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Know Your TANF

Helping stakeholders explore TANF data to make policy decisions that better serve low-income families

Executive Summary

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a $16.5 billion annual block grant to states that gives states broad discretion in how to spend their funds as the expenditures meet one of TANF’s four broad purposes.

HHS collects a substantial amount of data and information on state TANF programs. However, policymakers have not been able to take full advantage of this information when making policy decisions because the data are not readily accessible and because of their own limited time and resources.

The Know Your TANF project will explore how stakeholders seek out information on policy issues and how data visualization tools can best be used to inform policymakers about TANF in their state.

This project is developing and testing different components of an interactive Know Your TANF website, including:

  • State profiles
  • State comparisons
  • National TANF Data
  • TANF Policy Basics

Ultimately, this project hopes to allow stakeholders to get information more easily that will help them improve TANF programs and policies in their state.

A project supported by the: HHS Ignite Accelerator

Team Members

Lauren Frohlich (Project Lead), ACF
Peter Germanis, ACF
Rebecca Shwalb, ACF

Milestones

March 2016: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
April 2016: Time in the Accelerator began
June 2016: Developed initial prototype
July 2016: Time in Accelerator ends

Project Sponsor

Susan Golonka, Acting Director, Office of Family Assistance, Administration for Children and Families (ACF)