Which welfare office

Apply for Benefits. Report Abuse. Review Data. DHS Sites. Contact Us. Download the appropriate paper application from the list below and mail it to your local county assistance office.

If you or someone you care for is in need of long-term services and supports but are unsure of where to start when searching for benefits, try the Information Referral Tool.

A short questionnaire will point you toward the help you need based on your needs. Increase access to health care. Develop a skilled workforce that meets the needs of Pennsylvania's business community. Provide universal access to high-quality early childhood education. The treatment of TANF adults who are not engaged in regular employment varies widely among the states, but the treatment still signals the importance of work.

Job search, the next most common work activity after regular employment, was an activity for 5. Work experience, in which recipients work in exchange for their welfare benefits, was an activity for only 3.

But where work experience is used heavily, as in New York City, Ohio, and Wisconsin, it conveys a strong message about the expectation of work and reduces the attractiveness of welfare. Welfare offices tend to convey information about the financial rewards from work in a haphazard manner. Even when workers did explain these important policies, they did not always describe them fully and accurately. Similarly, a recent study by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation MDRC found that workers frequently did not mention the continued availability of food stamp and Medicaid benefits after leaving welfare.

In recognition of these problems, several advocacy groups and welfare agencies have designed attractive and colorful brochures with specific examples of the full range of benefits available to working families. PRAs require workers to be more paternalistic toward welfare recipients. Depending on the state, workers can ask recipients to attend classes on parenting, money management, life skills, family planning and counseling, or substance abuse counseling and treatment.

Workers can also require parents to take their children for regular medical checkups and immunizations, make their children attend school regularly, and refrain from alcohol abuse.

States may also test recipients for the use of controlled substances. Requiring recipients to cooperate with authorities to establish paternity and obtain child support was federal law under AFDC and continues to be under TANF.

To the extent that workers monitor compliance with a PRA and make it clear that noncompliance will be costly to the recipient, PRAs can reduce the attractiveness of welfare and discourage welfare dependency. TANF substantially strengthens the ability of states to enforce their rules on work and personal responsibility.

Federal law now requires states to sanction welfare recipients by reducing the benefits of those who do not meet work requirements and child support obligations. TANF goes further than the former AFDC program by permitting states to increase the severity of sanctions and even end benefits completely, usually after repeated noncompliance with the rules. Changes in food stamp rules have also increased the severity of TANF sanctions because food stamp benefits no longer rise automatically when welfare benefits are cut.

While states decide the amount of the sanctions, the decision to impose or lift a sanction is inevitably at the discretion of the frontline worker, perhaps with oversight by a supervisor. For these reasons, the actual frequency with which sanctions are imposed for a given rule violation varies among states, offices, and individual workers.

General Accounting Office, 5. By far the most common reason for the sanction was noncompliance with work requirements. However, less than 1 percent of TANF families experienced a termination of all cash benefits. The extent to which workers actually monitor compliance with all the items in the PRA varies among offices, which makes the PRA more meaningful in some places than others.

Efforts to change behavior regarding out-of-wedlock childbearing and marriage have been implemented more slowly and with less force than policies to encourage work, perhaps a reflection of divided public opinion on these issues and less clarity about which policies are likely to be effective. A family cap is easy to administer because it requires no action or discretion by the welfare office.

Linking welfare recipients to family planning and pregnancy prevention programs has been far more problematic, however. Public health workers or family planning nurses are on site in only a small minority of welfare offices.

In some offices, welfare workers say they are prohibited from mentioning family planning to their clients. Even where workers are instructed to refer clients to family planning services, they may fail to do so because of personal beliefs, embarrassment, lack of time, or oversight during a crowded application process.

While some workers may discuss marriage with their unmarried clients or try to repair relationships between married couples, few have had training in marital counseling.

Many welfare agencies are trying to broaden the duties of frontline workers. Many states have also trained their workers to involve clients in finding solutions to the problems that keep them on welfare. The welfare officer does not act as an advocate in areas such as grievance, discipline or harassment; nor does the welfare officer offer ongoing counselling. Staff are now referred to Welfare early in their absence and with the possibility of one OHS referral should the absence continue.

As such, anyone called to an appointment is expected to attend. The primary aim in managing sickness absence is to, where possible, facilitate a return to work at the earliest reasonable point.