Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Welfare-Orientation


Now, back to the orientation during this orientation everyone gathers in a room with a few tables with big piles of paper to fill out with those little stubby no eraser pencils. There are not enough tables or chairs, women are writing on their laps, up against the wall, completing a stack of at least 30 pages of paper work that include the following:

Georgia Department of Human Services Expense Statement it looks like a roster of your monthly bills, gas electric, water, car expenses, etc.
These are things you can no longer pay and why you may have come and apply for TANF. They ask amount due, how often paid, last time paid, amount paid and finally by whom. On the flip side of this expense statement is a Statement of Income and Resources, this side does not make any sense at all if you are a needy family, do you have income and resources?

Then there is the Georgia Department of Human Resources TANF Notice of Family Cap Rule:
Which essentially says that if you happen to receive TANF(cash assistance)  over a ten month period and you have a daughter who is old enough to become pregnant or you become pregnant, you won’t get an increased amount of money for the newest member of the family, this has been in effect since around 1994, this is how it reads in short speak if a family gets cash for two years straight or more after 1994 and for 10 months before May 1, 1997 or after they will only receive the eligible amount declared when they first began to get cash for a total of 48 months during their life time.

I say give us the money up front, give us access to the money immediately if we say we need and can prove it.  If the state is given money for TANF and they are not using it for TANF then aren’t they misappropriating funds, by not giving the money to those who need it, aren’t t they just perpetuating poverty in their state, maybe they have some reason to keep a percentage of the population in their state poor, so they may receive this money in the name of poverty and use it to plug holes in other areas of their state budget.

How, much would that be for me? With one child I would be eligible for about $235.00 a month for 48 months, that comes to… $11,280.00, to get that all at once could change the world for a lot of families.  I would be able to deduct from my $11,280.00 when ever I liked until it is all gone, if I blow it then oh well, it’s a once in a lifetime deal. It would work, it would keep the family above water, it would stimulate the economy, and it would give way to better money management, and could boost self esteem and create a new way of life for many, from now until eternity, at least they could keep their utilities on. 

Then there is the Georgia Department of Human Services TANF Work Requirement Exemption Form you don’t have to look for a job you are exempt from this specific requirement to gain immediate employment. There are few select reasons you may be exempt, being a new mother is one of them, giving you 90 days to get your business in order, bond with the baby, search for day care, etc. you are given 3 of the 48 months of money without having to comply with all the rules. 

These are carbon forms, white on top , yellow on the bottom,  I suspect printed by the State of Georgia, why are they carbon? At the bottom of some of the rest of the sheets are indications they were once carbon also, indicating which color goes to who and the client was an option on these, but perhaps it has been found that a client really does not need to have these papers, so these once carbon copies, that do require a signature in many cases, you do not receive a copy of as the client.

Now these other sheets are just single paper, not carbon and these I suspect are created by the county, are hardly readable, a lot of the spelling and sentence structure is incorrect.

There was a whole section on the back side of the Lanmarc Group, Inc. Sheet that had a revision date at the bottom of June 23, 2008 that was scribbled out, just scribbled over with a pen or pencil and copied that way over and over, was that the revision made in 2008? From what I can gather through the lines there were once rewards or incentives given to participants at one time, buy were no longer, so they just scratched out that part, as if they were angry about it being a part of the whole thing. It was an angry scribble. It looked like it was a good idea and quite helpful to participants something about gift cards at Wal-Mart.

Sloppy, non-professional work is not respected or seen to have much value at all. This makes the client feel as if their needy family is not really that important after all, as if they could be scratched out of existence.
 

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