Student offers a review of the Frontline documentary Poor Kids

In class, we watched the film Poor Kids, a documentary involving three families and focusing on the children and how being poor affected them. The film showed many different living situations, from living in a very tiny motel room to a family in a homeless shelter, the effects of poverty were obvious in each situation. The families all had many similarities. Two of the three families were two-parent households which to me is a good point to show that poverty can happen even to the “all American family”. I feel that some people may have the misconception that most poor children come from a household headed by a single mother and this is not necessarily true. Also, the adults in each of the families were actively searching for work or working a job that was inconvenient just to try and make any money they could for their family. 

For example, the one family in which the father did have a job, he was working in a factory that was something like an hour away and his wife and children all had to pile in the van and make the commute to his job every day. The reason his wife had to bring the kids every time is because the homeless shelter they were living in would not allow the children to be unsupervised. Other parents were putting applications in at every place in near vicinity and just hoping for the best. 

In the case of the third family, which was a single mother and her two children, the town that they lived in looked to have absolutely nothing. It was run down, and you could tell its glory days were long past. The mother had learned a trade, she was a hairdresser, but she couldn’t find work at any salons. In this case, the physical effects of poverty were very evident. The mother didn’t have money to dress in what would be considered salon appropriate clothing and she had poor dental care (assumingly from lack of ever being able to afford it), and these things only exacerbate the struggle to find a job. Her 12-year-old son was mowing lawns to try and make any extra money possible to give to his mother to help feed the family.

 In all cases, these children were very aware of the situations going on around them. They knew that their families were poor and struggling, and most of them mentioned that their lives weren’t always like this. The hardest part for me was to hear these children express such grim outlooks for the future. One little girl mentioned that in the future all the jobs will be gone, and this is just sad. This is something most children never think of, but when this is all children see, it is easy for them to believe that there aren’t opportunities. 

This movie shows how poverty is a cycle that is hard to end. Five years after the initial movie was filmed, they went back to revisit the children, and in all cases, they were still struggling. They may have been a little better off but they were by no means out of poverty’s grasp. In one family, the father had finally found a job and the son, who was now out of high school, was working along side his father, and they were both just hoping that these jobs would hold out. This is an example of the son going down the same path his father had, and I would guess that throughout his adult life he is going to struggle just like his father because his only option was to get out of school and go straight into working a low wage job just to make ends meet.  In all the families, it seemed that the boys struggled to make it through high school, they either got in trouble or just didn’t have motivation; and the girls were a little more focused on trying to do well in school and make it somewhere.

All in all, I think everyone should have to watch this movie and be exposed to how kids in poverty are living. This is a hard reality, but all communities have children that are struggling, and there needs to be a focus on resources that help these children and their families. If we don’t make it a goal to help children, more than likely they are going to continue down the path of poverty throughout their life. 

Student offers an overview of what students learn about in a social work policy class

Social Policy has opened my eyes to lots of areas the American government is lacking in regards to providing the necessary resources families need to meet their basic needs. For one, learning about welfare reform has been very interesting. $2 a Day showed that people no longer believe they are eligible for resources, even when they are in an incredibly rough state. Currently, the way assistance programs are set up in the United States, they don't meet as much as a need as there is. For one, the movie Poor Kids showed that people were so poor in America. It makes me really angry that as a country with so many resources, we let children go hungry on a daily basis. The idea of hunger is something children in foreign far away countries might struggle with, but I believe it's a problem that absolutely should not exist in America. 

This class has also brought insight on how people think about the same topics in completely different ways, especially politically. I believe a part of this is due to political ideation but I also concur that some just has to do with upbringing. If someone was brought up poor they are naturally going to have a different idea about something than someone who grew up never needing any government assistance. I do value learning and processing how peers feel about issues. In some instances the class has been able to come to a mutual understanding and in some circumstances we have not. This reminds me of learning about tribal political beliefs. If we as a class or even as a society are able to get to a level where we can hear each other out, I believe there is great benefit in that. 

Social Policy and Culture and Diversity have had a lot of similar topics this semester. For one, both classes have brought up the issue of racial disparities in many areas of the United States. These are seen in health care, the prison system, and even in employment. We see in the news on a daily basis, people being treated two different ways based upon if they are white or black. Part of being a social worker in this area would be to advocate for actual equality, not the perceived equality some people believe we have in America. 

To conclude, I have already learned quite a lot in this class and am looking forward to the resources I will obtain that will help me to be a more informed citizen and a better social worker. Before attending this class, I have not stayed up on current events. I think these homework assignments will help me change that. Parts of this class have been difficult for me because policy doesn't necessarily relate to the area of social work that I want to work in. I do believe regardless of what area I work in, there is something I can get out of this class. 

A student shares their opinions about TANF

A social welfare policy that grabs my attention is TANF. TANF is a cash assistance program to help families buy basic necessities to survive. This program even provides transitional services to help families become self-sufficient. In class we learned that TANF is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. In February of 2018 the Office of Family Assistance at Health and Human Services published a report documenting that total combined federal and state costs for TANF (and the states' maintenance-of-effort expenditures that go along with TANF as part of the same policy) were $30.9 billion. However, only a relatively small portion of this expenditure (seemingly about 36% at most) went to cash assistance. Much of the spending went toward work, education, and training activities; child care; child welfare services; pre-kindergarten and Head Start; services for children & youth; work supports; out-of-wedlock pregnancy prevention; and program management. In any given month during 2015, about 1.63 million families with 4.17 million persons were receiving help through TANF.  About 48.6% of those on the TANF caseload were in child-only cases (families with no adult; the TANF support was for children).  The average monthly assistance for persons getting TANF benefits was valued at just under $400.  

There are things I agree with and disagree with about the TANF program.  One reason I like the TANF program is because it provides families with temporary financial assistance. I also like that you must be a U.S. citizen; however, I don’t like under certain circumstances immigrants can receive TANF. They should be U.S. citizens. Families can receive TANF for five years. I feel like this is a little long for people to be on this program. I would think three years would give someone plenty of time to get back on their feet.

People on TANF must have a plan to become self-sufficient. This is the number one reason I like this program. Since this program requires people on TANF to work towards being self-sufficient, I would think it would motivate people to get out and get back on their feet. I know not all people want to live on welfare programs for the rest of their lives.  Another thing I like about TANF is most families are also eligible to receive SNAP. SNAP benefits help families buy food. SNAP is the supplemental nutrition assistance program. 

Some people take advantage of the welfare programs. We always hear stories about the one on welfare who don’t get out and try to help themselves. They want everyone to do it for them. We never hear about the ones who are working their butt off to try to get back on their feet and make a better living for themselves. My question is, does the Illinois Department of Human Services follow these guidelines?   I know there are some exceptions. One exception I know of is if you are in a vocational program that will finish within six months of the 60-month deadline. I agree with this exception, because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This person is working towards bettering themselves. They have proof of trying to better themselves too. 

Self-sufficiency is indeed a noble goal, and something most people can achieve.  Of course, while we want people to be self-sufficient, we must realize that most of the persons who receive benefits from TANF are children.  Nearly half of the TANF cases are children without adults, and among the families with adults, most of those families do have children.  We don't expect all those children to be self-sufficient, do we?  Not yet, at least.  What are your thoughts about persons who don't seem likely to achieve self-sufficiency?  I'm not just thinking of persons who have significant mental illnesses or developmental disabilities or physical impairments or chronic health problems—what about the people who are not very intelligent and have had horrible childhoods so that they are fragile and not very competent?  What if such persons can't get and keep a decent job?  What are we to do with them?

You also mention your opposition to non-citizens receiving TANF benefits.  I hope you will look into this issue.  One group of immigrants who get TANF for up to eight months are Iraqi and Afghani refugees. Do you think we Americans have any special obligations to refugees from those countries? Also, what about legal foreign residents who are fleeing from spousal abuse?  There are 28 states that allow TANF benefits for battered spouses and their children, but do you really think that the 22 states that don't make this program available to that population have a superior policy?  It's something to think about.

Student describes personal value of SNAP, SSI, and Medicaid

In my opinion, this student offers a convincing personal testimony about the value of SSI, Medicaid, and SNAP as programs that help persons with disabilities enjoy a better standard of living. These programs prevent the sort of desperate poverty and malnutrition we don't want in our society. 

Since I became disabled at the age of sixteen I have received a lot of government assistance, which has helped me survive and get by. The first assistance I can remember receiving was Supplemental Security Income when I turned eighteen. The Supplemental Security Income program was established during the Nixon Administration. It was essentially a restructuring of the Social Security Act’s public assistance programs for blind and older Americans. The program assists poor people aged 65 or older as well as blind people and people with disabilities. People with disabilities, like myself, are the largest group in Supplemental Security Income clients. “Disability” is defined under the Supplemental Security Income guidelines as a “physical or mental impairment that prevents substantial employment activity and has lasted or probably will last for a least a year or may result in death. As I stated before I started receiving Supplemental Security Disability when I was eighteen and I am still receiving it today at the age of twenty-three. I am grateful to be able to have this income because it has helped me be able to support myself while being a full-time student and has also helped be able to provide for my son over the last two years. Although for me it is not an ideal income to survive on forever, it has been an amazing benefit to have over the last seven years of my life since I have been unable to work. 

[Back in the 1990s when I was a graduate student the Social Security Administration published an interesting report authored by Sata Kochhar and Charles G. Scott describing all the different sorts of disabilities among SSI recipients the prevalence of various conditions.  That report is still available online.  For the most recent data (which is not at all detailed like that 1995 report was, you can go to the Statistical Yearbook from Social Security, and see that (in December of 2016) 5.8 million SSI recipients were disabled, 1.2 of these were both blind and disabled, and only 1.2 million were elderly.]

One thing I have been blessed with my entire life is private insurance from my mom. It has been a blessing to never have to worry about going to the doctor or getting my medicine. Before having Medicaid, having private insurance was a huge benefit to me and my family. I was life lighted to a hospital when I had my car accident and my private insurance covered every penny of my twenty plus thousand-dollar helicopter ride. I am explaining the ways that private insurance has benefited me because I also want to explain how it has hindered me in ways since becoming disabled. The situation I am going to use is when I was still doing physical therapy and my private insurance was basically slowly trying to kick me out of physical therapy all together. They began limiting my monthly visits and time to an amount that made it almost pointless to go anymore. At that point my physical therapist and doctor began trying to get my private insurance to cover a ‘sit to stand’ machine that I could have at home since I was not going to be able to use one at therapy for very much longer. The sit to stand was a machine that I could transfer into that would lock my knees into place and let me slowly pump the machine up to a standing position. It was a great way for me to stretch my legs, bare weight on my legs and let my insides breath from a normal body position. This sit to stand machine would provide multiple benefits for my body.  

I went through a couple different companies applying for a sit to stand machine in hopes of getting approved for it. But it wasn’t until I received Medicaid that I finally was approved for the sit to stand. After being denied multiple times by private insurance, I was approved on the first try with Medicaid, and I could not have been happier. Because of Medicaid I was able to continue my therapy from home and not have to worry about getting the proper exercise I needed. Today even when my private insurance won't cover all or part of a bill, Medicaid almost always covers the costs. Medicaid is a major health program and helps millions of people like myself. To explain Medicaid more, it is a federal grant to states that helps finance health care for the poor. Federal regulations specify the basic health services that must be offered under Medicaid. Yet, services are primarily administered by individual states including decisions regarding the duration of services and optional services. Medicaid is a “vendor system” which means payments are made directly to the service and provider. Many recipients of Medicaid are families with Temporary Assist to Needy Families (TANF). However, the most Medicaid dollars go to people who are blind or have other disabilities. Furthermore, most Medicaid spending on older Americans is for nursing home care. 

Another program that has been a big help in my life since becoming disabled is food stamps. The Food Stamp Program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) was designed to help end hunger and improve nutrition and health. It helps low-income households buy the food they need for a nutritionally adequate diet. The Illinois Department of Human Services administers the program in our state, but at the federal level the program is administered by the Department of Agriculture. Food stamp benefits can be used to buy any food or food product for human consumption, plus seeds and plants for use in home gardens to produce food. Benefits are provided through The Illinois Link System, an electronic system that allows someone to use a plastic card, like a bank card, at grocery store check-outs. Most households with low income can get food stamp benefits. I started receiving food stamps when I moved out of my mom’s house at the age of nineteen. When I first moved out I moved into an income-based apartment complex by myself, so I only received around $65 when I lived there. After I moved out of my apartment and into a house I was renting for quite a bit more money, they increased my monthly amount to around $195, which was awesome. I was always able to keep my house stocked with food throughout the entire month. Once I had my son, my monthly amount increased to around $320 and it has been an absolute blessing for my son and me. My son has been blessed to be able to have all the food he has ever needed in his two years. Without the help of my food stamps, I would not have been able to keep food in my refrigerator and cabinets a lot of the time. 

I know one of the articles I came across had some older information, but the key points of these programs were still clear. In my opinion, although some of these programs may be flawed in certain ways, they are none the less beneficial to those truly in need. Without federal and state programs like I mentioned, among many other assistance programs, people like myself would not be able to survive or provide for themselves and/or their families.

References

Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare. (2017, October 30). Retrieved February 24,

2018, from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/current-issues-and-programs-in-social-welfare/

Illinois Food Stamp Program. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2018, from

https://www.benefits.gov/benefits/benefit-details/1260

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.