ty!:) I should have started by telling Q that I have often felt the way Q is feeling. There is nothing more infuriating than working with people who appear to not WANT to change, who settle into the welfare life, and who don't inspire their children to see ways out. I had to work through that to see the good the system does do at times, desite all its flaws.
I have seen a lot of derisive comments about social workers made, mostly by conservatives who not only see little value in what they do, but believe that social workers actually don't SEE the inherent problems in a system that can breed dependence. From my experiences, that;s way offbase. You bet we see it. But we see the rest of it, too. And that's what the critics don't get to see.
I was just thinking about the "cheats"...There was a small community in the county, a very strange place. To get to it, you went into the mountains, a beautiful drive that somehow felt like timetravel. Over the peak of a hill, you looked down at these small wooden houses, handbuilt, with smoke coming out of all the chimneys because they all heated with woodstoves, and junk in the yards, and a few scrawny vicious dogs. (I always had a large stick with me). One of my families was a young man who was on SSI disability- he had lost an arm in a logging accident. He was stunningly handsome- surprisingly so because the Valley was very inbred, and everyone had a sort of washed out, weak look, as if the genes were getting tired. We had gotten a call from some do-gooder that he was OH NO cutting wood and I had to "investigate" it.
I sat in their smokey living room, if you could call it that- since it was sort of a kitchen-bedroom too, his pallid wife by his side crying because she thought I was going to take him jail or something, and, and listened to this young man, sleeve pinned up, admit that yes he had chopped some wood and sold it and not reported it as income.
How did you do that! I asked.
With one arm, he said. I can chop, it's just slow.
ANd he wanted to take me out back to show me, because he was actually- and justifiably- proud.
My god.
Welfare king, indeed. |
