In
the early 1970’s I was working as a caseworker for the county department of
social services (also known as the welfare department) in my Appalachian
hometown. My assignment was an Aid to
Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, caseload. The AFDC program, in effect from 1935 until
1996, provided federal assistance to children whose family had low or no
income.
I
don’t recall how many families I served, but it was enough that making home
visits to each family was hard to accomplish. I would read the file on the family and if it
appeared that the adult caregiver(s) and the children were doing well (even
though they were living in poverty), a phone contact might suffice—if they had
a telephone.
However, several days a
week I drove the back streets of my hometown or the mountainous county roads to
make home visits to the families on my caseload. Typically,
I would check on the well-being of the children, see what services the family
might need, and try to match their needs with community resources.
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| In my early days as a "welfare worker" |
While
I worked for social services, a few families took an inordinate amount of my
time. The challenges might be a large number of children in the family; adults
in the home who had mental health or other health issues; or I suspected that
the children were neglected. I returned repeatedly to these homes trying to
monitor the situation and to promote a healthier environment for raising
children.
During
the two-plus years I worked my AFDC caseload, I went to court one time to ask
that the courts remove children from a mother’s custody. This single mother had at least eight
children. I worked with the mother for months but she never made much of an
effort to comply with the department’s suggestions. The house was filthy. I
remember the interior walls had food stuck to them. It appeared there had been
a big food fight at some point but no one bothered to clean up afterwards. A loaf of bread and peanut butter and jelly
sat out on the table all the time and the children would wander by, fix
something to eat—if they were tall enough to reach the table--and keep moving. One
of the younger boys in the family frequently had cuts and bruises on his arms
and legs, and occasionally his face. When I asked what happened to him, he said
one of the older children had hit him or pushed him down, etc.
At the very
least, the children lacked consistent adult supervision and guidance. The worse
case scenario was physical abuse also was present in the home. The older
children missed school frequently, kept home to babysit the preschool children.
I
finally made the decision, with the assistance of my supervisor and other more experienced
workers in the department, to take the mother to court to gain temporary custody
of the
children. She had a lawyer, or perhaps the court had appointed the lawyer to
represent the children’s interests, I don’t remember. I do remember testifying. The lawyer asked me about my previous experience
with large families. In another county where I got my start in the field of
social services, I had large mountain families on my caseload. I also had served
as a substitute teacher in the local Head Start program so I had some job-related
experience and sympathy with the problems of poverty.
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| Mother with infant |
I
felt these children should be removed from the home with the idea that the
foster care worker would then work with the mother to help her improve her
parenting skills so the children could be returned to her custody.
After
the family services judge heard all the testimony and examined the
documentation each side provided, he ruled in favor of the department of social
services. When the deputy went to get
the children who were supposed to be waiting in a back room, the mother and her
boyfriend had fled the county with the children. I remember being surprised because
that was the first time I saw that the mom cared enough about her children to
fight for them. The sheriff didn’t try
to apprehend the couple. A warrant for the mom was probably issued. If she were smart, she never returned to
this county. I know I never saw her or the children again.
There never seems to be solutions to some problems, and I know you wonder what ever happened to the children. I had to visit a home once because the mother wouldn't come in to sign the IEP and found that there was a huge whole in the floor that went down two or three feet to the dirt below. The only seating was a backseat from some vehicle. My recognition of extreme poverty left me stunned. Seeing the two kids at school was one thing, seeing their home environment was eye-opening.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean. It can be gut-wrenching. I had lived in my small hometown all my life and had participated in some outreach programs through our church's youth program. It wasn't until I went into all these homes and drove on streets and roads that I'd never traveled before did I begin to understand poverty in Appalachia. I also came to recognize the kinds of poverty. Some rural families had no money but they raised a garden and had extended family in the area for support. They just needed a little bit of help, but some families were so entrenched in poverty and had such overwhelming issues that it was hard to know where to begin. I remember arranging for one family to get an outhouse but it soon turned over, and the family never bothered to upright it. They just went back to using the woods as their latrine, which told me that my priorities were not the same as theirs.
DeleteTeresa, at Renzi, a woman at age 29 was pregnant with her 7th child, I think. Her two oldest, aged 7 and 8, started school two years late. The family kept getting evicted and moving to worse and worse places. In one place, there were broken windows, the glass jagged, a tilting floor, and worse, no electricity. They had to light candles for light at night. They were evicted from there, and the mom started walking with all the kids up North Market St. A woman driving past them pulled over and helped the family get to a motel run by a friend of the mom's, I think. They stayed in 2 rooms for a couple of months during which time the mom had her baby. Christy tried to help the family; she tried to get them into Providence House, but it didn't work. Finally, Child Welfare came and took away her children and started putting them in different homes. It was traumatic for the kids. As poor as they were and as uneducated as the mom was, she loved them. The court intervened after 3 weeks and ruled her children had to be returned to her. I think things got somewhat better for them - they lived in better housing after that.
ReplyDeleteSo many sad stories, sad circumstances, requiring the wisdom of Solomon if you are in a position of responsibility for the children and have a degree of power over their future. Hopefully the mom that the Renzi folks tried to help was able to start climbing out of that hole. Once you've hit bottom, the only way to go is up. I hope you and your family are enjoying your new adventure. We missed you in writing group. Why, we almost had wine left over.
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