Abstract

In Safety and Financial Security for Battered Women, Patricia Cole and Sarah M. Buel discuss, with a reliance on anecdotal evidence, family violence and its impact upon the transition from welfare to work under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program established by the 1996 welfare reform. This Briefing Paper highlights many aspects of domestic violence, including its relation to race and poverty, and presents a number of recommendations as to how women in poverty who suffer from domestic abuse should be treated. This paper emphasizes the Family Violence Option which allows states to exempt TANF recipients from workforce participation if such participation would escalate domestic violence, impede escape from domestic violence, or result in sanctions against women as a result of domestic violence. The authors discuss the effectiveness of domestic violence services and make a number of recommendations as to how these services should deal with welfare recipients, including race-consciousness. The authors then discuss several economic supports to enable women suffering from domestic violence to escape those situations, including raising the minimum wage, job training, use of TANF, Welfare-to-Work and Workforce Investment Act funding, and the promotion of support services which are not co-terminal with TANF. These programs must work together in order to help women become both safe and financially secure.

by Patricia Cole and Sarah M. Buel, Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, Vol. VII, No.2, Summer 2000

 

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