Bulletin Boards |Shopping & Classifieds |Calendar |About Us

Front page

Behavior Management

Conflict Resolution

Early Intervention

For Educators

For Families

Internet & Assistive Technology

Recreation & Sports

Specific Disabilities

State By State

Transition

Washington Watch

Site Map

CREATIVE USE OF FUNDS FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES CAN EXTEND TO WELFARE MONEY

March 12, 2000

NEW YORK -- For many families in poverty, the Clinton Administration's revised welfare rules mean getting and sustaining employment is more important than ever, since the new rules emphasize the "temporary" in welfare's official title: "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families." But one aspect of the new rules that has gotten less attention may prove particularly beneficial to children and adults with disabilities, according to Eileen Sweeney, director of the State Low Income Initiatives Project at Washington, D.C.'s Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Sweeney issued a call during the recent Conference on Poverty and Disability for states to use the new flexibility in the rules to apply TANF funds to services for people with disabilities. The conference was sponsored by the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, the Reaching Up Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Child Support Enforcement.

POVERTY AND DISABILITY: TWO STRIKES AGAINST? March 12, 2000

"States have the financial resources as well as the legal obligation to make their TANF programs work for parents who are disabled and children who are disabled," Sweeney said. "There is a lot of money out there."

In 1999, there was at least $7 billion in unspent TANF funds available, out of a total of $16 billion allocated by the federal government for that fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. States have more discretionary money now than they did in the early 1990s, because federal TANF money is allocated to the states based on the number of welfare recipients in those states in the early 1990s. Welfare rolls have been shrinking across the country since that time, leaving most states with a surplus. According to budget and policy center, at the end of the federal fiscal year 1999, only five states had spent all of their federal TANF money. Wyoming had 58 percent of its money still available, and Idaho had a 47 percent surplus.

States also have the flexibility to extend this extra money to more families in need. Under new TANF rules drafted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last spring, states may use their funds to serve not only those who are current TANF recipients but also those who qualify as low-income, regardless of whether they ever received assistance under the welfare program. This includes parents who are no longer in the welfare system but are not working or are working in jobs that do not pay enough to meet the families' needs, Sweeney said.

The type of assistance states can provide is also more flexible. For example, depending on the severity of a child's disability, a state can decide to give the family assistance to allow the parent to stay home with the child instead of work. States can consider caring for a child with a disability as meeting the TANF work requirements.

In addition, states can combine TANF funds with money received under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's Child Care Development Fund to pay for child care for preschoolers. Such TANF money can be used to promote inclusive child care settings and other opportunities for low-income children with disabilities. Similarly, TANF money can be used to provide summer care for children with disabilities to enable parents to keep working.

A key role for educators and human services providers, Sweeney said, is to help state welfare agencies understand which parents they need to target and what the barriers are for them to succeed. Determining which families to target first is fairly simple if poverty and disability statistics are examined together, added Deborah Coates, professor of Psychology at the City University of New York and the Institute for Basic Research.

Coates identified nine types of children that are at high risk of having or developing disabilities. In addition to those in poverty, she said newborns in hospitals' intensive care units, children with low birth weights, children born with HIV and those born of alcohol and drug using parents are all prime candidates. In addition, children who are neglected or maltreated by their parents or primary care givers, children of adults with mental retardation and children whose parents have other developmental disabilities are also at high risk of having disabilities, Coates said.

Children of parents with developmental disabilities deserve close scrutiny, she said, because they are often underidentified. Besides some evidence of genetic links between disabilities in parents and their children, Coates said some parents with mental retardation or other disabilities may be reluctant to identify their children as also having disabilities, for fear the children could be taken away from them. In addition, depending on the severity of the parent's disability, it is possible that a child receives inadequate care, which can lead to the development of disabilities, Coates said.8