Our roving reporter Kendall Worth was walking down Spring Garden when some people who knew of his poverty activism and writing asked if he would tell their story. Here it is. No money for groceries, but many mental health and health problems, and lots of people looking down on them as if it is all their fault somehow.
Kendall Worth sits down for coffee with three Income Assistance clients who are terrified of their annual review, mostly because they feel their caseworker is needlessly adversarial and disrespectful. Why have an annual review when you know your disability isn’t going to go away, Kendall wonders.
This is Kendall’s second open letter to Community Services minister Kelly Regan. Turns out there were a couple of issues he forgot to raise. “Something I want to bring to your attention in this letter is something I wrote about how caseworkers get away with behaving like they are medical professionals when it comes to approving special diets. It is also this part of the ESIA policy that sets the stage for caseworkers further questioning doctors about the medical documentation that clients provide.”
Why do you have to pay a fee month after month for an unlisted number, Kendall Worth asks. For many people privacy is not a luxury, it is a necessity and a safety issue. Yet unlisted numbers are expensive. Adding to the problems is that Community Services seldom picks up the bill, meaning that for people on welfare it has to come out of their tiny food budget.
Today is frequent contributor Kendall Worth’ birthday, which leads him to reflect on birthday celebrations of poor people. He asked, and this is what he heard. “Kendall as much as we would love to celebrate our birthdays the same way ordinary people do, we can’t. Life is just not normal for us because of our income level we live on.”
Kendall Worth lately has been hearing a lot of stories about special diet allowances being cut and unpleasant annual reviews. Lives on welfare are getting harder, and he doubts that the welfare transformation will make things better..
Earlier Kendall Worth wrote about how even a short hospitalization and surgery can throw a poor person’s live into a stressful chaos. Who’s going to drive you home if you have nobody? How are you going to get to the Food Bank if you need to stay in bed for weeks? How are you going to keep your apartment clean and tidy? And what about the social isolation? Well, turns out that in this case at least lots of people are willing to step up to the plate.
Frequent contributor Kendall Worth relates the story of a young man who desperately needs support from Community Services, but can’t get it for a bunch of seemingly bureaucratic reasons.
After the defeat of Joanne Bernard we now have a new minister of Community Services in Kelly Regan. Kendall Worth, frequent contributor and chair of the Benefits Reform Action Group, wrote this open letter to tell her what’s wrong with the department in terms of income assistance, and how to fix it.
Last month our regular contributor Kendall Worth tried his hand at volunteering for the Lisa Roberts campaign. Sounds like he gained lots of valuable experience and did some great networking. And everybody wins, as Kendall will be able to advise the NDP on poverty and welfare issues, which he knows about from experience.