By Kendall Worth!
As regular readers know I touch on issues that affect the community of people I live in and advocate for… If you look at the whole reason as to why I started this BLOG in the first place, as explained in this, the first post, I created: https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2021/11/intro-to-for-what-matters-journalism.html and this post explains further. https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2021/12/building-case.html Both posts illustrates the reasons why this BLOG is needed. As explained in those posts, their are hardly any media outlets out there that will cover disabilitty and poverty related issues – issues I regular talk about in my posts. My BLOG started following the closure of the Nova Scotia Advocate , following the death of publisher Robert Devet.
I recently sat down with a woman, I will call Julie. Julie has been following my BLOG and came to me one day to talk to me about her observations and her solutions to get people out of the situation of living on Income Assistance and it’s effects.
First a bit of background on Julie. I used the name in a previous post, but it is not the same person I previously talked about.
Anyway: This Julie is in her early 30’s and she spends her days happy about the fact that she is off Income Assistance. We sat down recently and had a conversation. She pointed out she has learned about my activism within the past year of her life, but she has read through articles even back to the Media Co-op. She pointed out that when she saw the post where I had reported on the Career Seek Program, that caught her eye and made her want to meet with me. She told me, that, in her opinion/observation it is very sad that this program is not more accessible. She Believes that education is the key to moving out of poverty and social isolation. She actually told that after being on Welfare from age 19 till 21, getting a student loan to go back to school, and her family adding money to the pot to help support her throughout her time at college, is what got her off income assistance.
During my recent interview with her she pointed out that everything I talk about, from top to bottom, regarding living on Income Assistance, and it’s affects on mental health and experiencing stigma and discrimination, comes to her as no surprise whats-so-ever. Julie told me that one reason why she knew she could only stay on assistance for a short time was because her family and friends are strong believers in stigma. She explained that in their opinion, if you cannot afford your own home or groceries then it is because you are living beyond your means. She told me that her family are strong believers in that factor. Julie and both agreed that her family’s beliefs are related to two Nova Scotia Advocate articles about stigma, from the past. This one https://nsadvocate.org/2016/10/17/kendall-worth-ignorant-ideas-about-welfare-i-hear-a-lot/ and this one https://nsadvocate.org/2016/10/24/kendall-worth-more-ignorant-ideas-about-welfare-that-people-actually-believe/ .
As I said above, nothing I talk about through my writing, comes to her as a surprise because of the time in her life she was on welfare. Yes Julie is correct that in reality some people will only be on welfare for a short period of time but we do not know what percentage of people that is…
Julie presented herself, during the interview, as very understanding of persons with disabilities. She even said she 100% supports the need for a better system of accessing and receiving disability income.
https://maytree.com/publications/advancing-the-canada-disability-benefit-quickly-to-meaningfully-support-working-age-adults-with-disabilities/
But she also brought up the sadness about the many welfare recipients who have hidden talents that could lead to them someday gaining full-time work and getting off the system. I told Julie at this point Yes I do agree that many welfare recipients may have Hidden Talents, and she and I agreed that this was also covered in this old article from the media coop http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/my-life-poverty-activist-and-writer/33807.html
I explained to her some welfare recipients cannot handle the mental stress that it takes to get off the system and there are various factors involved around reasons why. She also mentioned this article http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/join-team-kendall-worth/34407.html in the Halifax Media COOP. She liked the fact that this article brought up bringing 2 communities together. Julie believes that bringing 2 communities together just might be way to create solutions. I told Julie I personally do agree with the concept of this idea; but one problem is screening members of the better off community, on whether or not each person we invite believes in stigma about welfare recipients or not has no easy implementation.
Then while on the Subject on my past writing for the Media COOP I suggested to Julie she should pay attention to this article http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/how-deal-learning-disabilities-just-doing/21015.html and I explained to her this article talks about one reason why they Career Seek Program/university or college, is not a good fit for at least some, if not many, welfare recipients. One benefit Julie can see to a welfare recipient having easier access to the Career Seek Program is because many of my articles talk about how welfare recipients do not have friends or social contacts outside of people they see standing in line at the food-banks, or at places like Souls Harbour Etc. She said to me “Kendall if more, especially younger welfare recipients in their 20’’s or even their 30’s, had the opportunity to go to Collage or University then they would have opportunity to make new friends through school. I do agree that Julie does bring up a good point.
Julie did way say to me as she was reading through my writing, that she is happy to see that welfare rates have increased. The current standard household rate is $950.00 whereas when she was receiving welfare, the rates were only $790.00 a month. Then you could only access $535.00 of that amount if your rent was a maximum of $535.00 a month. She was happy to hear that now you get $950.00 a month no matter what your rent is, because Julie strongly believes that gaining independence is an important step toward self improvement. However , she still agrees that even the current $950.00 needs to be higher because this is not enough to gain full Independence. She said that it makes her sad to see that the rate for some circumstances is only $609.00 a month, because that, in her opinion, encourages less independence. She believes that if we continue to see a system that encourages less independence then social isolation in younger people is not going to go away. During this interview, she did not get into detail about her current employment, but did bring up that for her current Job she works for a research company, but researching Income Assistance related issues is not what she does as part of her employment. She told me she came up with these observations she wanted to share with me, as part of her own hobby outside of work, and living the experience herself, for a short period.
We both agreed that that real solutions remain a mystery!
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