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0970-0309 TANF Data Report; SSP-MOE Data Report

Subject; Collecting the Number of Deemed Core Hours using the Data Elements “Additional Work Activities Permitted Under Waiver Demonstration” and “Required Hours of Work Under Waiver Demonstration”

Justification: Under §§ 261.31 and 261.32 of the TANF interim final rule, published on June 29, 2006, if a work-eligible individual participates in work experience or a community service program for the maximum number of hours per week that a State may require under the applicable Federal or State minimum wage law, but falls short of the hours needed to meet the “core” hours requirement, we will “deem” the individual to have participated in the remaining core hours needed. We refer to these remaining hours as “deemed core hours.” This policy is limited to States that combine the value of TANF and food stamp benefit amounts when calculating the maximum hours of participation permitted based on the applicable minimum wage. A State can include the value of the food stamp allotment by adopting the mini-Simplified Food Stamp Program (mini-SFSP) option. As this policy was one of the last policy decisions made prior to issuing the Interim Final rule, we did not fully consider the data reporting requirements needed to capture this information. In order to give States the full benefit of this policy, we are proposing to collect the number of deemed core hours for the overall work participation rate, and the number of deemed core hours for the two-parent work participation rates in the data elements “Additional Work Activities Permitted Under Waiver Demonstration” and “Required Hours of Work Under Waiver Demonstration” respectively. These data elements are free and available for all States to use, except Tennessee, which does not plan to deem core hours until after its waiver expires on June 30, 2007. When we publish the Final Rule we will incorporate two new data elements to collect this information along with whatever other changes are required and no longer have data elements related to the 1115 waivers as they will have expired.