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/
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.
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