Despite having two children, Jessica F. only received $478 a month from Massachusetts’s cash assistance program, known as Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the amount that a parent with one child typically gets. She was denied an extra $100 a month thanks to a “family cap,” a rule from the 1990s, yet still on the books, that bars families from getting increased benefits to cover any children that are born while they’re already enrolled in the program. She had her youngest son while she was still in need of welfare, so he was excluded.
During that time, she was “always making tradeoffs,” Jessica said in a written statement shared with Rewire.News. If she used the benefits to buy things for her infant son, that meant she couldn’t buy what her older daughter needed. Last year she had to put off buying winter boots for her daughter to buy diapers. “Someone is always waiting,” she wrote. But the extra $100 she would have gotten had her son been treated like her daughter would have almost covered the cost of his diapers.
Parents are also “hurt … that their child’s individuality, their child’s dignity, their child’s humanity is disregarded,” said Deborah Harris, senior staff attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
[For more on this story by Bryce Covert, go to https://rewire.news/article/20...other-states-follow/]
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