Quicksand

So few things change when you spend each day trying to rise out of a bad situation, or more aptly, trying not to sink further.  Poverty is very much like quicksand, the more you struggle the deeper you sink.  Yet, you have to do something in order to stop the slow drowning.  Its just trying to figure out what to do without making the problems worse.  This is where we are now.

In our endeavor to keep a roof over our heads, and food on the table while looking for employment, as always, we have to fulfill certain obligations.  This week we had to recertify our information in order to continue to receive food stamps.  Let me take you on a trip through this process.

First, we receive the packet paperwork.  We see that it is due back very soon, with less than a full business week to take care of it.  We also see that we can recertify online.  This shouldn't be too big of a deal.  Except... when we first applied for food stamps the person at the health and welfare office filled the information in incorrectly.  Even though we had turned in paperwork with all of the correct information and all of the required documentation.  We had no idea of this until we went online to recertify.  To recertify online you have 48 hours from your first keystroke to finish the process.  So now the clock is ticking.

We have no reason not to be honest in this process.  We never have had a reason to falsify information.  But what do you do when you realize that your initial paperwork is incorrect? There is a huge amount of fear involved, because that is how the state works. The idea of having to pay back the cash amount of the food stamps and health insurance for our children over the past 5 months is too scary to make mistakes.  We decide to go to the Health and Welfare office to talk to a real person.  I had to take time off from free work in order to go to the H&W office. I also have not experienced any great supernatural healing as of yet and I still use crutches.

The waiting room is populated with some young families, a few women and children, an older couple and us.  They no longer have a receptionist, as they did a few months ago. They are short-staffed. There is a sign asking that people wait in line in order to receive a number.  My husband waits in line and I sit down.  A very disgruntled worker yells at me to remain in line.  I point and tell her that I'm with him, and he's in line.  She doesn't understand that we are together and she continues to yell at me to get in line.  He tells her that we are together and he's in line.  She doesn't understand and continues to yell at me to get in line.  She finally, while glaring smugly at me, gives him the next number.  She watches as he brings me the paper, and it finally dawns on her that we are together.  No apologies for yelling at us.  Poor people don't deserve to be treated with any sort of respect, and this is no more obvious than in the Health and Welfare office.

We finally talk to a person that while nice enough, really has no interest in helping us with the recertification process.  She does explain that the very short due date is actually a "target" date and not the actual due date. She smiles and tells us to use the incorrect information in our recertification.

Now, think about this.  We provided correct information to begin with, but it was entered incorrectly by a state employee. We were told to continue to use incorrect information on a state form, by a state employee.  We are treated poorly by another state employee.  If you are certain that fraud is rampant in the state system, how can you be sure its the people using the system, and not the people who are paid to help them?  If our application is found to be incorrect, we are the ones who will suffer because of it.  Nothing will happen to the employee who inputted the information incorrectly into the system.  Nothing will happen to state employee who acted inappropriately because I did not stand in the line.  Nothing will happen to the employee who told us to continue to use the incorrect information.

"Entitlement" rhetoric relies heavily on the supposed vast amounts of fraud in the welfare system.  Due to my experience as someone who is using welfare to help my family survive, and from others in the same position, I am beginning to see that wrong-doing in the welfare system stems more from the blatant mistreatment and purposeful misleading of those most vulnerable, by those who are supposed to help.