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The General Accounting Office (GAO) examined progress in meeting work-focused goals of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The following issues were considered: (1) states' progress in implementing TANF; (2) the status of families who have left welfare; (3) the characteristics of adults currently receiving TANF; (4) states' strategies for helping hard-to-employ recipients find jobs; and (5) emerging issues as welfare reform evolves. The analysis established that, as states implemented welfare reform amid strong economic growth, welfare caseloads dropped by 50%. Although most adults in former welfare families were employed at some time after leaving welfare, they were often working at low-wage jobs. States were attempting to help hard-to-employ recipients find jobs through strategies such as improving and expanding case management and providing services targeted toward preparing hard-to-employ individuals for work. Most TANF recipients were not engaged in work activities in part because many have characteristics that make it difficult for them to get and keep jobs. The six states visited by GAO staff have modified their "work first" programs to better serve hard-to-employ clients. It was recommended that states emphasize and enhance their work-based welfare-to-work strategies and foster and facilitate improved management and service delivery approaches. (MN)

GAO's survey of open foster care cases in California and Illinois found that caregivers both in kinship care (in which foster children are placed with relatives) and in other foster care settings demonstrated good parenting skills. There is more continuity in the lives of children in kinship care before and after they enter foster care than there is in other foster children's lives. GAO found no consistent relationship between kinship care and permanency goals (such as adoption or guardianship) or the time foster children had spent in the child welfare system. However, more than 80 percent of the children in kinship care in each state had been in care longer than the maximum period of time generally allowed by the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 before which a state would be required to initiate procedures to terminate parental rights. Differences in permanency goals and time in foster care may depend more on state policies and practices than on foster care setting. Both states are raising standards for kinship caregivers and widening the pool of potential kinship caregivers; they have taken initiatives either to make homes with relatives a viable permanency option or to facilitate permanency planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]