Kendall Worth continues his awesome reporting on the individual lives of people on welfare. Meet William, who lives with mental health issues and is on social assistance. A double whammy of stigma.
Kendall tells the story of Dorothy (not her real name), a young woman who with help from family and friends managed to overcome a severe depression while on social assistance.
One of the many hard things about having to depend on social assistance is the stigma. People often assume you’re lazy, even though invisible disabilities stop you from working. The other day poverty advocate Kendall Worth talked with one such person, who got verbally attacked by her fellow passengers on the bus.
Kate, a fearless mother who we have written about before, fights Community Services and gets the glasses (with warranty) her autistic son requires. It was hard and scary, and it looks like questions the NS Advocate was asking made a bit of a difference. This story has a happy ending, but you can’t help but wonder how many people would just have given up much earlier.
Poverty activist Kendall Worth met up with a young woman o social assistance who lives with invisible disabilities. Family and co-workers don’t understand what that means, and that makes for a hard life.
Nothing is ever simple when you’re on income assistance. Just ask Kate, a single mother. Michael, the elder of her two children, is a four-year old boy who has non-visible disabilities and is not yet fully potty trained. Now Community Services has sent Kate a letter that it will no longer help pay for the boy’s diapers. A decision like that is devastating when getting by is a struggle. “These caseworkers make me feel me feel as if they’re paying for it, as if it’s coming out of their pay cheques. It’s driving me bonkers.”
On the occasion of his birthday, Kendall ponders how celebrating life’s milestones is a right, not a privilege, and also suggests a way people might watch world cup soccer games without paying hefty cable fees.
We first met Sophia a couple of months ago, and did a Lives on Welfare story about her efforts to provide for her family while struggling with chronic pain. Here are more of Sophia’s memories about growing up on and off welfare. Unable to afford a computer, Sophia wrote this on her phone, because born story tellers like Sophia will always find a way.
Another episode in our series Lives on Welfare where people living in poverty tell their stories: Things went relatively well for Emma, a mother who lives with her daughter in a town an hour or so away from Halifax. Then she got sick, lost her job, and ended up on social assistance. Then her daughter also got sick.
“I felt the strong need to write this post because of my frustration with this unresponsiveness from my worker, and I wondered how many other people on Income Assistance experience the same thing.” An income assistance recipient writes on calling over and over and about the stress of never getting that much awaited call back.