(This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day. This year’s theme is Poverty.)
My son and I were on welfare together for seven years.
Poverty is not good for one’s self esteem – the stigma worms its way right into your core. While I was on welfare, I finished high school and went on to university, but I still felt unemployable. After years of being a welfare recipient, I felt like a teeny-tiny fish in a vast ocean of supremely bigger and more qualified fish. I felt like I had nothing of value to offer. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hire me.
(By the way, it’s a lot harder now for welfare recipients to get post-secondary education than it was in the 80s. I paid my tuition with student loans, but the government has since reclassified student loans as income, and that income would now make you ineligible for welfare.)
One day I picked up the Ottawa Sun and read an article about The Other Side of Fat City, which was a report about child poverty in Ottawa. The article said something like this: “Thousands of children in Ottawa, through no fault of their own, wake up to the ugly face of poverty every morning.†I read on to discover that “through no fault of their own†was a euphemistic way of saying that poor children were the innocent victims of crappy parents.
I might have had low self-esteem with respect to getting a job, but I thought I was doing a good job of raising a good kid under difficult circumstances.
I got out my poisoned pen and wrote a letter to the editor.
“My child does not wake up to the ‘ugly face of poverty’ each morning,†I said, “He wakes up to my face.†And I went on to tell them that he was poor for reasons unrelated to my parental inadequacies, and that I actually suffered the effects of poverty more than he did, as I was the one who struggled with the practical realities of it while he remained cheerfully oblivious to the fact that we were poor. And I told them that whenever the school had a food drive for ‘the needy,’ he showed up with a can of beans just like all the other kids. So there.
The Ottawa Sun published my letter, along with their standard stupid comment beneath it.
CBC Radio called me later that day. They had read my letter and wanted to interview me live on the Morning Show. Despite my morbid dread of public speaking, I did the interview. Ironically it was during this interview that my 8-year-old son discovered he was living in poverty. It was pretty hard to answer questions like “What’s it like to be poor and raising a child?†without actually talking about being poor and raising a child. I did that interview at 8:00 in the morning while he sat wide-eyed on the couch.
“We’re poor?†he asked solemnly when I got off the phone.
“Yes,†I said, “We’re poor. But it’s okay, don’t worry, nothing has changed. We’ve always been poor.â€
Later that day, I got a call from a woman who had heard the interview and wanted to offer me two things: a pair of skates for my son, and a spot in the Line 1000 Job-Finding Club. This was an intensive three-week program for welfare recipients and people with disabilities, to help them find jobs. It included career counseling, resume-preparation, video-taped mock interviews, access to job listings, and lots of phone calls to potential employers. (I believe Line 1000 lost its funding in 2006 and doesn’t exist anymore.)
I started the Line 1000 program the following week. Before the three weeks were up, I’d landed a job. The job was subsidized through an Ontario government program, whose goal was to help welfare recipients make the transition into the workforce. Basically, only non-profit organizations were eligible for the salary subsidy and only welfare recipients were eligible for the jobs. The government would pay 80% of the salary for the first year, after which the employer could either let the employee go or hire her at full salary. It was a great program (long gone now).
When my subsidized year was up, the organization offered me a permanent, full-time position and I’ve been there ever since – 17 years now.
In addition to student loans, social assistance and supported employment programs, I also depended on subsidized child care, affordable housing, and the encouragement of family and friends. These were all key elements in my transition off welfare and out of poverty.
In retrospect, I was very lucky to have been poor in the 80s. Many of the programs and supports that helped me get off welfare have since been slashed by short-sighted governments who didn’t see their value and who preferred a more punitive approach to poverty. You’ve heard the old saying that it costs money to make money? Well, it costs money to get out of poverty too. I believe we need to invest in people who are trying to extricate themselves and their families from poverty. It’s the right thing to do and it makes good economic sense.
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Some day, you should blog your actual letter to the editor that day.
It brought tears to my eyes when I read about James listening to the interview and worrying about whether you were poor and how well you handled it.
Once again, I am proud to be your sister.
Fabulous story and telling!
Zoom, I’m sending this to friends and family. Very well said!
Well done–both this post and your successful struggle.
FANTASTIC post, Zoom. Thank you for this!!
here via xup’s blog.
wow, this is truly an eye opening and inspiring story. it is so easy for people to make snap judgements – unfortunately, much of the media tends to focus on the negative stories and get everyone all stirred up. i wish your story could be distributed more widely. i have a few people in mind who i will share it with who could use some enlightening.
thanks.
Zoom, this is an excellent and thought-provoking post. Congratulations on your strength, perseverance and success on so many levels. Reflecting on (and posting on) elements of your past is a pretty appropriate thing to do on your 50th! Thanks!
Deb and me both…tears for J and how gracefully you handled it. I am so proud you’re my sister
HAPPY BIRTHDAY and thanks for reminding me about blog action day – go reread the beginning of my post Stone Soup.
You seem to have been blessed with the ability to be rich without money. I think it has to do with your innate intelligence and natural curiosity; with your way of finding the hidden gold in life.
Zoom, I love it when you blog about poverty and social justice. One of my family members is on welfare, despite having a PhD (mental illness can trump any education). Today, the system treats people on welfare as fraudulent until proven otherwise. The only explanation I can come up with for how the conservative government can keep axing social programs, and people keep voting for conservatives, is that they must not have family members who are poor, or if they do, they must attribute it to laziness or some other way that people “deserve” poverty.
Very informative. I grew up poor in the 70s and 80s, and put myself through college with credit cards and food stamps. I can’t imagine having to do all that with a child.
That’s a letter that should be sent out again.
“In retrospect, I was very lucky to have been poor in the 80s.”
I’d also add “…and living in a city.”
Just based on what my family situation was I always knew we were “different” but it wasn’t until after I was deep into high school when I realized we had also been living “in poverty”. I think living in one of the poorer regions of Canada kind of masked the whole thing… but mostly it was mom’s strength of character.
Great story, Zoom.
I did that program through Line 1000 twice. I never had any luck with it, but I’m sad to hear they’re gone now because I know they did excellent work. The workers I was paired with were always very caring, compassionate people who had my best interests at heart – even if that meant telling me I wasn’t ready to work yet.
You said it better than I can. We were poor too, my husband was told the alternatives were to leave me or “stand in front of a truck so you qualify for disability”. Some alternatives.
You are absolutely right, the real problem with anti-poverty programs is that there is no real way to get off of them. Goverment agencies (regardless of contry) seem to think it is more expensive to get people off of welfare than to keep them on.
You (and we) have proved them wrong.
So true. I have great respect for both my mother and Canada’s (unfortunately rapidly shrinking) social saftey net. I get infuriated everytime I here a neocon bemoan funding “welfare bums” with “their” tax dollars.
When my mother left my abusive, alcoholic father she was a stay at home mom with no university education and 10 years removed from the workforce (my age at the time). She left and had to take her 3 sons with her. There was a 3 or so year period during the late 80’s early 90’s where she was on welfare. Being the oldest of those 3 boys I knew we were poor, my 2 younger brothers didn’t quite grasp the concept. It was tough and took alot of self-sacrifice on her part but she provided a normal life for her boys, eventually taking a barely above minimum wage job as a cook as it was better than welfare as benefits were slowly being wittled away at that time. Those 3 sons went on to be productive members of society, 2 graduating University and becoming gainfully employed, and one becoming an apprenticed tradesmen, also gainfully self-employed. I like to think that the $958 a month she got for 3 years was a better investment than increasing police funding to combat the increase in crime that not giving that money in social assistance would cause.
And that’s where the neocons just don’t get it. They see the above situation as the exception to the rule. To them most welfare recipients are lazy bums defrauding the system and unwilling to find meaningful work. There is definitely a stigma to being on welfare and call me naive, but I think most people on welfare would rather not be on it given a “reasonable” choice. By reasonable choice, I mean a job that provides at least the bare necessities for oneself (and family) and a minimum wage job doesn’t cover that…
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the value of hard work and rugged individualism, I am now 8 years graduated and still paying back my student loans (thank you Mike Harris and deregulating tuition), but sometimes people just need a helping hand temporarily to get by.
I for one would rather help my fellow man than watch then call them lazy and watch them starve.
Happy Birthday! Another passionate, articulate post, Zoom. There was a period in my adolescence when my family was on welfare. Both my parents were ill (my father nearly died) and my sister and baby brother and I would have had nothing to live on. I’ll never forget how humiliating the experience was for my parents.
Excellent post, as usual. I am very tempted to forward it to both McGuintys and to our city councillor, (and probably will)
What Oma said…
Excellent post. Thanks for sharing. I wish more people could/would read that. Most of us tend to forget that there are people on welfare who really need and deserve it. We see the tricksters and people who are cheating the system and assume everyone on welfare is playing the same game when they aren’t.
One other thing I would add to your post is that it’s not easy to go on welfare, from a psychological standpoint. I had to go on it once during my divorce. After my first appointment, I fled and didn’t go back, didn’t send in the forms I needed to, didn’t take any money. I scavenged for two months rather than face what I perceived as the humiliation of asking for handouts. I did eventually have to go back because it was literally that or starve. Fortunately, it was of very short duration because I found a job right after I finished signing up. Still, if I felt like that, it stands to reason that most people have no other alternative do as well. It’s easy to think people want “free money”, hard to realize that that money isn’t quite as free and easy as one would think.
Who are the tricksters people see? For people without children welfare is not a remotely livable amount of money. My family member might have $100 a month tops after rent, although I doubt she gets as much as that.
“My child does not wake up to the ‘ugly face of poverty’ each morning,†I said, “He wakes up to my face.†Beautiful! And your statement about being glad you were on welfare in the 80s is a huge understatement. What is happening to all the people now who are in similar situations and who don’t have access to the support systems you did? Excellent post.
Who are these “tricksters”? If you mean those caught in generational poverty the solution is to have a humane welfare system that puts money into programs that have actual benefits in helping people get off welfare – like EDUCATION, DAYCARE, AFFORDABLE HOUSING.
The figures on welfare abuse are miniscule compared to public perception of it. I wonder who is responsible for that?
This blog post is perfect. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My daughter and I were ever so briefly on welfare in the early nineties. Nothing near the duration you and your son experienced. How do people oppose social safety nets? I know they do it.. . but I wish I could understand WHY. Then I could better change their minds!
Accidental Altruist – Really, you don’t know why people oppose social programs? Because the money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is taxes and no one wants to pay more taxes —NO, in fact we always vote for the guy who promises to reduce our taxes. Tax reduction always means cuts to “unnecessary” stuff like the arts and social programs and education.
Thank you ALL for taking the time to leave comments.
So many people have their own experiences of poverty, either as children or as adults. Our stories are so much richer than the dehumanizing stereotypes we’ve inadvertently and collectively absorbed. It means a lot to me that we can talk about it here. Maybe the stigma of poverty will in some small way be lessened when we can challenge the stereotypes with our own true stories.
It’s great to see a few first-time commenters here – Jazz, Meanie, Accidental Altruist, wrongshoes, anonymous. I’ve seen some of you around on other blogs, and I’m happy to welcome you to mine too.
Thank you.
I once worked with this guy from Suriname and he said his father taught him to say that he was broke, not poor. He said that being poor was forever, whereas you could always get some money somehow and stop being broke. It’s an interesting perspective.
If everyone in a predicament could write as well as you, we probably wouldn’t have anyone in a predicament. Keep on being an advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves.
Tricksters you ask? I personally know a whole bunch, as in entire families. I know for a fact that they scam the American Government for every dime they can get. They get a job for long enough to be able to go back on umemployment and then purposely lose it. They’ve been given good paying jobs, jobs that pay better than what I earn, and then mouth off to their boss so they lose it because they don’t want to work. They use every loophole they can to get more money for “their kids” and then go out and spend it on drugs and entertainment. I’ve heard them say they need to have another kid so they can up their welfare money. They’ve tried claiming twice for the same child by having different family members make the same claim. And all of this because they literally don’t want to work.
This isn’t hearsay, it’s not from any report, newspaper or television show, it’s fact. I’ve seen it. I’ve spoken to these people (they are “friends” of my father – it’s a long story and it’s why I’m so sure of the actual facts) and they admit it all – as long as there are no witnesses. If I had enough proof, I would have gone to the authorities long ago. There are people out there who need that money to get by and to see dishonest people cheating the system and effectively taking it from the needy makes me so mad I could spit. Unfortunately, the actions of the dishonest also tend to make the general public lump everyone on welfare into the same boat when that’s not at all the case. Those are the tricksters I was referring to. Even if they aren’t the rule, they are the perception thereof and are still contributing to poverty in more ways than one.
Of course there are people out there cheating the welfare system. There are people cheating every single system the human race has ever devised. However, the scale upon which the welfare system can be cheated by the poor is miniscule compared to the scale upon which, say, the income tax system can be cheated by the non-poor. Also, we tend to think of white-collar crime as somehow more respectable than welfare cheating.
Thank you for taking the time to post about your experiences!
I have been on welfare for five months after my employment insurance ran out and work would not take me back based on my modified duties as listed by my doctor. furthermore, not wanting to return to an environment that was negative and filled with harassment that my employer was willing to over look. i am presently in a career transitions program for people with mental health issues and i am feeling more optimistic and supported. its great to have someone in your corner that understands. welfare is barely enough and i worry that i may lose my apartment because leaving it would mean moving to living conditions that are triggering to my mental well being. so i struggle and persevere and remind myself that a self defined perception is critical to maintaining a positive attitude.
Thank you for sharing your experience Lulu. I hope your career transitions program helps you find the right career, and that you don’t have to leave your apartment.