Personal Responsibility And Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act

The Personal Responsibility Work and Opportunity Act was a bill that was passed into law in 1996. This law created a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The changes in the TANF program were significantly different than the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. The TANF program became a part of the national welfare reform which puts a stop to women with children being entitled to an endless amount of cash benefits. Welfare reform was part of President Bill Clinton and his campaign’s “promise to end welfare as we know it” (Gilbert and Terrell 2013 p.74). The sponsor of this bill was a Republican representative for Ohio’s 12th Congressional district and his name was John Kasich (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/104/hr3734).

Girls who gave birth while still in high school only 38% of them graduate. The reason the rest of them drop out is since they are forced to work in order to support their child. Nearly all cannot manage parenthood, school, work without family or friends help. With teenage mothers “Their children showed reduced educational attainment, had more emotional and behavioral problems, were at increased risk of maltreatment or harm, and showed higher rates of illness, accidents and injuries.” (Dennison P. 6) Just in the state of Texas, in 2012, there were 44 births per 1,000 girls’ state wide. Nationwide 50% of pregnancies are accidental in 2006. Teen parents also are a financial load to society, According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, in 2004, all together taxpayers paid more than eight billion dollars to help support health cares designed to help the 420,000 teenage mothers who gave birth in that year. “results from economic analyses suggest that implementing evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs, expanding access to Medicaid family planning services, and utilizing mass media campaigns to promote safe sex may reduce teen pregnancy and save taxpayer dollars.” (Without the help of drugs like Plan B or any type of birth control, a large amount of teenage girls will become unplanned mothers, making more of a financial burden to society.

AB 12 lets foster teenagers stay in foster care until they are 21 years old. Often, when foster youth turn 18, their foster parents kick them of the home out due to no longer receiving payment, and the youth have no place to go. With the implementation of AB 12, they can choose to stay in a foster home and the foster parent continues to get a stipend to help pay for the foster teens expenses. The foster teenager also has the option to move out of the foster home and get a monthly stipend that goes directly to them. This stipend is used to help pay for expenses such as rent, utilities, food, etc. This all sounds great, but I don’t feel that it is working for foster teenagers. The concept is good, but definitely needs to be reformed and restructured. To receive AB 12 funding, a foster teenager still has to meet with a county social worker monthly and meet certain criteria which include going to school, working, or looking for work. They can lose AB 12 funding if they do not meet these qualifications. Often, it is hard for the youth to meet these qualifications because they have not learned the necessary skills to effective apply and hold a job or learn how to navigate the college university system to enroll in school. What is happening is that the youth are not qualifying for AB 12 and if they do they are so used to the money that when they turn 21 and lose the AB 12 funding, they end up not

Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 Before this bill was signed into law the Federal Government provided about $70 million per year to conduct programs for adolescents leaving foster care that are designed to help them establish independent living. Research and numerous reports from States conducting these programs indicate that adolescents leaving foster care do not fare well. As compared with other adolescents and young adults their age, they are more likely to quit school, to be unemployed, to be on welfare, to have mental health problems, to be parents outside marriage, to be arrested, to be homeless, and to be the victims of violence and other crimes (Cook, 1991). The need for special help for youths ages 18 to 21

For many teenagers, their 18th birthday is an exciting time in their lives. They are finally becoming a legal adult, and are free from the rules and restrictions created under their parents. But not all teens feel the same joy about this coming of age. For the hundreds of thousands of children living in foster care in the United States, this new found freedom brings anxiety and fear. Where will they live after turning 18? How will they get the medications they may need? How will they find a job with little to no experience? How will they put themselves through school? Aging out of foster care is a serious issue among America’s youth. Every year, 20,000 children will age out with nowhere to go, being expected to be able to survive on their

Teenage pregnancy is linked to many critical social issues, such as poverty, lack of education, out-of-wedlock births, health issues, education, child welfare, and overall child well-being. These issues have been a social problem for decades, but it wasn’t until recent years when it emerged from being social invisibility to becoming an urgent crisis. “In 1995, in his State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton singled out teenage

Among those: job prospects, family, church, friends, rent and the cost of moving. According to Gardner, Policy experts say California’s large rolls are the byproduct of numerous factors: sheer size, tough job market and sheer numbers of single-parent households, among them. The state has nearly 30 percent of the nation’s one-parent welfare families. One major — and cash consuming — difference is California refuses to push out children even if the parents fail to fulfill requirements. Gardner states California provides unconditional support for children even if parents fail to comply with rules and regulations and according to Caroline Danielson, a policy analyst who tracks welfare issues for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, said the unconditional support for children is “a pretty rare policy in the country as a whole.” While few want to toss children out in the street, there are a number of conservative California lawmakers who believe hard choices must be made given the tough fiscal times for taxpayers, Arguing that California supports dependency on governmental help and handing out cash that it does not have. Furthermore, Gardner states recipient my qualify for Grants even if they go to work depending on how much the job pays. However, from the states point of view , this policy offers recipients incentives to re-enter the work force and move to self sufficiency

The teenagers need to be set on a path where they can live on their own. The children were taken out of their homes in the first place because they lived in a harsh environment of abuse or neglect, only to potentially be thrown into another uncaring foster family then be introduced to the cold hearted reality of life once they turn 18. Not only do they need to have the stability to live on their own and job, they also should receive help to receive health insurance and other government fundings that will help them. CAPTA should have requirements that will help the children that were placed in foster care with long-term goals and plans. It should not stop at when the children turn 18 years old. If the policy insists that the children will receive help until they are the age of 18, then the foster care system should be funded enough to have workers who will help the older children start a savings that will be from a job that they start years before they have to leave. Also the foster care system should not force the 18 year olds to leave if they do not have a proper place to

for most of the child welfare system’s history, most states did little to prepare the children in their custody for life in the real world. The federal government offered no financial help to the states to assist emancipating youth until 1986, when for the first time, Congress passed a law authorizing limited “independent living” efforts. Over the next fifteen years, about two-thirds of older youth in foster care received some sort of assistance in building independent living skills, ranging from a thirty minute course on resume writing to an eight-week course in household management. The 1986 law was seriously flawed because it only paid for skill-building services to youth between the ages of sixteen and

Although there is little research over this specific population there is one organization which has focused their knowledge to this topic: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy . This organization states that “…studies show that certain subgroups of youth in child welfare may be at greater risk for pregnancy than others, including those who experienced sexual abuse, those with frequent placement changes, those reporting peers with deviant behaviors, youth in kinship care, and those leaving supervised care by age 18 (as opposed to 21).4,6,7.” (Ng & Kaye, 2013). This statement symbolizes the persistence group homes specified for this population are needed and how important they are to the child welfare system. Although many do not know, “By age 19, 46% of teen girls in foster care who have been pregnant have had a subsequent pregnancy, compared to 29% of their peers outside the system.” (Ng & Kaye, 2013). Other criteria that is addressed and previous researchers have studied more on is higher education for these adolescent mothers. Many have the ability and are bright enough to pursue further education other than high school. If these mothers are capable of pursuing further then they will be able to pursue a future from their own children. According to the Midwest study “At age 24, having a child reduced a woman’s odds of being employed by 30%—even after holding educational attainment constant.13” (Barth, Bright, Shaw & Svoboda, 2012). This states that adolescent mothers may lose their ability to attain further education and could be perceived as a downfall to providing a stable life for their children. Saying this, providing a stable home where these adolescents are able to pursue knowledge on sex education can reduce the rate of children in the child welfare system as

A descriptive study by Okpych (2015) began to characterize the aging out population from the perspective of service provision and associated youth and state characteristics, based on the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) service data (FY2011 and FY2012). Among 131,204 service eligible youth, only 50.2% received CFCIP services; of the 13 CFCIP services examined, the top six most frequently received services (>20% of eligible youth aged 18 or older) were family support/marriage education, budget and financial management, health education and risk prevention, housing education and home management, career preparation, and postsecondary education support; more female youth received services than male youth; African American youth overall received less services than other ethnic groups. Further, continuous measures of service receipt (e.g., average number of service type received) indicated that youth only received on average 4-5 services out of the 13 possible service types. There were between-state differences in the proportion of foster care youth reported to be receiving CFCIP services, with over 62% of the states serving at least half of eligible youth, and the remaining 38% states serving less than half of eligible youth. Other regional differences in the offering of service type and service

Leaving children to grow up in the foster care system is not a good placement option as there is a substantial amount of research about the negative impact it has on children. Some recent findings of a study reported that 25 percent of youth who aged out of care did not obtain high school diploma or GED, only 50 percent were currently employed, and three quarters of the males and more than half of the females had ever been arrested (Courtney et al. 2007). Another study examining youth in California, Minnesota, and North Carolina found these employment patterns persist for many at age 24, with only a small portion of youth (25 percent in California, 22 percent in Minnesota, 16 percent in North Carolina) managing to maintain consistent connections to the labor market and earn as much as their peers nationally (Macomber et al. 2008).

Teenage mothers played a role in the abusing of government supports, and there are so much more difference factors that con

The article “Young, Pregnant, and Underinsured: Growing Demand Calls for Cost-Effective Collaboration between Health and Social Workers” is by Robin Rosell; Megan K. Scarborough and Carol M. Lewis. This article advocates the importance of prenatal care in teen pregnancy. The article introduces a program called Tandem that provides sufficient education, mental and physical health for both the mother and child. The article goes on to explain with the tandem program teen mothers are receiving care and support while being able to get an education and raise a child. Also, the dropout rate will decrease, as a teen mother will be given support and resources for her and the child. This is a relevant source for my topic because school social workers

Then, following connecting the causes and responses to teenage pregnancy and parenthood, the validity and effectiveness of the policy responses will be assessed. Successes and shortcomings will be considered, along with suggestions as to what policy and structural changes would be more advantageous. Finally, this paper will conclude that teen pregnancy is a structural issue not individual one, if it can even be considered an issue at all. Policy changes alone will not be sufficient, as social and economic disadvantage does not go away if one doesn’t get pregnant. Instead, it involves targeting societal values at their root, which is not socially or economically as simple as just introducing reports and growing a social panic largely against those who already face many obstacles.