Benefits is a large practice area including food stamps, cash assistance (TAFDC, EAEDC), emergency assistance, and welfare-related employment support services such as child care and transportation. For authorized users, this section provides:

• Materials from the Department of Transitional Assistance, including Field Operations Memos, Hotline Foci, forms, guides for frontline workers, and other subregulatory materials.  These materials can be helpful when representing a client at a hearing or trying to resolve a case through communications with a local office or DTA Central.

• Hearing decisions from DTA's Division of Hearings.

• Sample advocacy letters and memorandums from other benefits advocates. These materials are helpful to see if other colleagues across the state have successfully resolved the particular issue you are working on, so that you can get ideas and not have to reinvent the wheel.

How to search for relevant materials:

If you look at the subcategories, you will see that there are some arranged by document type (e.g. "Fair Hearings"), and some arranged by substantive area (e.g. "TAFDC," with subcategories like "Financial eligibility" and "Domestic Violence").  All of the documents in the categories arranged by document type should also be listed under the substantive area to which they apply. 

To get the most out of your research, we suggest that you first look under the substantive category which you are researching, going to the most specific subcategory possible. There you will find various types of documents which apply to the subject area. Then, to be sure your bases are covered, we suggest you go to the document type categories and use the search engine to search within them.  To be sure that you are searching only within a given category, be sure to click on "This category" next to the search prompt.