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DCF budget briefing: TANF, SNAP, child care, LEAP, rehab services and child support contracting
Summary
Secretary Laura Howard summarized DCF’s major benefit programs, staffing and funding mix. She described TANF block-grant limits, SNAP caseloads, the LEAP energy program, child-care subsidies and vocational rehabilitation outcomes, and answered committee questions about contracting and IT modernization.
At the Committee on Social Services Budget hearing, Department for Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard presented an overview of DCF’s economic and employment services, child-support program, vocational rehabilitation and overall budget context.
Howard said DCF administers federal direct-benefit programs including TANF cash assistance, SNAP (food assistance), child-care subsidy and child support. She told legislators Kansas receives about $104 million annually in TANF block-grant funds and that Kansas spends a relatively small share of TANF on cash assistance—about $10 million—serving roughly 7,000 Kansans because of state eligibility rules enacted in recent years.
On food assistance, Howard reported about 190,000 Kansans access SNAP and that SNAP benefits are entirely federal benefits (administration carries some state costs). She said the LEAP low-income energy assistance program served about 85,000 people in fiscal 2024 with around $59 million in benefits. On child care, Howard said DCF subsidizes child care for about 13,000 children with a mix of federal and state funding and that Kansas also runs an Early Head Start program through local partners.
Howard provided vocational-rehabilitation metrics: about 6,300 average monthly clients and 970 individuals who achieved competitive employment last year. She also said DCF conducts disability determinations for Social Security on behalf of the Social Security Administration, processing about 27,000 disability claims with a 98.9% accuracy rate.
On child support, Howard named Marcy Martinez as director of Child Support Services and said the program collects about $200 million annually on behalf of roughly 122,000 families (average cases per month). She described the program’s use of private contractors: two full-service contractors (Maximus Human Services and Young Williams) and a payment center. Committee members asked for more detail about the amount paid to contractors versus in-house staff. Representative King asked how much of the $1 billion agency budget pays contractors vs. employees; Howard said she would provide additional FTE and contractor detail to the committee at a subsequent meeting.
Committee members raised IT and field-technology points. Representative King and others asked whether regional staff and contractors could use tablets to collect data in homes. Howard said the agency is close to selecting a contractor for a comprehensive child-welfare information system that will replace multiple older systems, allow field staff and case-management providers to operate on a common platform and, she said, be a “game changer” during implementation over the next two years.
Ending: Howard said more detailed budget and FTE data would be provided at follow-up meetings and that DCF staff would return with contractor-level and staffing numbers.
