A student's favorite welfare policies

First Reaction Essay

One social welfare service I like is the program LIHEAP. It stands for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. According to the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity, it helps low income families pay for home energy services, usually their heating bills in the winter. The yearly eligibility levels are made depending on funding and cannot exceed 150% of the federal nonfarm poverty level. According to LIHEAP’s website, 3.03 billion dollars was released in the Federal Fiscal Year 2018. This was regular block grant funding from the Office of Community Services (OCS), Division of Energy Assistance (DEA).

  The reason I like LIHEAP is because as a social work student and a decent human being, I don’t want anyone to have to go cold in the winter. It makes me sad to hear about families and especially children getting sick because their houses are so cold, and they cannot afford to pay for their heating bills. I don’t see how someone could want to destroy what LIHEAP does. I do think that there should be more funding with LIHEAP because I know from experience that places like CEFS (a nonprofit Community Action Agency) in Taylorville did not have any more money to help with the LIHEAP program, so people in poverty that lived in Taylorville were not able to pay their utility bills if they could not afford it. 

Another program that I like is SNAP. It is another program for low income people. SNAP helps people with making sure they have food. It gives people a card and puts money on it that they can spend on food. I think SNAP is really important because without it, I know a lot of people in poverty would go hungry. I hate when people talk badly about people who receive SNAP because they need It to survive. People always think that the people who get it do not use it wisely or are committing fraud with it, but I’d rather have someone who uses it on junk food than for his or her children going hungry at night.  People going hungry in the United States would be a lot worse without SNAP. It is still bad with it, but it could be much worse. I have received SNAP in the past and it helped feed my whole family, and I am very thankful for it. 

The last program that I like is Supplemental Security Income or SSI. According to Social Security’s website, this program helps aged, blind, and disabled people who are low income by providing them with cash. It is different than SSDI because this program is for people who have not worked enough to earn the amount of work credits required for SSDI. SSI is funded by general tax revenues. I like SSI because without it, so many disabled people would be homeless with no place to go. They cannot just get a job like most people say because they cannot work like everybody else because of their disability. I know that to get it, it is a very long process because the government does not want people to get SSI unless they know for sure that they are disabled. I do not like when people say that people are on SSI and SSDI just because they are lazy and do not want to work because that is not true for a large amount of people who are in the program. I think people on SSI should be given more money because I know someone on it, and they do not get more than 800 dollars a month, and that is not enough money to live off of. 

There are other programs and services that I like and have an opinion on, but these were just the most important to me. I really care about programs that help the poor because I have been poor my whole life, and I wish people did not have to worry about when their next meal would come or if they would have somewhere to live in a month or if they would be able to have heat in their house during the winter. Nobody deserves that, and I think we should help out people as much as we can. 

References

LIHEAP and WAP Funding. (n.d.). In Liheap Clearinghouse. Retrieved from https://liheapch.acf.hhs.gov/Funding/funding.htm

Utility Bill Assistance. (n.d.). In Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity. Retrieved from https://www.illinois.gov/dceo/CommunityServices/UtilityBillAssistance/Pages/default.aspx

What Is Supplemental Security Income? (n.d.). In Social Security. Retrieved from https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/

This is a great way to write a reaction paper.  We could all make a list of the social welfare policies we like the most, or the ones we think ought to be  least controversial. But, for the sake of discussion, let me offer some points.

LIHEAP is necessary and valuable because it prevents persons from freezing to death or perishing from heat exhaustion. So, yes, we need it or something like it.  And yet, as an environmentalist and as someone who keeps my house at 16 degrees C (60 degrees F) from mid-November through early April when I can turn off the heat, I am concerned that persons with LIHEAP benefits may keep their apartments or homes far too hot through the winter. I don't like going into the homes of persons living in poverty during the winter and finding that their homes are heated up to 25 degrees (77 F) and everyone is sitting around in t-shirts and shorts.  People could keep their homes cooler, wear sweaters, jackets, long-underwear, and so forth and be just as comfortable, but waste less energy.  If we all were using renewable energy, I wouldn't mind so much.  

SNAP is necessary to prevent starvation and malnutrition.  Some people who complain about SNAP suggest we could just get charitable donations and provide soup kitchens, breadlines, food pantries, and food baskets for poor persons to prevent malnutrition.  In fact, we already do this, because SNAP benefits are insufficient, and some people who ought to get food assistance don't get anything. Even now, the government wants to make sure able-bodied (and healthy minded) adults of working age can only qualify for SNAP benefits for a limited time.  The idea is to push people into employment where they can earn enough to feed themselves, but I question whether wages offered by some employers do provide sufficient income for people to house and feed themselves. Many persons receiving SNAP now are already working full-time.  So, I think SNAP is too stingy and too difficult to keep. SNAP is a wonderful policy for farmers, food producers, and food retailers (grocery stores), and while poor persons get the food benefits of SNAP, it's important to recognize that the money ends up in the hands of local businesses (grocery stores, food companies, and farmers).  

SSI is another great program, I agree with you about that.  I also agree that SSI benefits ought to be increased. The one problem I have with SSI is a problem for which I can't figure out a solution.  It is this: we know that for most people with disabilities, if they would get a job and work on a regular schedule, this would have great benefits for them.  Yes, some persons are so profoundly disabled that this isn't an option, of course.  But, most persons with disabilities do have talents, strengths, ambitions, and abilities, and they would be happier and better off if they used these qualities at least for a few hours each week in some sort of employment situation, where they could interact with coworkers, improve their skills, and contribute something to a collective effort (a business is one sort of collective effort, but there are others worthy of consideration for employment). So, I wish SSI had a way of helping more persons receiving benefits to get employment.  And yet, our system of defining disability and awarding SSI benefits takes a nearly all-or-nothing approach. And we often reduce benefits in such a way that there is very little incentive for persons to work.  I wish we had a way to encourage and support more persons with disabilities to get some form of employment, but I wish we could do this in a way that wasn't financially punitive, and I'm against any system of coercing persons with disabilities to enter the work force and desperately keep jobs even if those jobs may be unsuitable or unwholesome.

Reflections on $2 a Day and the American nutrition and housing welfare system

In the book $2 a Day I saw that SNAP was the main thing that each of the families had, and for most poor families this is the only help they can receive from the government. Kathryn edin and Luke Shaefer make the statement that welfare is dead in the story more than once because it seems that nobody is getting welfare anymore because it ran out of money to give away. Another program I recognized as helping the poor in this book was housing assistance, in which the family received their own living space without having to pay for it in full. They usually will spend 30% of the money they make each month towards their housing. 

I believed these two things (if working together for poor families) could ensure that everyone would have both of these things (security from malnutrition with food aid and security from homelessness with housing assistance), and with housing and food security, life would become better for them. But it seems the benefit levels we offer now do not provide the security I had expected.

With SNAP the family receives a card, like a debit card, that the government will put a specific amount of money on it every month for the family to solely use on buying groceries. The amount of money that the government puts on a card depends on how many people will be living off of it, how much money their household has, and some calculations based on child care costs. Even with food stamps (SNAP benefits) more families tend to still go hungry however. 

If this is their only source of income they have nothing to buy things like socks and underwear for themselves or their children. Another priority they may have is to keep the electricity on in their home along with the heat and air condition. Because many families place these needs over their need for food they exchange their SNAP benefits illegally for cash. When they do this they will lose 50 – 60% of their money because depending where you live people will only give you 40 – 50% in cash for what you gave them in SNAP. For example, if you gave someone $100 in SNAP they will only give you $40 -$50 in cash. Even though they are losing a lot of spending power many families do this to have cash to pay for other bills and things they need. This is why they still often times go hungry even when they have these benefits. If they used them correctly families would be well fed, but may be sitting in a cold, dark house, without proper clothing, which can be just as hard to get through, if not harder in some cases. 

If I could make a change to this system it would be that the people using SNAP can take out 1/4^th of their benefits as cash that they could spend on any bills they may have. Then they would not be losing money and risking 20 years in jail over trying to make ends meet. On top of that 1/4^th should be able to be spent on nearly anything that a person may need such as clothing, or toiletries in convenient stores such as Walmart. This would not work however if they were trying to buy name brand clothes from the mall or clothing stores. The remaining ½ would then be used solely for grocery items. They would still not be eating the best if this were the case, but I believe it would be more food than they would have than if they were selling their SNAP and only receiving half of what it’s worth. They would not need to take out 1/4^th in cash or use the other 4^th for other items and could use it completely on food if they preferred as well, but in this way they would have more freedom with how they could use the money without losing profit. I believe this would give them more stability along with confidence. This would also allow them to buy clothing for job interviews or soap to be clean for the interviews which would give them higher chances at getting a job. 

[One thing to keep in mind is that the SNAP benefits are calculated using a formula that tries to provide families with sufficient consumption levels to provide adequate nutrition for everyone in the household. The model assumes that people will buy the least expensive foods, that may require significant preparation and cooking time (potatoes, dried beans, peas, lentils, and rice would probably make up a bulk of calories for persons living on the most thrifty food budgets). In fact, we know from research on typical shopping habits of persons using SNAP that they consume foods in ratios that are approximately similar to what most Americans not using SNAP would buy (including some pre-processed foods, a significant amount of meat, and levels of sugary drinks and snacks that just about match the already unwholesome diets of most Americans—about 20% of purchases).  If you cut the levels of SNAP benefits, there are real risks that persons receiving food assistance will have household members becoming malnourished. Of course, your point is that some of the poorest persons receiving SNAP are already sacrificing their nutritional well-being to keep the heat on, buy underwear, or get the car fixed so they can continue arriving at their workplace on time each day.  Your policy suggestion makes a lot of sense if we add something like the TANF cash benefit and LIHEAP utility assistance to the existing SNAP and school lunch programs, so that poor families would get a whole package of benefits to cover their basic necessities.  While a guaranteed minimum income or guaranteed employment (to poor persons who make reasonably adequate workers) would also achieve your goal of ensuring people enjoy security in housing, food, and some other basic essentials such as heating in winter, transport to workplaces, new clothing, and so forth, it seems politically unfeasible to create a guaranteed minimum income or guaranteed employment situation for Americans.  Therefore, your policy might be the reasonable substitute: a sort of consolidated welfare program that combined the functions of the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA with the Housing Subsidies of HUD with the TANF-type cash benefits from Health and Human Services and the medical benefits of Medicaid.  You apply for one thing, and get the subsidies and benefits from all the programs bundled together.  You would gain some efficiencies (similar to the guaranteed minimum income, which would be the most efficient program of all), but you would continue the selective and monitoring functions that Americans seem to demand as they regulate the poor and monitor their behavior to ensure that they are really deserving, and not becoming dependent on welfare.  

Without a housing subsidy it is nearly impossible to have your own living space for your family. If you are lucky enough to have a small space of your own it would be hardly livable at all. Therefore, the poor often live with other family members or friends, when this is not available there are homeless shelters, but the book $2 a Day states that they kick you out of many homeless shelters after about three months. With housing subsidies, a family gets a small, but livable place to live in and call their own. This also helps them to feel more stable and confident than they’d feel otherwise. Paying only 30% of how much income the family makes every month is very reasonable a price. The government then pays the remaining balance of the apartment. I believe if poor families have a stable home they would have less stress and be able to feel more confident in looking for a job along with more time to do so. This program also gives them an address they can put on applications for jobs. I remember in the book jobs may discriminate if a person puts a homeless shelter as their address on an application and therefore they often do not waste their time to follow up.  

With both housing and SNAP assistance poor people could have a roof over their head and food in their fridge. This will take a lot of stress off of them about where they are going to sleep that night and when they’ll be able to eat again. They will also have more time to look for a job now that they do not have to worry as much about shelter and food and this will make them more confident as well. They will have an address to call home, and they will have means to have proper hygiene to better impress the person in the interview. I also believe the feeling of stability will give them an over-all better outlook on life as a whole.

That's a critical point you are making about the need for the welfare safety net to provide persons living in poverty with a shield against stress and desperation. Labor is only free if it can have a choice of which jobs it accepts, and if we use desperation and stresses of poverty to force labor into any job that comes along, we are diminishing the liberty of workers.  Likewise, as you point out, if we make poor people insecure and push them into chaotic lives because of their poverty (poverty often resulting from their health problems, their mental health issues, their family problems or break-ups, and their vulnerability to the whims of business owners or the fickle nature of the business cycle, and only in exceptional cases due to character defects such as dishonesty and laziness), then we make it that much more difficult for persons to climb out of poverty.  We ought to make getting out of poverty something that is easy to accomplish, and the policies you are recommending aim to do that, and recognize the flaws in existing welfare safety net we have now.

Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Reflection Paper

In class we talk about many different populations of people, but I think that one that gets overlooked is adults with developmental disabilities. I worked in a sheltered workshop for a little over 7 years and have seen first hand the kinds of financial difficulties they have. Just like children, these adults, don’t have much of a voice when it come to their own personal finances. Most of them do not understand the concept of money.

A lot of adults with developmental disabilities live in group homes. Much of their financial income is determined by the state. They are covered by Medicaid, SSI, SSDI and some receive SNAP. According to the Social Security Website most are covered by SSDI (87%), if their parents had a work history and the person was diagnosed before the age of 18.  I knew a few others that qualified for Black Lung Survivors Benefits.

Case workers scrambled to make sure that no one clients savings got over $2,000 for fear of them losing benefits. A couple years ago there was a panic when they reduced the amount of cash that was disbursed every month to clients in ICF group homes. For most it went from $60 to $50 or $40. Ten or twenty dollars does not seem like much to most, but they use that for things most people take for granted. Haircuts, a coffee, new shoes, clothes, or entertainment. Often clients that went to the workshop could not go on any outings that month because they lacked the funds. These were not extravagant outings. They were things like going to get a coffee, ice cream, or go to the zoo. 

A good thing was the clients never had to worry about healthcare, housing, or food. That was covered. When they got $60 a month that put them at $2 a day for cash. They were better off than pretty much everyone in the book $2 a Day since they don’t have to worry about food or shelter. These people can not advocate for themselves, although some try their best. One client from an ICF home knew that he would only get a certain amount of cash each month no matter how much he worked. It was sad to see some of the clients that had no concept of money working every day, sometimes making upwards of $200 a paycheck. They never get to see that paycheck. They get the allotted $40-$50 and the rest goes towards their room and board. 

Like anyone else, disabled or not, we want independence. Many of these clients could make a wage enough to pay for outings, clothing, haircuts, entertainment, or anything else that they need without going without new shoes for several months due to lack of cash funds. A higher functioning client wanted so badly to get out of the workshop and into the community working. She walked everywhere, went to interviews, and eventually landed herself 2-part time jobs while working at the workshop. She wanted to better herself and make enough money to do the things she loved. Since she was bringing in “too much” income she had to start paying into Medicaid.

I know there must be limits to what people can get because I can see it getting out of hand. Where is the line drawn though? If you increase their benefits so they have more cash, then that money is probably coming out of some other program. If you let them make as much as they want without losing benefits the state will be losing money. I believe that every adult with a developmental disability should be able to keep what they earn. Obviously if they make an obscene amount of money then yes, they should pay for some of their benefits. I don’t see the harm in them keeping what they earn.