With #NoShameParenting, Yahoo Parenting is telling the inspiring, funny, honest, and heartbreaking true stories of families around the country in an effort to spark conversation, a little compassion, and change the way we think about parenting forever.
Three years ago, my husband abandoned my two young children and me. As a stay-at-home mom, my grief was pushed to the side by the overwhelming realization that I had absolutely no way to provide for my kids. With no family to help me, an empty bank account, no job of my own, and two kids relying on me, I was terrified that we were going to end up homeless and hungry on the streets.
As much as I was ashamed to admit it, welfare seemed to be my only option.
It was a Tuesday morning when I gathered up the courage to walk into the Department of Human Services looking for help. I got there right when the office opened, not realizing that people routinely show up hours before then to get in line. I waited six hours with a crying baby in my arms and a restless toddler clinging to my leg before I finally saw a social worker.
With my house in foreclosure and no money for an apartment, I was devastated to learn that the housing assistance program, known as section 8, had a waiting list that was more than five years long and was closed to new applicants. There was nothing the social worker could do except give me information for a shelter that offered up to six weeks of residency — when they had room.
If I made less than $400 a month, I was eligible for a small amount of cash assistance — less than $100 a week for a family of three — but I was also required to volunteer 20 hours a week or participate in job training. While I was not against that, with two young kids I was unable to do either as the waiting list for a daycare assistance program was six months long.
There were also hurdles to getting food stamps (also known as SNAP), thanks to an in-office paperwork delay of six months for new applicants, so I signed up for the “Women, Infant, and Children” program (WIC), which gives low income mothers vouchers to buy specific food items. But I soon abandoned that completely because I didn’t have childcare for the time-consuming classes the program required, and it proved too difficult to find the WIC-approved food items in the end. While I’m in no position to be complaining, if I wanted to keep a job, I couldn’t spend two full days a month sitting in a WIC office with my children, only to find out that none of my local stores carried the very specific items that WIC approves.
Eventually we were approved for food stamps, but despite the fact that my kids and I live far under the poverty line, a state budget crisis means that our benefit amount is so low that I am left standing in line at the food pantry just to be able to feed my kids.
The first big stepping stone in truly building a better future came when we were finally approved for subsidized daycare and I was able to begin working in what amounts to a minimum wage job. But even though I was only making $8.50 an hour, I was now disqualified from cash assistance.
Still, I was one of the lucky ones. Due to budget deficits, many lawmakers have cut childcare assistance funding and left financially unstable parents with no way to better their lives. In Illinois, for example, 90 percent of applicants don’t qualify, even if they only make $665 a month. But childcare costs as much as (or more than) college tuition in many states; which nearly cancels out any money earned from a minimum-wage job.
As my kids grew older, and the care required for their special needs intensified, my biggest struggle has been relying on the so-called “free health insurance” provided to welfare recipients. We may have “free” health insurance, but the Affordable Healthcare Act has flooded the system with so many Medicaid patients that there simply aren’t enough doctors to see us. With two young kids who get sick often, I was crushed to learn that the pediatrician Medicaid assigned to us is based several hours from our home. Recently, even our local hospital was moved out-of-network. My son is in desperate need of specialized care, but has been on the waiting list to see a specialist for 18 months now — a list the office receptionist told me he would probably never make it to the top of because privately insured patients would be moved ahead of him.
We have free health insurance, but that doesn’t mean we have healthcare. In a country as developed as America, it sickens me to know that medical care is often unavailable to my children.
I’m in no position to be complaining about the assistance I receive, but because of how broken the system is, it’s not only leaving us hungry, sick, and stressed, it’s failing to help me get to a more stable place.
I want to get my family out of the system, but at this point I can’t figure out how. If I make even $100 more per month, my children and I will no longer qualify for public assistance and I will need to be able cover the full amount of my children’s daycare, food, and health insurance costs. I would obviously like to support my own family, but when welfare cuts people off for having a savings account, how can I ever prepare for that? And if I can’t plan ahead, how can I essentially triple my income to cover my costs in one month’s time?
I have no idea and because of that, I’m trapped. The government has given me no wiggle room, no opportunity to grow, no sliding scales that I can work with while I dig myself out of this hole. I’m stuck in a broken system that I can’t get out of, I’m a debt on society, and I’m forever surrounded by the stigma of being a “welfare mom.”
I am a welfare mom and I can tell you, it’s a nightmare come true.
America, the land of the free… homeless, hungry, sick, and trapped.
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http://news.yahoo.com/i-am-a-welfare...351882294.html
govt/publc health insurance paid by a percentage of all revenues is part of the answer.
another part is no-profit govt health
No matter who designed the current welfare system, the Repugs are ideologically committed to ing it up more, and screw over the Ms of ladies like the one above.
There is no way to help everyone. What was designed as a safety net can no longer catch those with a sudden change in lifestyle, and they should be the ones first served. The "breeders" should be cut off as more deserving people need help.
maybe we should cut back on giveaways to people who don't really need it:
http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/who-...sing-subsidiesThe federal tax code allows homeowners to write off mortgage interest payments from their income before calculating their tax bill. Although it’s old news for tax- and housing-policy wonks that homeowners are getting federal subsidy payments, it may surprise others who assume that the federal government’s housing assistance goes mostly to low-income renters.
The mortgage interest deduction adds up to a lot of money – an estimated $131 billion in 2012. That dwarfs total spending by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (under $50 billion). The biggest tax benefits go to high-income homeowners who’ve taken out big mortgages for expensive homes. Recent results from the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Model show that means affluent white families living in the suburbs, not the low- or moderate-income people who are struggling to buy homes or make ends meet or the central city neighborhoods that need reinvestment.
How about we stop letting in thousands of illegals and refugees and take better care of our own?
illegal immigrants are a net gain to the economy, over $1B+.
If SS contrib can be capped, certainly mortgage deductions can be capped. Like no deduction at all for homes priced at 2x the regional median home price.
There are a lot of issues with the welfare system. A lot of it is abuse by people who game the system and have for most of their lives. Another problem is that it's run by the federal government instead of a private agency who could better streamline the process. Eventually though it will come down to who we mean when we say "we". When we want to help others, are the others part of the "we" or they just part of the "others"? If they are the former, then they should also have the same criteria for being "we" as we do, and if they are the latter, then their citizenship shouldn't matter and it's going to be a bleed out.
What doesn't need to happen is fleecing of people who've climbed out of that situation on their own just to feed the beast of welfare.
It almost always comes down to the fact that you cannot legislate human behavior, only punishment for the undesirable type. Punishment cost money, and when you spend money on something you're trying to get money from, you're getting a double whammy.
"cannot legislate human behavior"
typical rightwingnut conviction that people deserve to be poor because they are bad people, God doesn't love them, when a very large proportion of people on public assistance are employed in ty paying jobs because Repugs refused to raise the Fed minimum wage to a living wage level, and so many (Repug) businesses are based on paying exploitative, poverty wages.
A lot of mothers want to work, but day care is so expensive their ty wages don't pay for day care and other cost of living (and cost of working)
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-14-2015 at 12:32 PM.
There are people who really need it, but, like anything else, it's horribly abused.
are you equally upset by BigCorp hiding $Ts offshore?
OOICU812...
I don't think mortgages should be a tax write-off, but then I think all income write-offs need to be eliminated.
Maybe we should find a means of stopping a second abuse of women having children who cannot afford them.
Exchange subsidies for tube tying. Same with the father. If he cannot provide for the child he makes, require he have his tubes tied too, for subsidies to the mother.
state subsidized sterilization after means-testing people for parental suitability?
hard to believe you'd bring this up again, but then again, it's not.
(this comment has been endorsed by Libertarians for State Regulation of Human Fertility)
They need to go after the s bag husband, garner his wages, force him to support his kids and give her alimony. This poor woman should contact some of the bigger churches in her area - they sometimes have ministries to help people in her situation.
that immigrants are a drain on resources is a very common premise, but one that is seldom backed up with empirical support.
even if it were, it would be difficult to show that helping one precludes helping the other.
Or is the USA morally and economically not up to the challenge?
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-14-2015 at 01:31 PM.
another common premise. can you offer anything besides anecdotal support for it? just how widespread and horrible is the abuse?
Human behavior includes knocking up women and never paying child support. You can arrest guys and put them in jail for failure to pay child support, but you're still not getting any money from them and now you're paying more yourself to house and feed the bums.
The solution to these issues isn't palatable so it won't be used in our lifetimes. China had the answer with only allowing one child per couple. You should not be allowed to have a child if you're a habitual drug user. In order to get welfare a person should be forced to get birth control, not just the pill that requires they comply daily, but a way to stop pregnancy until such time as the individual becomes self sufficient.
There are a lot of human rights issues with doing a lot of the necessary things to reduce or eliminate poverty, so if anyone here wants to go down that road understand that's the fire you're starting.
However once again Croutons misreads. I am atheist, voted Democrat in the last election (last two actually) and was born dirt poor. That doesn't give me any exclusive insight, however my family never relied on welfare or subsidies. I was lucky enough that my parents cared about each other and were hard workers. Lazy, drug and alcohol abusing uneducated people who produce offspring like a ing factory producing widgets are going to load any welfare system and their kids aren't going to have the same impetus to climb out of it as I had, since it's now possible to have an entire generation of families totally dependent on welfare and illegal revenue from drug sales.
Along that same note, do you have the ability to do anything about it if you were given that data? If not, why do you need it? Do you just want to be right?
it's not my hobby horse. I wouldn't do anything with it. I don't think welfare fraud, even if it were common -- which I tend to doubt -- is a good reason to curtail assistance to folks who need it.
I hide as much as I can be n my 401k.
She should go work in a gas station or something where she can get paid straight cash by the habib running the place tbh.
Here’s an amazingly simple way to cut poverty
l: In 2013, 15 percent of people eligible for food stamps didn't get them — down from a whopping 31 percent in 2007. In 2012, 20 percent of people eligible for the earned income tax credit(EITC) didn't get it.
an experiment in conjunction with the IRS in which they sent mailings to 35,050 tax filers in California who didn't claim the EITC in 2009, despite their tax returns indicating that they were eligible and despite an initial reminder notice from the IRS. Collectively, these filers had left $26 million to which they were en led on the table.
Overall, 22 percent of people getting the survey responded and claimed their money.
What would really make a difference, and unlock billions in currently unclaimed money, is a system of automatic dispersal.
The IRS typically knows most people's wage income from W-2s filed by employers, and so can probably guess who's eligible for the EITC and file those people's returns for them, ensuring they get the benefits.
, the IRS could file returns for everybody
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...udy-experiment
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