Lewin Group

This issue brief provides an in-depth analysis of a sample of welfare recipients in Colorado who left welfare but were not working in 2008. This study is part of a five-year evaluation of Colorado’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program called Colorado Works that The Lewin Group and its partners, the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center, the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Policy Studies, and Capital Research Corporation, are conducting for the Colorado Department of Human Services. (Author summary)

This report examines three related topics affecting participation and engagement in the Colorado Works program. They are: (1) Work participation activities and strategies; (2) Diversion policies among Colorado’s counties; and (3) Sanctioning practices observed in Colorado.

The Department of Labor (DOL) funded this study to explore the relationship between nonmonetary eligibility policies and practices and program outcomes, such as recipiency and benefit duration. This report provides an examination of the factors that appear to affect program outcomes in eight states: Four “high recipiency” states (Delaware, Maine, Pennsylvania, Washington) and four “low recipiency” ones (Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah).

Since 1993, welfare recipients have been leaving the welfare rolls for work in record numbers. From January 1993 to January 1998, welfare caseloads declined by 33 percent nationally, and several studies have estimated that over half of the adults who have left welfare have entered the labor market.⁽¹⁾ The inflow of welfare recipients into the labor market can be attributed to two basic factors: welfare reform and the strong economy.

There currently is limited information on what state vital registration systems collect with respect to marriage and divorce. Each state governs the collection of information on marriages and divorces that occur within its jurisdiction. Although the federal government issues guidelines and recommendations, states determine what information they will collect from local areas (e.g., city and county clerks, courts) on marrying and divorcing couples, how it is collected, and how it is stored. How states operationalize these tasks has implications for data use.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), contracted with The Lewin Group and its subcontractor, The Urban Institute, to explore options for the collection of marriage and divorce statistics at the national, state and local levels. The project explored information collected through national surveys as well as information that states and local entities, such as courts and county clerks, collect through their vital records systems.

Following enactment of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in August 1996, the state of Colorado implemented its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, Colorado Works. PRWORA repealed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, a federal entitlement to assistance, and replaced it with the TANF program.

In Colorado, county human service and social service departments provide a range of programs for adults, youth and relative caretakers to help stabilize families, increase self-sufficiency, and prevent the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency.  This report provides an overview of services offered in Colorado.  The report also highlights three broad areas of innovative family-related and prevention services, including collaborations with child welfare and other efforts to prevent out-of-home placements, programs designed to increase child well-being through parental involveme

This report examines strategies Colorado counties were using to serve the hard-to-employ TANF population in 2005, highlighting promising approaches that counties might choose to adopt and providing  the state with useful information that can help guide future policy choices.

One of the most controversial features of the 1990s welfare reforms was the imposition of time limits on benefit receipt. Time limits became a central feature of federal policy in the landmark 1996 welfare law, which created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. The law prohibits states from using federal TANF funds to assist most families for more than 60 months. Under contract to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S.