General Information

The TANF data set is comprised of persons/cases considered TANF. It does NOT contain persons/cases that are suspended, food only, or are two parent cases. These cases will be included in the NON-TANF file once work on that file is complete. These persons/cases are still included in the current month and preliminary month files.

The TANF client level data set is considerably larger than its predecessor. It contains a wealth of information so that counties and providers can better manage their caseloads in accordance with TANF work participation rate requirements. The TANF data set now contains the provider ID and location number assigned to each case for the report month. In the process of doing this, we did drop the counselor name.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) limits the number of hours participants can be in unpaid work experience, CWEP or community service projects. Hours are calculated by adding the cash and food amounts for the month and dividing by state minimum wage. The TANF work participation file provides cash and food amounts along with hours in each of the above mentioned activities.

The Teen Parent data set contains TANF teen applicants or teen spouses of applicants who are Work Eligible Individuals (WEIs) with grade levels less than 12 and verified MAXIS school status of full-time, half-time or less than half-time who have zero high school or GED hours recorded in the data warehouse for the report month. Applicants are listed by servicing county as recorded on the latest MFIP issuance transaction for the report month. Sanction information is included in the data sets. Counties/providers should use this report to identify teen parents for which no hours have been reported. Providers have until the end of the month in which this report is released to secure and record hours in WF1. Hennepin County providers have a different time frame for hour collection and recording in TEAMS.

The Current Month FSS Participants data set can be used by ES Providers to reconcile FSS records. FSS eligibility is derived from MAXIS data, specifically ES status codes. The ES status codes are derived by background, based on various STAT codes. These are loaded onto the ES Status field on EMPS only when an ELIG approval is done. The Current Month FSS Participants data set identifies those participants who have been determined to be FSS and are pulled out of the TANF WPR.

The report contains a field, "EmploymentExemptStat", that identifies the ES status code assigned to a participant. It is important to note that there may be more than one reason a participant could be eligible for FSS, however when choosing which code of multiple possibilities to assign, MAXIS uses a hierarchy:

PRE-60 Month Hierarchy

POST-60 Month Hierarchy

Code	Description	Code	Description
27	Special Medical Criteria (UP)	12	Special Medical Criteria
34	Newly Arrived Immigrant(UP)	19	Newly Arrived Immigrant
33	SSI / FSDI Pending (UP)	18	SSI / RSDI Pending
28	IQ Tested less than 80 (UP)	13	IQ Test less than 80
29	Learning Disabled (UP)	14	Learning Disabled
30	Mentally Ill (UP)	15	Mentally Ill
31	Mentally Retarded (UP)	16	Mentally Retarded
32	Unemployable (UP)	17	Unemployable
23	Ill / Incap more than 60 Days (UP)	07	Ill / Incap more than 30 days
24	Care of Ill / Incap Fam Memb (UP)	08	Care of Ill / Incap Fam Member
26	Family Violence Waiver	11	Family Violence Waiver

This data set should be used to reconcile who has been identified as FSS. If a participant is receiving FSS services but it not on the report, contact the financial worker to determine the reason. Keep in mind, the ES status codes are only updated when a new approval has been made.

The Preliminary Month Data Set was changed as of November 2008 release. Three (3) additional fields were added near the end of the data set. They were added to assist in determining whether or not minor parents in HS/GED activities will meet the TANF participation rate at the end of the report month. The three new fields of "EducationLevel", "DRA_Relationship", and "SumMAXIS_DESSchoolMoHrs" were added and placed between the "PrelimDESHours_NoWaiv" and the "AgencyID" field. The Prelim data dictionary and file layout tab were also updated to reflect these changes and provides a description of the fields.

To use the added features to determine WPR compliance for teen head of households, the "EducationLevel" field must be less than 12; "DRA_Relationship" field must be a '1' or '2'; and the "SumMAXIS_DESSchoolMoHrs" field must be greater than or = to '3'.

The Job Search Hours Data Set is designed to keep you updated on the JS changes that took place effective with the October '08 TANF data set. A corresponding data dictionary has been added.

The purpose of this data set is to provide Employment Service Providers with information about job search hour data. This will assist users to help manage the employment plan better and understand the work hours required, hours recorded/tracked in WF1/TEAMS, hours reported by DHS in the TANF WPR federal report as job search or other hours, and a balance of job search hours available for federal reporting in the rolling 12 month period.

The TANF Work Participation Rate Report by County and the TANF Participation Rate Report by Employment Service Provider (linked below) contain three columns of information. The left column contains the raw TANF participation rate, it is calculated by dividing the denominator into the numerator. Not more than 30% of the numerator cases may be the numerator due to federally-countable vocational education activity or teen head-of-household or married teens completing high school or GED or education directly related to employment averaging 20 hours or more per week. The right column contains the final TANF participation rate for the report month after removing excess cases from the numerator that exceed the 30 percent federal limit.

Please remember that the County TANF Work Participation Rate Report has been revised to exclude all applicable FSS cases and that it may take several months for FSS implementation results to be achieved. We've added an additional Excel document to this portion called "Listing of Employment Services Providers". It contains a numerical listing of location ids for providers that can be used as a resource for the ES Provider WPR.

We have received many inquiries regarding how the 30 percent limit is used in calculating the TANF work participation rate (WPR). The TANF WPR report, either county or provider model, contains three segments with these headings: Before Application of 30 percent Limit (left); Cases Subjected to 30% Limit (center); and After Application of 30 percent Limit (right).

Olmsted County’s March 2008 WPR is used in the following example. Please refer to the March 2008 County TANF WPR report. It was determined that Olmsted initially had 67 cases that met the TANF requirements to be counted in the numerator.

There are 31 cases included in the numerator due to Voc. Ed or Teens in HS/GED. The 31 cases represent 46.3 percent of the total numerator cases. This leaves 36 cases that are not subject to the 30 percent limit.

In order to determine how many cases need to be removed from the original numerator to get under the 30 percent limit, 36 is divided by (.7).
This results in a new numerator of 51.42857 …
Truncate this number to get a whole number of 51. Now the difference between the new numerator (51) and the original one (67) is 16.
So, 16 of the 31 cases subject to the 30% limit were removed from the original numerator. Now one can divide the new numerator by the denominator in the left segment and reach the revised WPR.
The same logic is applied to each provider in the Provider TANF WPR report.