Difficulties After Leaving TANF: Inner-City Women Talk About Reasons for Returning to Welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families‪)‬

As state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs have implemented five-year time limits and other restrictions on welfare use, the importance of fostering sustainable welfare exits has grown. This task is most daunting in large inner cities, in which the debilitating effects of concentrated poverty often militate against economic mobility (Jargowsky, 1997; Wilson, 1996). Although most states have initiated program evaluations to ascertain basic outcomes for people who leave TANF, less is known about the experiences of inner-city leavers in post-TANF welfare environments. Also, research has not focused on the reasons why one-fifth to one-third of TANF leavers return to welfare within one year (Acs & Loprest, 2001; Loprest, 1999). Based on focus groups conducted in five high-poverty neighborhoods in Chicago, this article explores the problems faced and strengths used by women who are poor as they attempted to achieve self-sufficiency after leaving TANF. Because our sample included primarily women who left but then returned to TANF, study findings provide unique perspectives on why TANF exits often fail in poor inner-city areas. Such unsuccessful results often have been overlooked, because early studies have focused on average outcomes (Moffitt & Roff, 2000). Study participants' observations about their experiences with public bureaucracies also provide valuable information about how program implementation issues can powerfully affect success after leaving TANF.