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Delaware’s TANF State Plan 10-1-2017 to 9-30-2020
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• Require adults and minor parent(s) to obtain family planning information from the provider of their choice. • Provide for a fiscal sanction of an initial $50 reduction in benefits for failure, without good cause, to obtain family planning information. This reduction will increase each month by $50, either until there is compliance or the case is closed. The sanction will end when the adult and/or minor parent(s) obtains the family planning information at the provider of his or her choice. • Eliminate benefit increases for children conceived while a caretaker is receiving TANF, and apply this family cap to children who are the firstborn of minors included in a TANF grant where the children are born after March 1, 1997. • Treat two-parent families the same as single-parent families.
The Delaware Adolescent Sexual Health State Plan from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Advisory Board provides a course of action to reduce the high teen pregnancy rate in Delaware. The goals for the State of Delaware are based on Healthy People 2020 goals for adolescent reproductive health. 1. Adolescents, adults, families must understand and apply essential sexual and reproductive health information and develop communication skills in order to make positive choices concerning relationships and sexual health. 2. Rates of unintended teen pregnancy are reduced. 3. Rates of subsequent teen pregnancy are reduced. 4. Rates of sexually transmitted infection are reduced. 5. Racial, ethnic and geographic-based sexual health disparities are reduced.
vi. Conduct a program, designed to reach State and local law enforcement officials, the education system, and relevant counseling services, that provides education and training on the problem of statutory rape so that teenage pregnancy prevention programs may be expanded in scope to include men.
Statutory Rape Prevention
The Sexual Predator Act of 1996 imposes more severe criminal sanctions on adult males who are significantly older than their victims and holds them financially accountable when children are born as a result of violations of this law. Each year an administrative notice regarding the Act is published informing DSS staff how to identify instances of statutory rape and how to make appropriate referrals to the Division of Family Services.