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The United States government has developed an assistance program for families that needs cash assistance to help provide for their daily needs. The temporary assistance to needy families program or the TANF program was established in order to help out these types of families by providing cash to them.
The temporary assistance to needy families program is a targeted program for any family that has children under the age of 18. The family must meet certain criteria to be named as "needy" and the government will provide monthly payments to help out the needy caretaker so that they have enough to cover daily living expenses. The assistance that is provided by this program depends upon how many children the family has and varies from $110 a month for one child to $500 or whatever the state maximum is for household expenses.
A number of different factors go into the decision for a family to receive TANF benefits. These factors can include: the inability for one or more of the parents to work or provide for the child, not owning any type of property other than one house, resources for other forms of cash such as savings accounts or investments and income based requirements.
Once it has been determined that the family is eligible to receive benefits under the TANF the family will receive a EBT card where the benefits are uploaded to every month. In order to receive the benefits on an on going basis one or more of the caretakers must engage in an approved work related program. There are various work related programs available for the caretaker to engage in and the time invested in the program can range from 30 hours a week all the way up to 55 hours. Occasionally there are exceptions to the work related requirement in cases where the caretaker cannot participate due to age or disability.
