- Truant kids to cost families state aid, By Jennifer Chambers, September 25, 2012, Detroit News: “Michigan parents whose children don’t attend school will lose welfare cash benefits under a new state policy that takes effect Oct. 1. Starting Monday, the Michigan Department of Human Services will require children ages 6-15 to attend school full time to keep their family eligible for cash benefits. If a child doesn’t, the entire family becomes ineligible. The policy change was prompted by Gov. Rick Snyder, who called earlier this year for a crackdown on truancy and the cycle of crime it creates. It takes effect two days before Michigan’s fall Count Day, when attendance is used to determine 90 percent of a school district’s per-pupil funding from the state. For the 2011-12 school year, 93,408 cases of truancy were reported in Michigan schools, an increase of nearly 10,000 from the previous year, which had 83,491. The policy is expected to affect the vast majority of the state’s 59,000 welfare cash-assistance cases and its 162,655 recipients. The average eligible household in Michigan receives $463 a month from the state…”
- Welfare cases in Ohio tumble, By Kate Giammarise, September 24, 2012, Toledo Blade: “Ohio’s welfare rolls continue to decline sharply, statistics from the state show. Declining participation is part of the reason Ohio will likely avoid a federal penalty of $135 million, but critics charge the state’s most vulnerable children and adults are being denied needed assistance. Statewide in July there were 151,495 adults and children who received assistance through the Ohio Works First Program, also known as TANF, or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. That’s about 75,000 fewer people than the 226,778 who were recipients in January, 2011 — a decline of about one-third in less than two years. The number of people receiving the assistance has declined by thousands of people almost every month since the beginning of last year. In Lucas County, the number of recipients has declined from 12,985 people in January of last year to 9,349 adults and children in August…”
- State welfare roll plummets; needy turn to Maine cities, By Kathryn Skelton, September 23, 2012, Bangor Daily News: “Last winter the state gave Lewiston a heads-up: 337 families were about to lose state welfare benefits. Portland had 237, the second-highest number among all Maine cities, in the same boat. Those families had nearly hit the state’s new 60-month lifetime limit in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, exhausting benefits. They could apply for an extension or turn to the cities for General Assistance. In Lewiston, 75 have asked for city help so far. Two-thirds of those applications are pending. Lewiston has already given out nearly $10,000 in benefits to the 24 families approved…”
Month: September 2012
Census Poverty Reports
- States see more poverty among children, unemployed, By Marisol Bello and Paul Overberg, September 22, 2012, USA Today: “States saw little relief from poverty in the past year, especially among children, the unemployed and those in the lowest income brackets. The latest Census figures show that 17 states had increases in the number of people living in poverty between 2010 and 2011. Only one state, Vermont, showed a decrease; the other 32 states showed no change…”
- Poverty grows in high-income Washington suburbs, By Carol Morello and Annie Gowen, September 21, 2012, Washington Post: “Some mornings they line up before the door is even open. All day long, needy residents stream by the food pantry on Prosperity Avenue in Fairfax County, coming for fresh vegetables, canned goods, milk and eggs. Food for Others sits on a street whose name rings with bounty. But the number of people seeking help there has almost doubled over the past four years, as the number of poor grows. Newly released Census Bureau statistics show that poverty rates rose last year in the Washington suburbs, even as the same data showed that the region is home to seven of the 10 highest-income counties in the United States…”
- Census paints bleak picture as 1 in 5 hit poverty level in Michigan, By Steve Pardo, September 20, 2012, Detroit News: “Incomes are down, food stamp use is up and the effects of the recession are still hammering Michiganians as the poverty rate continues to rise in both urban and suburban areas, new U.S. census data shows. A detailed snapshot of Americans’ finances to be released Thursday by American Community Survey show the state has a long road to recovery. The survey sampled some 3 million households…”
- Milwaukee’s poverty rate stands at 29.4%, By Bill Glauber and Ben Poston, September 19, 2012, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The Great Recession is over, but the hangover remains in Milwaukee, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Milwaukee remained one of America’s 10 most impoverished big cities, with a poverty rate of 29.4% in 2011. The figure was unchanged from a year earlier, signaling that the economic spiral that enveloped the city’s poorest communities in recent years may have hit bottom…”
- Poverty dips in Austin area for first time since recession, By Juan Castillo, September 20, 2012, Austin American-Statesman: “For the first time since 2007, the percentage of people living in poverty in the Austin metro area has dipped. The poverty rate also fell slightly in the City of Austin, but the percentage of children younger than 18 in poverty in the city climbed for a fourth straight year, to 29.1 percent in 2011. The figures are from voluminous data to be released today by the Census Bureau that provide the latest markers on the effects of a weakened economy but suggest that the legacy of the recession may be easing slightly in Austin. The data, however, offer a mixed view. For example, poverty grew nationally and in Texas, which had one of the highest poverty rates among the 50 states…”
Child Welfare and Kinship Care – Ohio
State may allow the families to receive foster-care money, By Rita Price, September 24, 2012, Columbus Dispatch: “For Regene Denton to become the grandparent of her dreams — retired, relaxed, happy to host and spoil the grandkids occasionally — she would have had to allow seven of them to go into foster care. ‘I run into a lot of people who say, ‘You’re crazy,” said Denton, who now has legal custody of four girls and three boys ages 1 to 13 years. She and her husband, Paul, are tired, pressed for money and certain they did the right thing. ‘I guess some people do turn away,’ Mrs. Denton said. ‘We couldn’t.’ As child-welfare agencies in Ohio and throughout the nation work to increase such kinship placements as the preferred alternative to foster care, advocates say the families need more financial support to manage households that double, triple or even quadruple overnight. Thirty states now have kinship-guardian assistance programs that allow the families to receive foster-care money. Ohio is considering joining them…”