Welfare - Orientation part 2

Your name is called along with maybe 5-7 others and you are sent to a waiting area until the specific person you are assigned to, called a case manager, calls your name to meet with you individually in her office to review your stack of paper work and give you the next designated step to receive TANF, money.

This is when you are informed that you will need to begin to attend a work activity program. You are given the name and location and the date and time to begin and told that if transportation is a problem, then you can be provided with a free weekly public transit pass, which will be available for you to pick up the upcoming Friday between 9:00am and 11:00am. I was ecstatic about that, I could go anywhere the system went and that was my goal to go anywhere and everywhere on my quest for employment.

 My car had been broke since May; I walked everywhere I had to go, if I couldn’t walk to it, Oh well. I hate it though because my son is in the school band. Last year I couldn’t go to any performances, practices or anything. This kind of situation in a family’s life hurts the most when you think of how much it hurts the children in these families. The parents have to try and wear a face of it’s going to be okay, and the children know they are hurting, they see and feel  their parents fear and pain right through any mask they try and wear to cover it up. Hurting people, hurt people! Someone said (find out who said this) you see it all the time, the children crying, small ones little ones and the parents frowning and yelling and even swatting and yelling at them. To someone who didn’t understand it might look abusive or neglectful, but I assure you, that parent, that woman is hurting, she is in pain and she feels abused and neglected when all she can count on is TANF.

In some quest to cure the ills of this percent of the US population the question was asked, “Why can’t you get a job”? Some one or some study somewhere or some survey indicated the biggest response was “I can’t get there”, I remember it being said that transportation was the number one cause of the peoples’ in ability to change their standing in life. Solve the problem of transportation and end poverty.

 There were many people talking about how the local transit system was not the best; it could be better, as a matter of fact there was a vote about it about to take place July 31, 2012. I looked forward to the outcome. Many people wanted to vote no because it would mean neglecting the needs of one group for the interests of another group, who nearly always saw their interests satisfied. Wasn’t that the problem that started it all? So I wanted to participate in the vote and make my own judgment of the public transit system.   If transportation was the reason for my shortcomings we were about to find out.

My first question was how long before I receive money? The answer was you must complete the work activity program, I then asked how long is that, I was told 45 days. Now I was disappointed, I needed assistance for my family now, not in 45 days, and besides how was I suppose to pick up a free transit card if I had no money to pay for transportation to get to it? I was told that was totally my problem, if I wanted to get the TANF this is how it starts.