TANF Recipients as Potential Long-Term Care Workers: An Assessment of the Prospects in the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, and South Carolina

The long-term care industry’s need for workers and TANF recipients’ need for jobs could be mutually beneficial if, indeed, recipients’ characteristics, skills, and circumstances match the requirements, accessibility, and availability of these jobs. This paper analyzes characteristics of long-term care jobs and the individuals who hold them; examines characteristics and circumstances of all single-parent TANF case heads in the four study states, and of those recipients who are or have recently been employed in the long-term care industry; and predicts the likelihood of employment among current TANF recipients. Based on this analysis, we estimate that just over half of those on the TANF caseload in the four study states have the potential to succeed in paraprofessional long-term care jobs.