Department of Health and Human Services, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families

Department/Agency: Department of Health and Human Services

Position:

Assistant Secretary for Children and Families

Executive Schedule: Executive Level IV - Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation

Major Responsibilities:

• Coordinate public and private initiatives to support family stability and self-sufficiency
• Advise the Secretary on children’s and families’ issues
• Approve policies, publications and grants issued by ACF
• Conduct emergency preparedness and response operations

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

• Social service background
• Knowledge of welfare policy
• Management experience

Insight:

The Assistant Secretary for Children and Families administers a $45 billion budget and a wide range of social services, including Head Start, foster care, adoption, assistance for low-income families and support for children with developmental disabilities.

“It’s been very clear that getting results in these areas means using a lot of bully pulpit and public affairs strategies with states and communities,” Olivia Golden, assistant secretary for children and families during the Clinton administration, told the 2000 edition of the Prune Book. 

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) also collects child support, runs the Office of Refugee Resettlement and administers the program that provides grants to the needy to heat their homes in winter and cool them in summer. It provides Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the bedrock welfare grant program formerly called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). In the social welfare arena, it is the federal government’s front-line service provider. 

Partnering with state and local social service providers is a primary function of the head of the ACF. The Bush administration pushed for greater collaboration between ACF and faith-based organizations. 

Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes comprehensive sex education programs, complained that Wade F. Horn, who led ACF from 2001-2007, went overboard in pushing abstinence-only sex education programs. Horn also championed the Bush administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative. “Sometimes I'm dubbed ‘The Marriage Guy’ or ‘The Marriage Czar for the Bush Administration,’" Horn told the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy in August 2006. 

President Bush outlined the intent of the marriage initiative: “To encourage marriage and promote the well-being of children, I have proposed a healthy marriage initiative to help couples develop the skills and knowledge to form and sustain healthy marriages …. By supporting responsible child-rearing and strong families, my Administration is seeking to ensure that every child can grow up in a safe and loving home.”  

Critics of ACF raised an outcry when it was learned that Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist, was being paid by HHS to write favorably about the initiative. Horn initially defended the arrangement, but later instituted a policy preventing the agency from hiring any outside consultant with working ties to the media. 

The assistant secretary for children and families implements the administration’s social agenda, whether it’s the welfare reform of the Clinton years or the social traditionalism of the Bush administration. The next assistant secretary will have to develop an approach that aligns with the new administration’s family values, as well as keep running social safety net programs that lie at the core of the government’s commitment to the neediest.       

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:

Deputy HHS Secretary
Deputy Assistant Secretary
President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities
Assistant Secretary for Legislation
Assistant Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response

Key Relationships – Within the Government:

Department of Justice
Congress

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:

Faith-based and community organizations
Front-line service providers
States
Native American tribes

Nomination Referred to:

Senate Committee on Finance

Current Position Profile:
1. Carmen Nazario (Confirmed Sept 22, 2009). Former Assistant Professor of Social Policy, Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico. Former Administrator, Administration for Children and Families, Department of the Family, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Recent Position Profiles:

2. Daniel Schneider, J.D. (Acting 2007- 2009). Former National Endowment for the Humanities general counsel. Former deputy associate director of White House presidential personnel and White House liaison at the Department of Labor.

3. Wade F. Horn, Ph.D. (2001-2007). Child psychologist. Former president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Former associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University. Former director of outpatient psychological services at Children’s Hospital National Medical Center.