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The Near Impossibility of Moving Up After Welfare [TheAtlantic.com]

 

Is it possible for Candace Vance to find a good job?

Vance, 31, is a single mother of two who hasn’t worked for more than a year. She’s on Wisconsin’s version of welfare, called Wisconsin Works, or W-2, which provides her with $650 a month. In order to receive that money, Vance is required to look for a job, and if she doesn’t find one, she’ll eventually lose her benefits.

The challenge, for Vance and for millions of people like her, is that the jobs available to her don’t provide much of a chance to build a better life. Most of the jobs that she is qualified for pay around the minimum wage, which, at $7.25 an hour in Wisconsin, Vance says, is not enough to cover her rent, groceries, and gas, and allow her to have anything left over. Saving up to go back to college is out of the question, and she’s not allowed to go back to school while she’s receiving W-2.

“They say, ‘Go, get a minimum wage job, just to get your butt off W-2, and then you won’t have to depend on us,” she told me. “But we need more than that. You know we need more than that.”

Since Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, work has been billed as the best solution for people like Vance. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, better known as welfare reform, encouraged states to put stringent work requirements on people receiving Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). In order for states to continue to receive federal money, recipients had to put in a certain number of volunteer or work hours every month, and counselors had to push recipients to take a job, any job, that would get them off the dole. (Each state has its own program to administer TANF; W-2 is Wisconsin's version.)

[For more of this story, written by Alana Semuels, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...fter-welfare/490586/]

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You point out how we have a lot of work to do to stop blaming the victim, especially people in poverty, Rachael. There are ACEs -- adverse childhood experiences -- and ASEs...adverse system experiences. Some people, such as Nadine Burke Harris, are beginning to include ASEs in ACEs (she added involvement with the foster care system as one of an additional six ACEs for which she screens kids). I would say that you could include attending or teaching at a zero-tolerance school, involvement with most juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, most courts, most social services. They're staffed by people with big hearts who often have that heart ripped out by the system's toxicity.

Dr. Sandra Bloom wrote about this in Destroying Sanctuary. She founded the Sanctuary model to help organizations become healthy.

Wow. I am appalled by the comment here - clearly we continue attribute poverty to people's character NOT to a broken system - I am from the other side of the counter - I stood crying hysterically demanding someone talk with me [a very kind compassionate man did] at my local welfare office - left with two small children - no job [I was the 'stay at home'] - and a high school education.

Don't talk to me about paying the price - you have no idea what you are talking about - three part-time jobs, full time school, involvement in my children's school life [volunteer parent], house sharing to make the bills, an absentee father who only showed up to tell me what a horrible job I was doing and to threaten to take away my children.

I remember the day I walked into the DSHS office and gave the rest of my food stamps [then the humiliating tear it out one at a time packets] to my worker and said - "I don't need these anymore". I got applause. I cannot tell you how that felt.

I put myself through college and grad school - while raising my daughters - both college graduates with 5 and 6 digit incomes - I have practiced clinical psychology for almost 20 years - in non-profits and government agencies trying to give back to the disenfranchised as folks once invested in me.

Things that helped? Subsidized housing, WIC, food stamps, insurance coverage for my children [I never qualified for a 'check' as I chose to go to school and work at the same time]...good friends and supports [some family some not]. Determination, persistence, wanting more for my children, wanting true independence and 'cred' to fight my abusive ex-husband with -

Examine your biases and blind spots, folks. I have walked in the shoes.

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