TANF child-only cases in California: Barriers to self-sufficiency and well-being Richard Speiglman a , Hana Brown b *, Johannes M. Bos c , Yongmei Li d and Lorena Ortiz e a Child and Family Policy Institute of California, Oakland, CA, USA; b Department of Sociology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA; c American Institutes for Research, San Mateo, CA, USA; d Northern California Institute for Research and Education, San Francisco, CA, USA; e Berkeley Policy Associates, Oakland, California, USA Since the United States implemented Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), or ‘welfare reform,’ the number of assistance cases without an adult receiving aid has risen dramatically. In states like California, these child-only cases now constitute the majority of all TANF cases. Despite this increase, existing research sheds little light on the composition of child-only caseloads and the status of the adults and children in such cases. Drawing on county administrative data and interviews with 143 parents associated with child-only cases in five California counties, this paper identifies both the demographics of the child-only caseload in these sites and the major barriers to employment that parents in sanctioned and timed-out child-only cases face. These include human capital, health, and family issues, in addition to other obstacles. The data suggest that, despite functioning as one administrative entity, CalWORKs, California’s TANF program, has transformed into two separate programs: a welfare-to-work program and a subsistence-level cash assistance program for some members of child-only families. Given this transformation, the paper closes by suggesting a research agenda for future child-only scholarship and argues for policy innova- tions to meet the needs of the expanding child-only caseload. Keywords: TANF; welfare reform; child-only; CalWORKs; employment; poverty; barriers Introduction In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity ReconciliationAct (PRWORA, P.L. 104193). This legislation replaced the country’s longstanding entitlement program for poor families with children, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a block grant to states. ‘Welfare reform’ eliminated individual entitlements to poverty relief, enforced strict work requirements and time limits for welfare recipients, and forced all 50 states to restructure their welfare policies to meet these new requirements. In this process, welfare reform ushered in a programmatic era of ‘welfare-to-work,’requiring able-bodied adults to participate in work or work training activities as a condition of their receipt of cash assistance. *Corresponding author. Email: brownhe@wfu.edu Journal of Children and Poverty Vol. 17, No. 2, September 2011, 139163 ISSN 1079-6126 print/ISSN 1469-9389 online # 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10796126.2011.555391 http://www.tandfonline.com