Less than Ideal

As the clock on the receipt of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits continues to tick, TANF departments across the United States are being expected to address the needs of their harder to serve populations, including domestic violence victims and survivors. This article documents the experiences and learnings from a large TANF office in Chicago where a pilot program was initiated 2 years ago to provide on-site domestic violence services to TANF participants. Despite considerable efforts, most TANF caseworkers resisted referring women for services, forcing the project to devise alternative means of gaining access to the women in the TANF office. Of the women who came to at least one follow-up session with the domestic violence advocates, 57% have been placed in work activities, demonstrating successful outcomes and indicating that it is critically important to solve the organizational issues raised by the demonstration project.