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Page | 1 Part A - Program Goals, Administration, and Implementation
1.0 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Hawaii's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program provides cash assistance benefits to needy families with (or expecting) children, and case management, employment, and supportive services to adult TANF recipients through the First-To-Work (FTW) program, to enable them to obtain and retain employment, exit TANF, and become financially independent.
The following statements were used as guiding principles in the design of Hawaii’s TANF program when welfare reform was executed under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA):
A. Welfare is temporary and not a way of life. B. Parents, not government, are responsible for the support and maintenance of their children’s well-being. C. Parents who are able to work, must work. D. Families must be financially better off by going to work than staying on welfare.
To achieve these objectives, the program uses a combination of positive incentives and adverse actions to challenge applicants and recipients to move away from welfare dependency and toward a future of financial self-reliance. The adverse actions include the sixty-month time limitation and welfare grant reductions for households that contain at least one (1) work eligible individual, and penalties for failure to participate in work activities. The positive incentives include exclusion of the earned income of dependent children who are full-time students; disregard of assets and resources; exclusion of all educational loans, grants, and scholarships; and increased earned income disregards so that a family remains eligible for welfare assistance until their gross income exceeds 185% of the federal poverty guideline (FPG) or their net earned income exceeds 48% of the FPG by household size (Note: Hawaii's FPG is legislatively capped at the FPG for 2006).
2.0 PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION
The State Department of Human Services (DHS)
DHS is the single state agency responsible for administering the TANF program in Hawaii, in accordance with Title IV-A of the Social Security Act, as amended by the PRWORA and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA), and all other applicable federal laws and regulations and provisions of this State Plan.