Unexpected increase in cash benefit enrollments prompt cuts beginning in November
Families drawing temporary assistance will see a drop in the benefits at the beginning of November, the Cabinet of Health and Family Services announced last week.
Known as the Kentucky Temporary Assistance Program, or KTAP, the benefits program provides cash, medical and transportation funds to low-income families for a lifetime maximum of five years. The program receives allotted federal funds from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.
The commonwealth’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services said when the state paid recipients more and increased program eligibility in 2023, an unprojected surge in enrollments followed. At the same time, there were increases in foster care costs. Now, the state says it has to cut back on the program.
The decision concerns youth advocates, who feel this decision could have been avoided.
“If families and kids ranked high on the priority list, these kinds of cuts absolutely would not be happening,” said Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, an advocacy nonprofit dedicated to children’s issues.
In 2023, the state adjusted the program to match the rate of inflation. Currently, a household of three receives $524. In 2022, a family of three would have received $262. Next month, it will receive $341.
“We’re unable to cover both needs at the current levels,” said Steven Stack, secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, in reference to both foster care and temporary assistance expenses.
A recipient’s maximum personal net worth, between investments and savings, rose from $2,000 in 2022 to $10,000 in 2023. The monthly income limit for a household of three rose from $974-per-month in 2022 to $1,169-per-month to 2023.
Prior to 2023, the criteria for eligibility and the payment amounts had gone untouched since the program began in 1995, Stack said. While other government programs, like SNAP and Medicaid, kept up with the rate of inflation, the temporary assistance program had not.
As a result, program enrollments have grown by more than 5,000 families. In 2023, there were 10,026 average families. In 2025, there were 15,117.
At the same time, there has been an increase in intensive foster care cases, which means higher state spending on social workers, hospitalizations and facilities.
In addition to the strain it will put on these families, some advocates fear the cuts could cost the state more in the long run.
“This decision is clearly bad for kids,” Brooks said.
“It’s clearly bad for families, and the irony is it may just be also bad for the state budget,” he said. “So we hear about win, win, win propositions. This is a lose, lose, lose proposition.”
He adds that because child neglect — an inadequate level of care, food, clothing and other basic necessities — is the leading reason kids enter the foster care system, he fears the cuts will only push kids further down that path.
Norma Hatfield, president of Kinship Families Coalition of Kentucky, has raised two of her grandchildren. She wishes the assistance program could have kept the funding so that families like hers had more support and could avoid instances of state involvement. She’s disappointed there was no discussion prior to the cabinet’s decision to decrease benefits.
“They should have seen this coming early 2025,” Hatfield said. “There should have been discussions, but instead the decision to choose one vulnerable child over another was made.”
Her frustration with the department’s budgeting decisions follows a saga around a stalled 2024 law that gives more time for relatives who agree to take care of abused or neglected children to apply for foster benefits. That law has not been implemented due to the Republican-controlled legislature not assigning funding for it, a judge determined in September.
Auditor Allison Ball served the cabinet a subpoena Sept. 19 to review its internal communications and financial projections related to that law. A judge dismissed her lawsuit against the cabinet Sept. 15.
