The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project is supported by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. BIAS-NG aims to make human services programs work better for the people receiving services by reshaping program processes using lessons from behavioral science, an interdisciplinary field that incorporates psychology, economics, and other social sciences to provide insight into how people process information, make decisions, and take action. In Washington State, the BIAS-NG team, led by MDRC, worked with the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to design and test an intervention aimed at increasing engagement in work activities among clients who were approved to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). TANF is a government program that provides temporary cash assistance to qualifying individuals who have very low incomes. For many participants in TANF, receipt of the cash assistance is contingent on the completion of required activities; frequently these are work-related activities.

The BIAS-NG team began working with DSHS in 2016, investigating where lack of client participation in work activities was most acute. Using administrative data, the BIAS-NG team found that many clients who were approved for TANF and assigned to a work activity by DSHS did not attend their work activity orientations, and fewer still completed their work activities within 13 months. The BIAS-NG team explored clients’ experiences during TANF intake sessions to identify behavioral bottlenecks (process factors that might reduce clients’ engagement) that kept clients from attending their work activity orientations and subsequent work activities. Then, to address these behavioral bottlenecks, the BIAS-NG team designed an intervention that included two sets of print materials for use in TANF intake sessions. However, the team found evidence that the intervention materials were implemented unevenly, and that there was no consistent difference between the intake sessions experienced by the intervention and the business-as-usual groups. In short, the two necessary conditions for the experiment to be a fair test of the intervention—that the intervention materials were used as intended and that clients in the two groups had different experiences—were not met.

Nevertheless, the BIAS-NG study in Washington offers insights into what it may take to change staff behavior as a means of altering client behavior. Three lessons emerge from the BIAS-NG intervention in Washington that have implications for TANF program-improvement efforts:

• Align staffing policies to better support the goals of new tools. Although the intervention materials were designed to help staff members build rapport with clients, staffing and client-assignment procedures commonly used in TANF offices may have limited staff members’ ability to engage clients as intended and build this rapport.
   
• Consider how existing management systems may conflict with the intended objectives of new tools and processes. DSHS’s centralized timekeeping system—used for performance purposes—may have deterred staff members from spending more time with clients.
   
• Work to get staff members to buy into the implementation of new policies.