4000 - Assistance Planning With Individual Applicants/Recipients - "See Policy Memo #99-10-01 re: "Assistance Planning When a Person Other Than the Parent is the Caretaker and the Parent Enters the Home".

This section sets forth guidelines regarding assistance planning in the cash, medical, food assistance and child care programs. The term "assistance planning" now encompasses the food assistance term "household composition" and the child care term "case structure."

4100 Assistance Planning for the Cash Programs

Assistance planning relates to the consideration of certain individuals living together as a family group. The assistance plan shall consist of those members in the family group who are part of the mandatory filing unit and who are applying for or receiving cash assistance, plus other family group members for whom assistance is requested. A family group is defined as the client and all individuals living together in which there is a legal and/or caretaker relationship. (See 2220 for temporary absences.) (See the Appendix for definitions for caretaker and legally responsible person.) All persons who are members of the mandatory filing unit shall be included in the assistance plan unless permitted to be excluded by provisions of this section. The mandatory filing unit is defined as those persons within the family group who are required to be included in determining eligibility and amount of benefits. Failure to include a mandatory filing unit member or to provide information about a mandatory filing unit member necessary for determining eligibility may result in ineligibility for the entire assistance plan.

The exclusion of a mandatory filing unit member from the assistance plan as described in the following provisions shall not alter the composition of the filing unit (except as noted for SSI recipients.) The excluded individual would still be regarded as a filing unit member and his or her nonexempt income and resources would be considered in determining eligibility and amount of benefits for the remaining persons in the assistance plan. (See 5200 (6)). However, the individual would not be eligible and his or her needs would be excluded from the eligibility and benefit determination. The income and resource provisions contained in 5200 (6) and 6100 (4) would be applicable, except the earned income deductions and disregards would not be deducted from his or her earnings in accordance with 7212.