We need more responsive service for persons in poverty

This semester in our course we have had the pleasure of reading the book titled $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. It amazes me that the books I would never choose to read are the ones that will teach me the most and will open my eyes to things I may not have fully understood prior to reading the book. This book—although it wouldn't be my first choice—I am glad it is a part of this course. It taught me a lot about poverty and welfare programs within America. Although a lot of the programs that are offered have good motives behind them, this book truly opened my eyes to whether they are truly working the way they should (they aren’t). I am not one that ever grew up in a family needing cash assistance or food stamps, therefore I am not one that is educated very well on such programs. After reading $2 a Day, I started putting pieces together, it opened my eyes to the world around me and little things that I was missing in my day to day life. It opened my eyes to the fact that I have taken being raised in the household that I was for granted. Additionally, I can look back and see that I took several opportunities that were given to me for granted.

This is one of the great outcomes of reading a book like this, or going out into the wilderness backpacking, or traveling to another country.  All these experiences wake us up and help use appreciate aspects of our normal life or our culture. By seeing other possible lives, we realize how things we never noticed (we took for granted) make our lives easier (or worse), and we can enhance our appreciation for the advantages we enjoy (or become more eager to make changes to address the things that aren’t so good).

There is so much to discuss and lots of good material within $2 a Day, but something that stood out to me was when it spoke on the individual that went to the Department of Human Services up in Chicago trying to receive assistance. This particular individual was sent away because she had not arrived early enough and there was not a slot available for her to see a caseworker, even though she arrived to wait in line long before the center even opened. This is disheartening and upsetting because she had already felt as if she would never receive the assistance she had heard of but did truly need. First hand, I know that our state’s programs need serious attention and based on this book our state is not the only one. Due to the fact that I work for the Department of Human Services and see it daily, even if it is not within the unit that handles the services discussed in this book, I get it.

The programs need attention and staffing needs to be adequate within the state system before the idea of the programs running efficiently and well will ever be a thought worth thinking. Caseloads are way higher than what should be acceptable, resulting in burnout of the workers. This in turn results in inadequate staffing which leads to less individuals receiving the assistance they need because there are not enough people to get all of those in need through the lines. 

So, why is poverty such an issue and why do welfare programs suffer? Why do these individuals struggle to get reliable jobs and why do they make next to nothing? It is something that the public needs to speak about, and journalists and leaders need to bring attention to it before anything will be done. What if the state jobs that are struggling and are understaffed were staffed with those struggling to find jobs? This would in turn benefit those seeking assistance from welfare programs and it would help the individuals that struggle to find jobs and make ends meet. People donate plasma as often as they can just to make ends meet or earn extra cash to be able to buy a birthday gift for their child. When will people say enough is enough, stand up, and take action to change America for the better to improve poverty and welfare programs helping any and all that need it?

Student enraged by Tennessee legislation concerning adoption

As I was searching the internet for information on present day policies in the news I came across a very interesting title that caught my eye right away. The title of the article that grabbed my attention is Tennessee OK’s Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination in Adoption. Overall, the article discusses how the governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, signed the discriminatory adoption bill into law. This means that any faith based adoption and foster care agencies in the state of Tennessee can turn away same sex couples and other prospective parents who violate the agencies’ religious beliefs. As I was reading this article, another aspect that stood out to me is that eight other states have similar laws, with West Virginia still pending on the law. This article had me very intrigued and I am glad that I decided to read the entire article. 

This article mainly caught my attention because I want to go into the adoption field with my degree. Reading this article actually disgusted me and infuriated me. Reading more and more into it I could not help but agree with what a lot of the individuals who oppose this bill were stating. One of these individuals, the Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David,  was expressing that with “this bill will do nothing to improve the outcomes for children in care, it shrinks the pool of prospective parents and is a blatant attempt to discriminate against LGBTQ Tennesseans.” I could not agree more with this statement made by Alphonso David. It does limit the amount of prospective parents and will eventually lead to an increasing number of children in care. What I do not understand is why they feel like LGBTQ parents would not be a deem-able fit to be parents to children that need a good home. Alphonso David also stated “These legislators are disregarding the best interests of kids in the child welfare system to create a ‘license to discriminate’ against qualified, loving prospective parents.” After reading that statement, it got me to thinking about how LGBTQ parents have just as much love to give and just as much the possibility to provide a wonderful life to a child as a heterosexual couple. Another point that was made in this article is that by allowing faith-based discrimination against the LGBTQ adoptive parents, this law is limiting the pool of potential parents. By allowing this law, agencies can even discriminate to refuse to place these children with close relatives who are LGBTQ or of a different faith than the agency believes in. This bill that is being passed as a law is only harming the children. A statement made by the Rev. Stan J. Sloan, the CEO of Family Equality, “If the bill is signed into a law, Tennessee will join a small group of states that have broken the cardinal rule of child welfare-that the needs of children should come first.” When I think about this statement, it really upsets me how some people can be so against LGBTQ and other religious beliefs that they would put children’s needs below these hateful feelings. In my opinion, if you are going to act this way towards these groups of people, you need to find a different line of work. The individuals that suffer the most from this bill are the vulnerable children, and that is not fair to them. It is also not fair to discriminate against these groups of people. 

After reading this article and trying to let my brain process all of this absurd information, it made me that much more determined to try and change some aspects of child welfare. As I want to work on adoption cases when I earn my degree and start working in the field, I am getting a first look into what I may be dealing with. This article has made me want to change some aspects of the child welfare system but it also makes me nervous to see what the system is going to be like in a year or so when I do start working in the system. Is the system going to be even more beyond repair to where it may be a lost cause? I have always told myself that “I know I can’t change the whole world, but if I can change the life of just one individual, I will consider myself successful.” Overall, this article infuriated me, but it also made me that much more determined to start working on the child welfare system. 

First, I agree that it’s infuriating that people have such prejudices and will be allowed to base decisions on placement using these prejudices to discriminate against potential parents. Any argument that homosexual or queer parents are by nature of their sexual relationships or identities unfit parents isn’t supported by evidence, because even if this were generally true, the adoption agencies could still screen adoptive parents and use valid reasons related to actual unfitness rather than using sexual orientations and identities as a determining factor.

But, for the sake of enhancing our critical thinking, let’s consider the possible motives. 

One possibility is that these adoption agencies have people who dislike LGBTQ, and they are motivated by hatred and a desire to harm the LGBTQ parents who would like to have children through adoption. Another possibility is that they want the “best interests of the child” and believe that any child that grows up in a household headed by LGBTQ will be harmed in some way, and the harm that the child suffers as a result of being in a family with LGBTQ parents is greater than the harm the child suffers if they are must wait longer to find an adoptive family. This would raise empirical questions: how much longer would children have to wait if LGBTQ adoptive parents weren’t allowed to adopt from some agencies? If the discrimination is only allowed in regions where at least agency does not discriminate, would all potential LGBTQ adoptive parents go to the agency that didn’t discriminate against them, and would that remove all harm children would suffer by needing to wait longer for adoptive parents (because there would be no increase in waiting time)? What moral principle would a person claim justifies this sort of bill? I understand that freedom of thought and religious belief is a very fundamental value, and would that freedom of religious expression be damaged by any policies that forced religious groups to allow children in their custodial care to be adopted out to families that were LGBTQ, or atheist, or non-Christian, or “immoral” according to some peculiar religious teachings of the sect operating the child welfare agency (e.g., interracial marriages?) 

But, what if we aren’t so much concerned with the violation of the religious rights of those family welfare agencies, but the religious groups operating them said they would shut down if they weren’t allowed to discriminate against parents who weren’t “spiritually worthy” in some sense (were atheist or LGBTQ or whatever). That would raise questions about harms to children arising from the new decrease in supply of child welfare agencies providing services.  

If our priority is the well-being of the children, I could imagine a situation where religious child welfare organizations could extort from me approval for a bill allowing them to discriminate.  This could happen if: 1) the agencies were doing a lot of help to a lot of children in foster care, and were very successful in placing many children in homes of people the agencies considered spiritually “worthy” (e.g., straight, religious, racially homogenous, and Christian); 2) there was in the same region an agency that did not discriminate against prospective adoptive families based on their “spiritual” condition (e.g., was happy to place children with LGBTQ, atheist, interracial, and non-Christian adoptive parents); 3) the religious agency would cease its operations if it was not allowed to discriminate; 4) there was no plausible alternative possibility of non-discriminatory agencies to take up the increase in demand for chid welfare services if the religious groups closed their child welfare services; 5) there was evidence that if the religious child welfare was forced to not discriminate, and therefore reacted by closing down operations, children awaiting adoption would face much longer waits and placements in areas much further away.  If all those five conditions were met, I think I might regretfully allow some agencies to discriminate, because it would be a way to avoid harm to the children. 

The article did not give us enough information to understand if the government in Tennessee was going to pass the law because failing to do so would cause a collapse in the provision of child welfare services in their state.  Were the child welfare services and adoption services in Tennessee highly dependent on private religious organizations that were threatening to close their doors if they were not permitted to discriminate?  Were there other private child welfare organizations that could place children with LGBTQ parents, so that there would be no delays in adoptions, but where those non-discriminatory agencies unable to take up the service demand if all the discriminatory private agencies ceased providing services?  I wanted to know those, so I could know if this was an entirely ridiculous case of politicians conceding to demands from ignorant citizens to implement stupid policies, or whether this was a case of politicians genuinely concerned about religious freedom and making a pragmatic decision to accommodate some people for the sake of maintaining an adequate level of services to children in foster care and awaiting adoption. 

Reading $2 A Day makes one student concerned about inadequate policies and services

During the course so far we have spent lots of time reading the book “$2.00 A Day.” This books focuses on a few families in different situations among those in poverty, and how they are managing to survive. The authors write about a range of families consisting of one single mom and her kid to families that have up to 20 or more people living in a two or three-bedroom apartment, where sometimes there are more kids than adults. The book also tells about the welfare system in the different cities, and even states, in which these families live, and how welfare programs help, or rather do not help, them in their struggle to survive. The authors explain what resources are available for these families and what resources are not, and how these families cope with their lack of resources and lack of support. The book ends with ways that the government and the public can work to implement plans of action that could truly help these people living in the lowest form of poverty to rise above the “$2.00 a day” threshold of extreme poverty, and help them get possibly even closer to a decent and stable life. 

While reading this book, the stories from these people and the situations that they have encountered impressed me. They experienced heart-breaking misfortune and miserable instability. Thinking about the kids in these situations caused me some empathic sadness, as they will grow up not knowing anything else and thinking that this way of life is totally normal and fine. Eventually when they get old enough they will realize what kind of conditions and life they are living in, but until then they won’t even realize that they are not getting to experience the basic childhood that every child should get to experience. It was also very upsetting to think about little kids going hungry and crying themselves to sleep, and how terrible that must have made their moms feel. I cannot even imagine how much it emotionally hurt the moms to listen to their kids cry themselves to sleep from hunger and to not be able to provide for them food because she had to sell the family SNAP supply for cash to keep the heat and lights on. It was also very discouraging to hear that some moms are practically killing themselves, physically, just to give their kids the chance to go to school and wear the uniform and have school supplies so that they have at least have some time in their lives where they feel normal and feel like they belong. The unstable housing otherwise deprived them of having a place where they could belong.

When I was reading about how some of these families have been in multiple homeless shelters over the course of a few months to a year, because the shelters have a time limit in which a family can stay, it was not only very upsetting but also slightly infuriating that we as a country are allowing for this to happen and allowing for families with children to live like this. No body, especially young children who are at very crucial points in development, should have to live a life where they are always moving or getting asked to leave from places that are the only thing ensuring at least some amount of safety for them during the night. I also fully believe that if someone is still trying to find work actively, like one of the mothers in this book was doing, then they should not have to worry about being kicked out of the shelter and worried about finding a new place to stay. I can understand, however right or wrong, asking someone to leave after three or four months of staying in the same shelter if they are not actively seeking a job or trying to find a way out, but if a resident is really trying then they should be allowed to stay and not have to worry about a time limit before getting asked to leave.

Another shocking factor in this book is the amount of illegal activity that so many families have to—regretfully and not very willingly—participate in just to survive. Without partaking in some of the illegal measures discussed in this book, families risk starving to death, freezing to death, or not being able to get money for rent and therefore getting thrown out on to the street with nowhere to go. These practices also allowed for some families to have water for using the restroom, cooking, and bathing. For those who had a car, they also needed the cash from these transactions to buy gas to keep the car going. As a result of many very poor families needing cash, not just government issued debit cards, many families had to result to selling their SNAP benefits, their kids’ social security numbers for others to claim them as dependents, and even their bodies (for the women mainly) in order to bring in any cash that they possibly could. In some instances, some females would have sex with men, sometimes older or younger than them, in exchange for food because they were desperately hungry. Often times, these situations of women having sex with different men would lead to more pregnancies and therefore more mouths to try and feed and house. This, to me, is just sickening. In response to try and survive, the problem ends up growing and more problems result, such as STDs among the women and girls having sex with several men.

In response to these situations happening all over our country, we as Americans need to step up to the plate and work to improve and eventually end this vicious cycle that so many good, hard-working Americans are trapped in. Americans need to push for better funding and better programs to help those on the very bottom, as well push for stronger regulations on where the money goes and what it is actually used for. They need to make sure that states or agencies are not cheating those people who really need the money out of it for the states’ own needs, but instead that all of the government money for the welfare programs is going towards helping those who truly need it. There also needs to be greater support from the American people for the private agencies and organizations/groups working towards doing their part in ending the suppression of those on the very bottom. With more support from Americans as a whole, and across the country, the chance of eliminating severe poverty especially, and at least lessoning the number of those in poverty, will significantly grow. This is a problem that is going to take effort from at least the majority of the country’s citizens and the government in order to eliminate or at least improve.

Your reaction to the cries of the children who were sobbing because they were so hungry and there was nothing to feed them reminds me of that old Brecht musical, which has the lines:

Ihr Herrn, die ihr uns lehrt, wie man brav leben

Und Sünd und Missetat vermeiden kann

Zuerst müßt ihr uns was zu fressen geben

Dann könnt ihr reden: damit fängt es an.

Ihr, die ihr euren Wanst und unsre Bravheit liebt

Das eine wisset ein für allemal:

Wie ihr es immer dreht und wie ihr's immer schiebt

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.

Erst muß es möglich sein auch armen Leuten

Vom großen Brotlaib sich ihr Teil zu schneiden.

This reaction essay captures the general process of converting a person toward an attitude of greater sympathy to the plight of paupers, and eliciting from them a greater commitment to seeing improved anti-poverty policies and services, greater volunteerism, and a heightened sense of priorities related to caring for persons experiencing poverty.  You read realistic accounts of the struggles people face, and this provoked a powerful reaction, and to cope with the reaction, you are suggesting better policies and services. Bear in mind that this is an effective way to educate people to gain their support for any suggestion of improved policies (like providing stable housing assurances to the poorest of the poor); you need to let people hear stories about how harmful it is for children to live without stable housing.