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6 Section 2 - TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES (TANF)

TANF Needy Family describes a population that may be served using TANF funds. TANF services are available to families with dependent children under the age of 18 living in the home.

Family Employment Program (FEP) The Family Employment Program is the TANF funded cash assistance program in Utah. FEP offers a temporary support system allowing time to address family barriers. The long- term solution for most families is employment. Successful efforts to assist families toward financial independence are based on an understanding of the social, emotional and economic factors that affect the family.

The Utah Legislature established a 36-month state lifetime limit on January 1, 1997 for Utah's TANF cash assistance participants. The Family Employment Program is based on Utah's long experience with improving services for unemployed and underemployed families through continued welfare reform initiatives. The purpose of FEP is to offer unemployed and underemployed single parents and two-parent families opportunities to increase family income through employment, and child support or social security disability when appropriate. Cash assistance for two parent families where neither parent is incapacitated is funded using state funds.

Utah continues to contract with the University of Utah's Social Research Institute to provide data and survey information depicting basic demographics, family histories (including childhood adversity and trauma), employment and educational strengths and barriers, and overall experiences with FEP staff and program components. This data, collected at periodic intervals, tracks differences between the FEP population and other groups such as WIOA participants and the general Utah population. This data is used to track changes in the population over time and to inform program and policy development and implementation. The Social Research Institute assisted in the development of FEP case worker training modules reflecting the challenges and strengths of the FEP customer including trauma-informed approaches, executive functioning skills, motivational interviewing, human development and case management.

In addition, key business measures for operational performance include: the rate of those meeting federally defined participation requirements while receiving assistance and the number of closures due to employment, marriage or other "positive" reasons.

To maintain public trust, it is paramount that FEP is viewed as an effective employment program executed with integrity. The Internal Audit Division and Program Performance units of DWS are involved in the evaluation of proper dollar distribution and have responsibility in the evaluation of the program's integrity. An audit review tool monitors case accuracy and customer participation indicators. The Investigations, Overpayments, and Collections (IOC) unit investigates alleged fraud and collects overpayments.