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Welfare Made A Difference: Terrence Mitchell, New York, NY (Hunger Action Community Advisory Board Member)

  
Is this welfare reform? Being on welfare for the past couple of years has been a stressful headache that almost tore my family apart at the seams. I've worked most part of my life and when I got sick and couldn't work any more, I was put on a budget that was extremely hard to maintain. With 4 children, the public assistance we receive is way below the cost of living. If any one out there has children you know how costly they can be, school trips, exhibitions (which parents have to pay for the equipment or your child fails that class), clothing, gym clothes, toiletries even carfare. These things are not taken into consideration in the assistance amount yet I was told that it was mandatory for P.A. clients to participate in the work program (W.E.P.) which required clients to clean a park, a public bathroom or clean the streets and the hours were over 40 hours a week with no pay, over time payment or reasonable time off to care for children. Some case workers even told clients that they would be picked as permanent job holders but that never happened and if it did, it was only on a very small scale.
Now I myself had been a meat cutter for over 20 years and have one year and a half of college that was in the late 1970's. Even due to my chronic multiple illness, which stopped me from time to time and eventually stopped me from working for good, I tried to go back to work but still didn't receive any assistance that I was told that would be available to me such as continued P.A. grant for 3 months in case I got laid off or lost the job for any reason. And if I continued to work I would be eligible for a subsidized grant but that program is a good thing of the past. Now your case is closed after 3 weeks and if you lose your job for any reason you have to reapply for public assistance which is harder than the first time you applied which I feel is strange since the information on you has not been deleted from the system as of yet.
Now let's move on. Imagine you have children of any age and there's a problem in school or day care, you're living on this sublevel budget and carfare is something that you don't have, or due to your schedule with W.E.P., then ACS (child protective services) could be called and they could file neglect charges. Oh, but remember no matter how cruel or how understanding the workers say they are or seem to be, they are just doing their job but just what is their job? THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW. Now this gets even more interesting how children (teens and preteens) are affected socially when basic clothing and school supplies are unavailable. This frustration leads to truancy and other criminal activities such as robbing and drug sales, sometimes even prostitution and its ten times worse if you're a single parent. Your children's future economical, educational and social status are being affected, if that isn't personal then what is? You see the never-ending cycle here?
And being uneducated or African-America, Hispanic, Caucasian, married or single, man or woman, bisexual, gay or heterosexual, ages zero to ninety. Our only crime is being poor and being kept poor by these policies and requirements. Policies such as these are not modified to suit the needs of the people that they were meant to assist. I mean who ever made these reform policies what were they thinking about? Were they living in a cave or something?
If welfare is to make an impact on one's life then let it be positive. Take a step back, reform on a different level, a more compassionate and humane level.