Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Work Outcomes Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Administration for Children and Families</SUBAGY> <CFR>45 CFR Part 265</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0970-AD04</RIN> <SUBJECT>Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Work Outcomes Measures</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Family Assistance (OFA), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This interim final rule modifies ACF regulations in order to implement the statutory changes enacted by section 304 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA) related to the reporting of work outcomes under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. ACF is promulgating this rule as an interim final rule to ensure states and territories have sufficient time to comply with data collection for fiscal year 2025. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This interim final rule (IFR) is effective on October 1, 2024. Comments on this IFR must be received on or before December 26, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> ACF encourages the public to submit comments electronically to ensure they are received in a timely manner. You may submit comments, identified by Regulatory Information Number (RIN) 0970-AD04, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name and RIN (0970-AD04) for this rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,including any personal information provided.</E> We will not consider comments received beyond the 180-day comment period in modifying the interim final rule. You may find the following suggestions helpful for preparing your comments: • Be specific; • Address only issues raised by the rulemaking in the interim final rule and the information collections, not the changes to the statute itself; • Explain reasons for any objections or recommended changes; • Propose appropriate alternatives; and • Reference the specific section of the interim final rule being addressed. You can obtain copies of the proposed collection of information and submit comments by emailing <E T="03">infocollection@acf.hhs.gov.</E> Identify all requests by the title of the information collection. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lauren Frohlich, TANF Data Division, Office of Family Assistance, ACF, at <E T="03">TANFdata@acf.hhs.gov</E> or 202-401-9275. Deaf and hard of hearing individuals may call 202-401-9275 through their chosen relay service or 711 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern Time. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Themes From Consultation and Research</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Workforce System Alignment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Equity</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Definition of Exit</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Work Outcomes Data Sources</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Federal Matching for Calculating Work Outcomes of TANF Exiters</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. State-Level Matching for the Supplemental Work Outcomes Report</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Secondary School Diploma or its Recognized Equivalent Attainment Rate</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Justification for Interim Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Collection of Information Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Reports</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Request for Feedback</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Review and Approval of the Information Collection</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Review and Analysis</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023, Public Law 118-5, requires each state, in consultation with the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to collect and report information relating to work outcomes measures for work-eligible individuals in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program. Section 304 of the legislation requires HHS to issue regulations implementing these new requirements. It states, “in order to ensure nationwide comparability of data, the Secretary, after consultation with the Secretary of Labor and with States, shall issue regulations governing the reporting of performance indicators under this subsection.” We are updating the existing TANF data regulations (45 CFR part 265, Data Collection and Reporting Requirements) to reflect the new reporting requirements. “Each state . . . shall collect and submit to the Secretary the information necessary for each indicator. . . .” Section 304. “State” is defined to mean “the 50 States of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa.” 42 U.S.C. 619 (5). States and territories must begin reporting on those requirements in fiscal year (FY) 2025. For the remainder of the preamble, we will use the term “states” to refer to states and territories. These provisions do not apply to Tribal TANF programs. Section 304 of the FRA specifies that to ensure nationwide comparability of data, all states must collect and submit “the information necessary” to determine four indicators of performance. These are: • Employment Rate—2nd Quarter After Exit: The percentage of individuals who were work-eligible individuals as of the time of exit from the program, who are in unsubsidized employment during the second quarter after the exit; • Employment Retention Rate—4th Quarter After Exit: The percentage of individuals who were work-eligible individuals as of the time of exit from the program who were in unsubsidized employment in the second quarter after the exit, who are also in unsubsidized employment during the fourth quarter after the exit; • Median Earnings—2nd Quarter After Exit: The median earnings of individuals who were work-eligible individuals as of the time of exit from the program, who are in unsubsidized employment during the second quarter after the exit; and • Secondary School Diploma or its Recognized Equivalent Attainment Rate: The percentage of individuals who have not attained 24 years of age, are attending high school or enrolled in an equivalency program, and are work-eligible individuals or were work-eligible individuals as of the time of exit from the program, who obtain a high school degree or its recognized equivalent while receiving assistance under the state program funded under this part or within one year after the exit. Further, the statute required HHS to consult with states and the Department of Labor (DOL) before issuing regulations. In response, HHS engaged in consultation including issuing a Request for Information (RFI) (88 FR 82902, November 27, 2023) providing states and the general public with an opportunity to provide input, hosted listening sessions with state TANF leadership and data leads, held meetings with the DOL and the Department of Education (ED), and had discussions with practitioners and researchers as part of the Workforce IT Support Center Steering Committee and the National Association of Welfare Research Statistics annual conference. Through these discussions, we identified promising practices and recommendations for policy options. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Themes From Consultation and Research</HD> Written responses to ACF's RFI included responses from state TANF agencies and social services departments, national associations that represent state and county human services agencies, and a small number of advocacy groups. The use of “state” in the summary of comments below refers to both states who responded directly and associations who collected comments and responded on behalf of member states. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Workforce System Alignment</HD> TANF's new statutory work outcomes measures are similar to the performance measures established by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 (WIOA). DOL and ED shared lessons learned from implementing WIOA that inform our implementation of TANF's work outcomes measures, such as factors impacting the implementation timeline and data quality across sources. States also shared their experiences with WIOA and several respondents encouraged ACF—in partnership with DOL—to support opportunities for state workforce and human services agencies to engage in peer learning and information sharing around the new measures. They requested ACF, where possible, foster the alignment through shared definitions, data sources, and report timeframes. They noted that supporting alignment with WIOA outcome reporting strengthens collaboration between TANF and the broader workforce system, which will yield operational efficiencies across programs, identification of promising practices, a more client-centered culture, and improved service delivery. We appreciate the time and attention that respondents gave to reviewing the RFI and preparing their comments. This IFR seeks to make the new reporting requirements as useful as possible for program improvement, considers the challenges of implementation, and provides flexibility for states when possible. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Equity</HD> The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) is committed to improving the equitable administration of all OFA programs for the children and families we serve. In the RFI, we asked in what ways equity should be considered when implementing work outcome measures. Respondents expressed gratitude for our consideration of equity in the implementation of the work outcomes measures. All noted the advantages of co ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 56k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━