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THE VIRGINIA INITIATIVE FOR EDUCATION AND WORK PROGRAM (VIEW) TANF MANUAL APPENDIX J

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Understanding Federal Participation – Examples

Whether a client is counted as meeting the federal participation rate for a given month is dependent on the actual hours of participation entered into the ESP module in VaCMS. The following examples are designed to provide, in a general way, an understanding of how the participation rate is calculated in VaCMS. They do not show what should be entered into the ESP module - actual hours of participation are always entered - but do illustrate scenarios under which an individual’s participation might or might not meet levels needed to meet participation. The calculator is available at https://fusion.dss.virginia.gov/bp/BP-Home/TANF-and-VIEW/Training- Documents.

Example 1: Month 1: Ms. A is assigned to job search, a core activity, beginning May 1 through May 31. Ms. A participates in job search for 36 hours in week one, 33 hours in week two, 24 hours in week three, and 39 hours in week four. She returns her completed job search forms, which verify a total of 132 hours completed during the month.

Calculating Participation for Month 1: Calculate the total number of participation hours for the month and divide by the number of days in the month to get a daily average. For Ms. A, divide 132 hours by 31 days to get an average of 4.25 hours per day. Then, multiply the daily average by 7 to get the average actual weekly hours. For Ms. A, 4.25 x 7 equals 29.80 which rounds up to 30. If Ms. A’s information is entered correctly and timely into the ESP module, Ms. A will count toward the participation rate for the month because she met the requirement for participation in a core activity and averaged 30 hours a week of actual participation.

Month 2: The next month, June, Ms. A continues her job search. In week 1, she is in job search for 33 hours. She is in job search in week two for 36 hours. She then gets a job and works for 30 hours each in weeks three and four. Because Ms. A had four consecutive weeks of job search in May, the first week of this month is not a countable activity. (Federal regulations require that job search can be counted for only four consecutive weeks, after which there must be a break of at least a week before additional job search hours can be counted.)

Calculating Actual Participation for Month 2: For Ms. A because more than four consecutive weeks of job search don’t count toward participation, the 33 hours for the first week of job search in Month 2 are not counted. Count only the second week of job search, 36 hours, plus the 60 employment hours to arrive at the total actual participation hours for the month. Divide 96 hours by the 30 days in June to get a daily average of 3.2 hours. Multiply this by 7 for average actual weekly hours of 22.4. Ms. A has not met the overall participation rate requirement of 30 hours, so her participation will not count for this month.

Month 3: In July, Ms. A works 35 hours per week throughout the month. She verifies that she worked a total of 161 hours altogether.

Calculating Actual Participation for Month 3: Divide the total participation hours of 161 by 31, the total days in July, to arrive at the daily average of 5.19 hours. Multiply the daily average by 7 to arrive at 36 for the average weekly actual hours. Because employment is a core activity, and because Ms. A had average weekly actual hours exceeding 30, she met federal participation for the month.

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