Efforts are actively underway at the District’s Department of Human Services to thoroughly revamp the way that the city addresses the education and training needs of families on welfare. This week, DHS begins reviewing proposals from non-profit and for-profit companies that will be tasked with providing services under the District’s new TANF Employment Program, starting in October. New vendor contracts are just one piece of the larger TANF reform that DHS has embarked upon, and will play a central role in the program’s improvement and evolution.
The District’s new TANF service delivery model will look like this:
- New Orientation and Assessment: Focus groups with TANF families have shown that the District has not done a great job of assessing TANF parents’ barriers to work or in letting parents know about education and training options available to them. Under the new plan, DHS will conduct a comprehensive assessment of skills, barriers, and other issues, and it will conduct an orientation that covers the full range of newly available services.
- Customized Employment Plans : Each TANF family will be placed in one of two tracks — a” job placement” track for those who are essentially ready to work and mostly need help searching for a job, and a “work readiness and placement” track for those with more significant barriers who would benefit from education or training. Service providers will be expected to develop a detailed plan for each client, provide comprehensive case management, connect clients with appropriate services, and place clients in jobs.
- Pay for Performance: The compensation structure for the new contracts will be largely performance-based — meaning that contractors will be paid based on their ability to achieve the outlined goals: clients completing training and education programs, getting and maintaining a high-wage job, and completing all required participation hours, among others. Hopefully, that performance data will be made available to the public by the Department of Human Services.
DHS had originally planned to have new providers ready to start offering services this summer, but its effort to solicit bids was just announced in early June.. While DHS expects to have new providers in place by the start of the fiscal year in October, the delay means that clients may be affected by the new TANF time limits before they have the opportunity to benefit from TANF reform.
The District’s TANF reform holds much promise. Tight timing of key program components pose some risk to families who will be affected by already-in-place punitive measures before they are able to participate in the new program, but with skillful, timely execution, many more families will soon be receiving meaningful services that help put them on the path toward stability and self-sufficiency.
