she responded, “Let me sweep the damn floors, let me vacuum,” reflecting her willingness to take any available work, regardless of job type or the likelihood of it putting her on a path off of TANF.

Participants, like other DC residents, are navigating a weak and stratified labor market that makes securing a job offer more difficult. Last December, when DCFPI held the focus groups, DC’s overall unemployment rate reached 6.7 percent, a four-year high.^[30] These conditions may worsen, as DC’s Chief Financial Officer predicted that DC will enter a moderate recession in 2026 due to harmful federal policy changes and continued layoffs.^[31] And Black women are bearing the brunt of the weak economy nationally, suffering more job losses than other groups.^[32]

For many participants, this is not the first time they’ve had to navigate unstable economic times. Given their reported extended time on the TANF program, it’s likely that all participants received TANF at some point during the COVID-19 recession. These years count towards participants’ time limit, despite coinciding with historically weak hiring and widespread layoffs that made stable employment difficult, or even impossible, to secure.

Economic downturns consistently fall hardest on Black residents, who make up the majority of TANF enrollees. Not only does unemployment spike more sharply for Black residents during recessions, but Black workers also face longer periods of unemployment afterward than white workers (Figure 1).^[33] They are also more likely to be underemployed after recessions, working part-time when they want to work full-time at a job matching their skills.^[34] These trends may explain part of why participants are struggling to find employment today, raising concerns about the fairness of allowing TANF’s 60-month clock to run when labor market conditions are largely outside families’ control.

FIGURE 1.

Low Wages and the Benefits Cliff Keep TANF Families in Poverty

Even when participants can secure work, the jobs available to them are often low quality and poorly compensated. Research shows that increasing parental employment alone—without raising incomes—does not improve outcomes for children.^[35]

While limited access to higher education shapes the types of jobs many participants can pursue, several also emphasized the role of race in shaping opportunity. As one participant explained, “Some of it’s got to do with privilege. When I try to look for comparable African Americans in [jobs that she’d like], they’re more rare.” Her observation reflects a broader structural reality: centuries of exploitation and discrimination have systematically concentrated Black workers in lower-wage occupations. From 2020 to 2024, the second and fourth most common occupations for Black workers were security guards and cashiers, with median hourly wages of $17 and $15, respectively (Table 2).^[36]

TABLE 2.

Participants most frequently pointed to customer service and food service as the type of jobs they can access based on their skills and experience. They described several features that make these jobs unstable and undesirable. Firstly, schedules are often unpredictable or require late-night shifts, which creates ongoing challenges for securing consistent child care. Secondly, the jobs available to many participants do not pay enough to support individuals—let alone families. As one participant put it, “When I’m seeing my paycheck and I’m getting like, $80 or $100 dollars, I’m like… this is not enough.” Another added, “The jobs that we’re getting are actually maintaining poverty.” Their experiences are not isolated. In Kansas, parents who left TANF due to sanctions or time limits earned median annual incomes of $6,199 and $5,940, respectively, in 2018 dollars—this is roughly 30 percent of the poverty line. ^[37]

When low wages are combined with the “benefits cliff,”—or the steep decline in public benefits when earnings rise—the financial incentive to accept a low-wage job becomes even weaker. As earnings rise, even slightly, TANF and other safety net benefits begin to sharply phase out, limiting the financial gains of work. Parents start to see a reduction in TANF benefits after making just $160 per month—well before they’re earning enough income to meet basic needs. For every additional $3 earned beyond that threshold, benefits are reduced by $1—a marginal tax rate of roughly 33 percent.^[38]

When other programs such as SNAP are factored in, the harm becomes even more severe. A DC parent whose monthly earnings rise from $1,500 to $3,000 would face an estimated $1,300 reduction in benefits, leaving the family only about $250 better off for significantly more hours of responsibility.^[39] This does not even account for the additional out-of-pocket costs that often accompany employment, such as transportation, child care, or meals away from home, which can further erase any remaining financial gain.

Multiple focus group participants described wanting to work but being reluctant to lose their benefits for work that would not fully support them or could even leave them worse off. As one participant explained, “I can’t sit here and realistically say I’m going to take a job for $15 or $18 an hour, knowing that’s not really going to be any money. Then they’re going to cut off my food stamps and TANF.” Participants expressed deep frustration with the benefits cliff, arguing that it undermines, rather than supports, a successful transition to work. One participant explained, “To me, I just feel like it’s a fail because it’s basically punishing me for working.” Another echoed this sentiment: “It’s almost like you’re immediately punishing people for doing better, which is the opposite of what the goal of these programs should be.”

Participants’ experiences show that low wages combined with steep benefits cliffs make it difficult for work to meaningfully improve TANF families’ financial stability or lift them out of poverty. In addition to higher wages, multiple participants called for a grace period that would allow families to temporarily receive both earnings and benefits, supporting a more stable transition into work.

Design Flaws Limit the TANF Employment and Education Program’s Ability to Support Parents’ Long-Term Career Goals

Although significant barriers to employment exist, DHS offers resources aimed at helping TANF participants secure jobs. The primary employment service DHS offers to TANF families is the TANF Employment and Education Program (TEP), which provides parents with coaching toward education and employment goals. Through TEP, DHS assigns TANF enrollees to a contracted vendor (e.g., Maximus, Grant Associates, and KRA Corporation) that provides coaching, job placement services, skills training, and financial incentives for engaging in vendor-approved career pathways. Participants also have the option to choose whether to work with a vendor or pursue a self-directed pathway to better meet their individual needs and preferences.

Participants reported widely varying experiences with TEP, underscoring differences in vendor performance and significant variation in individual experiences, even among participants served by the same provider. In general, participants who were matched with a well-suited vendor sung high praise. Many were grateful for supports offered during the job application process, including mock interviews and assistance accessing free professional clothing. Nevertheless, positive vendor experiences did not necessarily translate into improved employment outcomes. Participants consistently expressed that working with a vendor was not a reliable pathway to employment, citing various reasons, including:

• A misalignment between the jobs available through TEP and participants’ skills, interests, and long-term goals;
• The absence of a guaranteed path to employment after completing classes, trainings, and other skill-building activities; and,
• A mismatch between the milestones incentivized by TEP and the milestones participants need to reach to make progress toward their career goals.

Firstly, participant experiences contradicted goals explicitly outlined in DHS’s TANF State Plan, which frames TEP as a program designed to support “career-ladder promotion.”^[40] Instead of advancing participants toward higher-quality, sustainable employment, participants highlighted the limited jobs available through TEP and the misalignment between those opportunities and their career aspirations. One participant described, “It just seems like the same five opportunities, no matter what vendor you’re in.” She added, “I don’t want to work at a stadium. I don’t want to be security.”

Though TEP vendors cultivate employer networkers spanning a wide range of industries, vendors connect participants to jobs by their existing skill sets and work histories rather than career goals.^[41] As a result, participants without higher education—a reality for most TANF enrollees—described being steered into low-wage, undesirable work, such as hospitality or security roles. While this approach may enable participants to find jobs more quickly, placing them into work that doesn’t align with their interests or aspirations is unlikely to lead to lasting self-sufficiency, a purported goal of TEP and TANF. One participant touched on this, explaining, “You have to care about what you’re doing, you know. I think that goes [into] the difference between career readiness and work readiness.”

Lastly, participants expressed deep frustration with how difficult it was to translate TEP participation into actual employment. Because TEP is not a job guarantee program, participants must still navigate the full job application process—a process that, as discussed earlier, does not always result in actual offers. As one participant explained, “I still have to put in the work. I still have to apply. I still have to interview and hope.”

Even more discouraging for participants was the amount of time and energy they invested in skill-building activities that failed to lead to concrete opportunities. Participants described attending trainings and classes through their vendor yet feeling that these efforts existed in isolation rather than as part of a coordinated pathway toward their career goals. One participant who took entrepreneurship courses shared that, after finishing the program, “There [was] no real setup for success… and there wasn’t necessarily a pipeline in order to be able to become a business owner.” Although she had access to a case manager, she reported still lacking “the necessary connected resources[…]to go from one stage to the next stage.”

Multiple participants emphasized that they were not asking for their vendor to “hold their hand,” but they did report needing additional help once trainings and courses ended to actually move toward their goals. Some described needing clearer information on next steps of the job search, while others desired financial assistance to cover professional licensing fees, child care, transportation, and other necessities required to secure and sustain employment. Without adequate and tailored supports, participants reported that program activities felt fragmented rather than truly transformative. The absence of a clear, supportive pathway to employment is consequential given the racial composition of the focus group participants, and the TANF caseload as a whole. As Black women navigating poverty, many living east of the Anacostia River, participants described facing generations of disinvestment that cannot be overcome simply by completing skill-building or training activities. One participant from Ward 8 stated, “We require more.” Another participant from Ward 7 echoed this sentiment, explaining, “It’s kind of insulting to some degree, because it takes us a little longer, or we have to do creative routes to accomplish our goals.”

Participants’ reports that TEP is not functioning as an effective pathway to employment aligns with DHS’s own assessment of how well their program is functioning: In FY 2025, TEP had an average of just ten job placements for every 1,000 work-eligible TANF parents.^[42] And in FY 2026, DHS only set a goal of increasing that average to 18 placements for every 1,000 work-eligible parents.^[43] When explaining these disastrously low rates and goals, DHS pointed to a skills mismatch, noting that “most TEP customers struggle to meet the qualifications employers demand”—a finding that closely mirrors the focus group results.^[44]

DHS also cited budget constraints that have reduced local hiring in industries that historically employed the largest share of TEP participants, such as hospitality and administrative roles.^[45] Further compounding these challenges, budget pressures and the new TEP contract have reduced access to case management in FY 2025, as the number of TEP vendors declined and staff turnover increased.^[46]

Participants Raise Doubts About Effectiveness of Recent TEP Reforms

In spite of these challenges, DHS has made efforts to improve the TEP program, including redesigning it for October 2024 (See breakout box). While a comprehensive evaluation is still needed to assess the impact of these changes, focus group findings suggest they have not meaningfully improved participants’ ability to access and sustain quality employment.

As part of TEP’s redesign, DHS introduced an incentive program that rewards parents participating in TEP for meeting “2Gen milestones,” or a set of activities selected by DHS that are believed to improve family well-being and support families’ path to self-sufficiency. Table 3 highlights a selection of these milestones. Focus group participants identified a mismatch between the milestones TEP incentivizes and the milestones people actually need to reach to make real progress toward their career goals. While they appreciated the additional cash and acknowledged that the incentives helped keep them connected to TEP, multiple participants said completing these milestones did not meaningfully change their behavior or move them closer to their long-term goals.

Instead, participants reported that the incentives often felt disconnected from the realities of what they needed to secure stable employment. A few participants emphasized that many of the milestones were extremely basic. For example, TEP parents can earn $50 for opening a credit card, $25 for attending a medical appointment, and $25 for obtaining a library card.^[47] While participants acknowledged that these activities may be helpful for some TANF enrollees, particularly younger parents, they felt that the milestones largely reflected tasks they had already completed or already knew how to complete and did not require formal programming to accomplish. As one participant explained, “They are helpful on a lower level[…]I mean basic information level[…]It’s all basic information that you could really do [yourself].”

TABLE 3.

Importantly, 2Gen incentives are not the only incentives offered; DHS provides separate stipends for TEP parents who maintain employment or participate in education and occupational training activities long-term. (These incentives did not come up during the focus groups.) Still, participants’ feedback suggests that recent efforts to improve TEP have not aligned with many families’ needs. Rather than broad, one-size-fits-all programmatic changes, parents emphasized the need for more individualized supports that meet them where they are.

Ultimately, TEP is failing to connect parents to high-quality, sustainable employment. Without meaningful improvements, enforcing punitive work requirements and time limits under these conditions will set many families and children up for failure. DC can support work by helping families, not hurting them.

DHS conducted a full relaunch of the TEP program in October 2024.^[48] The relaunch introduced several significant structural changes intended to increase flexibility and improve service delivery, including:

1. Introducing the Family Choice Model to expand participation options.

Before the relaunch, TEP parents had only one participation option: working with a vendor. The Family Choice Model instead allows participants to choose whether to work with a vendor or pursue a self-directed pathway to better meet their individual needs and preferences. DHS assigns participants on the self-directed pathway an agency caseworker to provide additional support as needed.

2. Integrating job placement and education services under a single vendor.

Previously, vendors specialized in either education or occupational training, for parents focused on building skills through education and training, or job placement, for parents focused on securing or maintaining employment. Under the relaunch, both services are now offered by the same vendor.

3. Offering incentive payments tied to two-generation (2Gen) milestones.

The program now provides financial incentives for completing specified 2Gen milestones. Two-generation approaches aim to strengthen the entire family unit’s well-being by simultaneously supporting children and their caregivers.^[49] Eligible milestones span multiple domains, including economic assets, health and well-being, social capital, early childhood education, and K–12 and postsecondary education.

4. Simplifying verification requirements.

DHS streamlined verification requirements to make participation less burdensome for both parents and providers, reducing paperwork, delays, and barriers to maintaining compliance.

Given the recency of the relaunch, DHS has yet to conduct a full-scale assessment of how these changes are faring in practice.^[50] Before imposing harsher sanctions for failing to meet work requirements, the District should collect robust data to evaluate whether the redesigned program is effectively serving participants. Absent this evaluation, TANF participants risk being held accountable for outcomes without evidence that the primary employment support offered to them is actually working.

Negative Experiences with Agency Staff Undermine Access to Essential Services

Importantly, the findings above reflect the experiences of participants who are actively engaged with TEP and therefore derive at least some value from the program; however, others in the focus groups reported disengagement. While participants did not elaborate extensively on their reasons for not participating due to time constraints, many expressed a broader aversion to seeking assistance from DHS altogether. This reluctance stemmed from repeated negative interactions with DHS and vendor staff, with criticisms ranging from inefficiency and incompetence to outright disrespect.

Two participants shared stories in which DHS mistakenly cut their benefits during recertification. One participant, whose benefits were terminated immediately after giving birth, went to the service center directly from the hospital, only to be told, “It’s the system.” She explained, “It took them a week of every day going down there and raising it for them to really do something. I talked to like, five caseworkers.” Similarly, another participant shared that DHS had wrongly cut her TANF benefits for two months. “I went back and forth up [there],” she said. “I had to talk to different supervisors, different caseworkers, and they basically told me the same thing: it was a glitch in the system.”

While administrative errors create serious material hardship, participants described their treatment when seeking help as equally, if not more, damaging. In fact, disrespectful and dismissive behavior from staff emerged as the single most frequently reported concern and generated the most passionate discussion across focus groups. Participants characterized caseworkers as “rude” and “nasty.” Many felt that staff “don’t want to help,” “give attitude,” and “act like they don’t even want to be at work,” all while behaving as though they are “so much better” than the people they’re serving.

These interactions take a significant emotional toll on participants, many of whom reported feeling demeaned, powerless, and angry. As one participant explained, “It is depressing, and they really do treat you like shit.” For many, this treatment piles onto the mental health struggles they already carry. One participant described this cumulative strain, exclaiming, “It’s just added stress on top of stress. Where’s the peace to do well and to thrive? To constantly be in stress, to live in stress, to sleep in stress, it’s not healthy and it’s not productive.” Another added, “I’m already in my lowest place—the fact that I even have to resort to these resources—so I don’t need to be treated without respect.”

Participants report that they have come to associate DHS service centers as places where they must endure dehumanizing treatment, all to receive inadequate support. Research on administrative burden consistently shows that public service systems that are stigmatizing, confusing, or difficult to navigate discourage eligible individuals from participating.^[51] Participants echoed these thoughts, with some believing that these barriers are intentional and designed to deter access. One participant stated, “They’re intended to be difficult and… more of a challenge than what it really has to be.” Another added, “It’s buried on purpose.”

Together, these dynamics help explain why some TANF participants remain disconnected from TEP and DHS more broadly—not because they do not need support, but because accessing it can carry significant emotional and logistical costs.

DC Policymakers Should Reverse TANF Cuts and Make Administrative Reforms to Better Create a Pathway to Upward Mobility

The TANF cuts scheduled to take effect in October 2026 will deepen hardship for families, worsen TEP’s entrenched policy failures, and are not paired with program improvements that offer a real pathway to upward mobility. The consequences will be immediate and will do nothing to help people work or address the life challenges that TANF families navigate. DC lawmakers should maintain cost-of-living adjustments, the absence of a time limit, and sanctions at their current levels so that children aren’t pushed into deeper hardship—an outcome that should be an explicit and central goal of any TANF reform. The Council should also reject Mayor Bowser’s newly proposed deeper cuts to TANF.

DC policymakers should also implement administrative reforms to improve TANF participants’ experiences on the program and dismantle persistent barriers to employment:

Conduct a formal assessment of the TEP relaunch. DHS launched the redesigned TEP in October 2024. Two years later, the impact of many new features is not yet fully understood, but the evidence we have so far shows that hardly any parents are meeting work outcomes. Before holding TANF families accountable through stricter sanctions or time limits, DHS must conduct a full-scale evaluation, engaging TEP participants, vendors, and staff to understand how the program is performing. This assessment should examine:

• The performance of vendors providing both education or occupational training and job placement services under new contracts.
• The experiences and outcomes of participants pursuing the self-directed pathway.
• Participants’ perspectives on incentive milestones and whether completing them meaningfully improves employment outcomes.
• Whether simplified verification requirements are effectively reducing administrative burdens for participants and vendors.

Strengthen oversight and accountability for TANF vendors. Conduct rigorous, ongoing quality control across all TANF vendors to ensure consistent outcomes. Some vendors perform better than others.^[52] DHS should hold all vendors to high, uniform standards for job placements and educational or occupational training placements, as well as for job retention and wage levels. Vendor performance should be regularly monitored, publicly reported, and tied to corrective action or contract renewal decisions.

The mayor’s FY 2027 budget proposal includes an $11 million reduction to TEP, but at the time of this report, her office has not yet released the full details of the proposal.^[53] It is unclear whether the plan includes any evaluation requirements for TEP or incorporates program design improvements consistent with these recommendations.

Minimize administrative burden in the POWER program. Expand outreach to identify families who may qualify for POWER and implement strategies to reduce documentation barriers, including categorical eligibility (based on Social Security Income participation) and presumptive eligibility. DHS and vendors may also need to re-train staff on how to identify eligible families.

Expand access to non-traditional child care options and reverse the decision to begin a child care subsidy enrollment freeze. TANF families face persistent barriers to using child care subsidies, including a shortage of non-traditional options. Introducing an enrollment freeze, as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education has proposed, would further restrict access. Although TANF families are within Priority Group 2 under the new policy, they are still behind families with children in protective services, children with disabilities, and children experiencing homelessness, which could delay or prevent them from securing necessary care.^[54]

Improve data collection on work outcomes. DHS should systematically collect and analyze data on employment, earnings, and job stability for individuals who exit TANF. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding of which policies and services actually lead to long-term career stability and upward mobility.

Ease the TANF benefits cliff by expanding the earned income disregard. This benefit cliff discourages work and undermines families’ efforts to achieve economic stability. DC can mitigate the benefits cliff by disregarding a greater share of earned income, following the lead of other states. For example, Massachusetts and Rhode Island disregard 100 percent of earnings during the first six months of employment, while Maine, Oklahoma, and Nevada apply a full disregard for the first three months.^[55] These policies give families time to stabilize and transition into employment without the immediate loss of support.

Mandate trauma-informed training for DHS and vendor staff. Given the high prevalence of trauma among TANF enrollees, hostile interactions with agency and vendor staff create unnecessary barriers to engagement. Trauma-informed training would enable staff to respond appropriately to participants’ needs, reduce conflict, and foster respectful, supportive service delivery.

If DC lawmakers decide to maintain the TANF cuts, or worse, adopt the deeper cuts in Mayor Bowser’s proposed FY 2027 budget, it is imperative that DHS develop a robust hardship exemption and extension policy that both protects beneficiaries from circumstances beyond their control and addresses the current and increased barriers to work that parents will face because of their benefit reductions. Equally important, DHS caseworkers must implement the hardship policy effectively to ensure no eligible families fall through the cracks.

Appendix 1:

What impact has TANF had on your ability to make ends meet and provide for your children?

• What expenses does TANF help you purchase? Are there any expenses that you struggle to cover even with TANF?

Some of you may also receive SNAP, Medicaid, rental assistance, or benefits from other programs. In your experience, does the cash you receive from TANF meet needs that other programs do not?

If your TANF benefits were reduced or cut, how do you think that would affect you and your family?

• What expenses do you think would be most difficult to cover?

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When applying for TANF, did you work with a caseworker to develop an Individual Responsibility Plan? The Individual Responsibility Plan lists your goals, career interests, and the steps you plan on taking to achieve “self-sufficiency.” The DC Government requires you to complete the activities in your Individual Responsibility Plan, which may include going to work or attending school.

• How was your experience working with your caseworker to make your Individual Responsibility Plan? Would you describe it as positive or negative, and why?
• Do you think the activities you and your caseworker decided on—whether that be searching for a job, joining a training program, or going back to school—were helpful and set you up to achieve your goals? Why or why not?
• Do you have the resources and support needed to achieve the activities in your Individual Responsibility Plan? If so, what’s helping? If not, what barriers are you facing and what help do you need?

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The Department of Human Services, or DHS, operates the TANF Employment and Education Program, also referred to as “TEP”, where they partner with service providers to help you complete the activities outlined in your Individual Responsibility Plan. Through this program, participants may receive career and education coaching, job search support, resume and interview preparation, and other services. Have you participated in this program or received any resources or support from DHS to help you build skills, complete education or training, or find employment?

• For those of you who have received employment/education support from DHS, what aspects of the program were helpful? What additional support would have better met your needs?
• For those of you who did not receive employment/education support from DHS, why? Were you not aware of these services, or do you prefer to work independently to achieve your employment/education goals?

Whether you’re currently employed or not, what types of jobs do you feel you have access to, based on your education, work experience, location, and other factors?

• How satisfied are you with the job opportunities available to you? Do they meet your needs in terms of pay, hours, stability, and overall fit?

What challenges have you faced, in the present or past, that make it difficult for you to get or keep a job and earn enough to support your family?

• Some common barriers include child care, transportation, or physical or mental health challenges. Have any of these, or others, made it harder for you to work?

For those of you who have worked for pay, what factors made it possible or easier for you to keep your job?

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If you could change one thing about the TANF program, what would it be? Why?

If you could speak directly to decision-makers—like the Mayor, DC Council, or the Department of Human Services—what would you want them to understand about your family and others receiving TANF?

Is there anything else you would like to share that you have not yet shared today?