I’m a welfare caseworker, and I’ve wanted to do this for a while. I work in a suburb of a major east coast city so please pardon me for being vague sometimes. I’m going to try to be as in depth as possible without breaching client confidentiality, as I really don’t want to get fired.
All day I deal with people and families receiving Cash Assistance, Food Stamps, and Medicaid. Mostly cash (the official name of it is TANF, which stands for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). I love my job, I really do, but there are days when it makes me want to scream.
For example, this afternoon I have a client coming into the office to apply for TANF. She was just evicted from her home because the landlord she was renting from didn’t pay the mortgage. Sucks right? She’s now living in a family shelter. She lost her job because she had to move and had no transportation. So she walks into the welfare office to apply for benefits (we’ll call this district A). Instead of taking her application, the office hands her the form, but tells her she needs to send it to another district (district B), since that’s where her food stamps were open before she had to move to the shelter. The other district could have easily requested her record be transferred (as it will be later anyway) and they could have handled the application without any additional hassle for the client. Instead, she has to find a way to get almost 10 miles out of the way to district B, have one interview, leave to file for child support in a town 10 miles away (but closer to District A), come back to District B again to finish all the paperwork, then the following week start the mandatory client employment and training program (which is just a few blocks from the shelter and District A). After all of that, her case will be transferred to a worker in the District A!
Sounds ridiculous right? A prime example of government idiocy. And a case were the client who actually needs help gets run around all over town before she can get it.
