Let's Call her Lea.

 Let's Call her Lea, (Not her real Name)

By Kendall Worth!


Previously, I have written stories, (esp in the N.S. Advocate) where I illustrated the actual lives of people on welfare. Examples of some of these specific stories include:

Note: when I do an actual story on a welfare recipient, I never identify their real names, where they work, ( for those who have part time jobs supplementing their income) or any information on that would identify them. This is to prevent them being stigmatized by people who believe in the stigmatizing myths about social assistance recipients.

These stories share much, but the big problem is the “Principle Situation”.

 

From: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2022/singles-deep-poverty-pandemic/

The Principal situation is that: “Income assistance rates, have never been, and, currently, are not, enough to live on.” I should point that that when the stories above were written the income assistance rate was only $810.00 a month. It is now $950.00 a month. The low income assistance rates mean income assistance recipients have to use food banks, soup kitchens and other drop-ins where people living in poverty go, in order to get out of their apartments, and have a life. Also the myths that the financially-better-off-community believe about Income Assistance Recipients increases stigma. Myths like:

  • Welfare encourages people to not work.

  • Welfare recipients can milk the system indefinitely.

  • Undocumented immigrants abuse the welfare system.

  • The welfare system is full of loopholes that get exploited at the taxpayers’ expense.

  • Most welfare recipients are single mom or single men with mental health issues.

  • People who depend on welfare, are just too lazy and do not want to work for a living.

  • People on welfare are uneducated.

    Here in Nova Scotia our system of Employment Support and Income Assistance is:

  • abusive toward clients, especially those who need help the most;

  • full of bureaucratic nonsense and systemic problems with trying to qualifying for what support is available;

  • guilty of promoting living a life of social isolation;

  • causing ESIA clients to develop depression and anxiety while receiving income assistance;

  • not providing enough money to live on;

  • requiring caseworkers to know too much personal information about you.

     
     

I recently interviewed Lea. She gets the standard household rate of $950.00 a month. She is 36 years old and is unemployed like many welfare recipients. She use to work but had to leave her job for health reasons. In addition to the $950.00 she gets the allowance for 3 Special Diets which = $81.00 and the $40.00 telephone allowance. Overall = $1071 a month. Starting 6 month ago she started receiving the Housing subsidy which is $361.00 a month. $1071 Plus $361.00 = 1432.00 a month.

Her rent is $875.00 a month $1432.00 – 875.00 = $557.00 a month left over. Her power bill is $65.00 a month on Budget Billing. 557.00 – 65.00 = $492.00. Then, after putting 40.00 directly on her phone that brings down what she has left to live on to $452.00 a month. I should point out her phone bill is actually $47.00 so after she pays $7.99 out of her personal allowance that bring what she has left down to $444.01.

Out of that $444.01, $81.00 goes directly onto her Special Diet Needs. So that brings her money to live on down to $363.01. Out of that she has to pay for the remainder of her groceries, and personal hygiene products She also has a cat, so cat food/cat care and cat products has to come out of the money left over. She tells me that even though she is taking a chunk of money out of her budget to look after her cat, that pet, she points out, is good for maintaining her mental health. One problem is Community Services will not cover the expense of owning a pet even if your reason for owning a pet is for purpose of therapy and maintaining mental health.

Community Services will, according to section 8.2.14 of the Employment Support and Income Assistance Policy Manual, cover Guide Dogs for the Blind as a special need, but nothing for “pets.” 

 

 

There are three areas reflected in Lea’s story with links to the previous pieces at the beginning of this article – which are about other people's experience of receiving social assistance.

#1 – Even though Lea is single, she has people in her life who believe, because she is not in a relationship, and on social assistance, she should be living in a Group Home, rather than living on her own, with some dignity.

#2 – She, like many income assistance recipients depends on the soup-kitchens and drop-ins where poor people go in order to get out and have a life. She lives her life having no social contacts outside of going to those places. Her friendships have deteriorated over the years. In the past, she has been accused of not respecting boundaries in a friendship. This does not come as a surprise, as I covered this in a previous article.

#3 – Living her life without a good relationship with family, and having no friends or social contacts means she must put off a surgery that she is advised to get, but is also advised to have someone on hand to help her. She has been advised to get surgery, soon, for the last couple of years – but there are barriers, explained in this article. Having no one to help you get home from hospital or stay with you after surgery is an ongoing issue for people on social assistance, who have no family and few friends.

Lea is currently 36 years old and at times feels like a young person living in an old person’s world. Lea told me that she tries very hard not to make attending the soup kitchens an everyday thing, because she finds she is not interested in making friends with the people she sees there. For days and days on end, she feels she has to, because she has no food in her apartment, otherwise. Just like I have heard from many welfare recipients, her life (plus the life of others on welfare) is already depressed, and talking to the people she sees at Soup Kitchens makes her more depressed. She dreams about the day that she will go back to work, if that can ever happen. In her past when she was working, she held down jobs like working in a call Centre for 6 years, and, at one time, working at Tim Hortons.

Her reasons for leaving those jobs was primarily because her disabilities, including OCD, dyslexia, and anxiety disorder, were causing her stress while at work. She tells me that it is because of her family’s belief in welfare myths and stigma, and their misunderstandings of the severity of her invisible disabilities, that it has come to the point where her family wants nothing to do with her. Misunderstanding invisible disabilities is the cause, for many welfare recipients, of poor relationships with their families and past friends.

She tells me about how is she is in a fight these days with the surgeon and the hospital OR Staff because she needs a certain type of surgery that will get cancelled if no-one is accompanying her on the day of Surgery. She said to me during the interview “Kendall how I am suppose to make a good friend who will care enough to not want to see my surgery get cancelled, when I have no friends? The people I see at my affordable avenues of getting out and socializing with people, are not going to do it”, and as she said: “Kendall you even talked about yourself in your BLOG post dated January 04, 2022 how there is nothing like a Social Prescription available in Nova Scotia”. I said to her “Yup I do agree we do need a solution to that one”.

Medical professionals will tell you that there are medical reasons behind why it is not safe to go home on your own following day surgery. The hospital claims it is “liable” if anything happens within the first 24 hours following your release from day surgery. At her request we had agreed not to disclose what type of surgery she needs and has been putting off. She feels and worries that disclosing this info of her story sill stigmatize her further.

She feels that social prescriptions would benefit her if that program existed. The surgeon wants her to have a friend who drives; which would also mean someone who has an income and can afford the expensive cost of owning and operating a Vehicle. This is not possible for someone who receives a welfare cheek. Community Services will pay for the taxi as “medical Transportation”. However, for OR staff to allow her to go home in a cab, she must have companion beyond the taxi driver. That fact -- that she cannot go home alone from surgery is the policy of the hospital.

I end this story by saying I hope things get better for Lea, and all welfare recipients, in the future.






Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 12, 2022 at 2:12 PM

    Great story Kendall. Thank you. One thing to note--the standard household rate you quoted is for people with disabilities, not those without. For the latter, the standard household rate for a single employable person is in the $600's.

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