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• Temporary Family Assistance is the name for the cash assistance program for basic and special needs which are paid to recipients of Jobs First. This replaced what was known as the AFDC program.
• Previous welfare programs provided little incentive to find employment as most earnings (after some small disregards) were deducted from the cash benefit. Recipients were not allowed to have or accumulate any savings to plan for future emergencies. Jobs First was designed to reward work by providing incentives to self-support. The program is intended to be transitional assistance and to supply individuals with the tools they need to become self-supporting within twenty-one months.
• Under Jobs First, recipients who get a job are allowed to keep all earnings up to the Federal Poverty Level as well as their cash assistance for the remainder of the 21 months. They are also eligible to receive medical assistance, child care and food stamp assistance.
• Child support payments from an absent parent are sent directly to recipients and all but $50 is counted as income to calculate the amount of their public assistance grant.
• To provide for future emergencies, recipients are allowed to have up to $3000 in a bank account. All life insurance policies and pension plans are excluded, and bonds are excluded as long as the combined face value of all bonds owned by the assistance unit are less than $1,000.
• Understanding the need to have reliable transportation for work, one non-luxury car, with an equity value up to $9500, is excluded from consideration in determining eligibility for assistance.
• Other program simplifications have been instituted to allow workers to concentrate their efforts on helping recipients to become employed and eventually self-supporting.