T. J. ROYAL
Almost 400 Edgecombe County residents receive money from the state's Work First Family Assistance program to help them take care of needy children.
Work First is North Carolina's program to disburse Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits from the federal government, targeting economically-distressed families in communities.
Edgecombe County's Work First Administrator Isham Spann said that since May, around 100 extra people have entered the program each month.
More people have entered Work First since May because the Edgecombe County Department of Social Services did away with its Total Independence Program (TIP) that month. TIP provided a three-month lump sum cash benefit without families entering into Work First.
Recipients get at least $362 each month to take care of one child, $472 for two children and $544 for three children. Benefits roughly increase $50 per child from that point.
To qualify for Work First's cash assistance, parents or legal guardians must have at least one child under the age of 17 and have less than $3,000 in readily available assets. Recipients are eligible for the assistance for up to two years.
Besides providing cash assistance, the program is also intended to help families find sustainable employment. Many recipients are expected to complete several hours of work, job training and job search activities during the week to continue receiving Work First cash benefits.
In July, out of the county's 70 cash recipients with weekly work activity requirements, only 13 completed their assigned hours.
Spann said that when people do not meet their activity requirements, their monthly payments are reduced or eventually cancelled.
To chart the program's success, former Work First recipients are checked at six and 12 month intervals to see if they have kept employment, Spann said.
Statewide, Spann said 68 percent of people have kept employment six months after leaving Work First assistance. The federal goal is 60 percent.
In July, three people in the Work First program entered paid employment.
"Work First has worked, in trying to accomplish the goals that the feds set for us," Spann said.
But for the majority of the state's Work First recipients, Spann said they do not have any work requirements.
Nearly half of Edgecombe's recipients, 192 of them, do not have such requirements. Out of those, 187 are "child only" cases, where a child is in the care of a guardian and still receives Work First cash assistance.
With or without work requirements, Spann said that Work First is working because of the number of people who have come off public assistance in the past 13 years.
Spann said that since the program started in 1995, its caseload in the county has dropped from 1,875 down to July's 391.
"Work First is working. I think it's one of the better programs that DSS has to offer, definitely," Spann said.
And overall, North Carolina has fewer people on TANF assistance compared to neighboring states.
From October 2006 through September 2007, more than 273,000 people received TANF assistance in the state.
Virginia and Tennessee had significantly more TANF recipients over the same period. Out of 7.1 million people, Virginia had 380,000 TANF recipients. More than 830,000 people received TANF assistance in Tennessee, out of 5.7 million people.
And even though North Carolina is the 11th most populous state, with around 8 million people, it ranked just 19th in the number of people receiving TANF assistance.
Although Work First is designed to help people stay off public assistance, Department of Social Services Director Marva Scott does not know if the program will have much impact on the county's 11 percent unemployment rate.
One reason is because many of the county's unemployed do not meet Work First's criteria, she said.
But, she added, "it's going to help some of the folks who are not employed be employed" and help them have the income to take care of their families.
Spann said that even if Work First appears to be a handout, "I think people want to be able to take care of themselves.
"Sometimes, you're in a particular situation where you need to get from point A to point B, and you need to take this route to get there."
