This past month I organized two interviews and then waited. As I have said in a previous posting there are so many ways that silence works for people. So I waited nearly two weeks for one interviewee to make a two word edit in her story. I waited nearly as long for the other one to drop by my apartment for ten minutes. He is in my building six days out of seven.
While I was waiting I happened to be on the phone one morning with a woman in her mid-thirties (another Joan – all the women interviewees are going to be Joan!) I have known her well since she was ten. We visit about once a year and talk two or three times a month on the phone.
Joan lives in Montreal, in a group home where she shares a room with another resident who is not in any way a spousal or sexual partner. She prefers this arrangement over others in her recent past because the “house mother” is much more relaxed and the rent is cheaper.
Joan has lived on welfare – the Quebec version of ODSP – for fifteen years. She lives this way because she is on a complex of psychiatrist prescribed medications – at last count 14. She became diabetic about ten years ago so a few more meds have been added to the cocktail. Beyond the $900 she receives for food and rent welfare pays for these prescriptions and for some “training programs” and the transportation to these programs.
I put “training programs” in quotes because Joan has been training on and off for exactly the same sort of job for nearly as long as she has been on welfare. When she is mentally well she works as an assistant in a seniors’ residence. She performed this job more than adequately in one establishment for over five years.
Her tasks are simple, repetitive and absolutely essential – if she didn’t do them a regularly paid employee would be called in. Once or twice a day she sets up the furniture in an activity room, wheels the residents into the room, sits with them while they do exercises in their chairs or play board games, helps serve a light snack, wheels the participants back to their rooms and cleans the room. Joan does this 3 days a week usually for about 2.5 hours a day, and sometimes she will take a 5 hour shift.
Joan performs these simple tasks with a genuine affection for the old people she supports. Her high regard for the elders has won her several acknowledgements at various memorial services from grateful relatives after a resident has died.
Joan provides other social support as well. In her words: “I am there for my friends. I help them out when they don’t feel good. I had to call 911 twice for my friend last month who had taken four days of pills and slit her wrists.”
Similarly to the way things work in Ontario, Joan says that being on the “disability” benefit creates some obstacles for her. She says: “It makes it harder because even if I wanted to work for the people I could lose my welfare.” In such a case she would lose her medical and dental coverage, and have to pay the prohibitive cost of her medication.
Joan has had some private arrangements in the past, providing one-on-one support to an elderly woman for cash. She says: “I want to work for the elderly under the table so I could have more money to buy things like shoes and more tattoos. I would work more than 7 hours a week if allowed, but I’m scared of losing my welfare.”
When Joan is undergoing an episode of hearing voices, anxiety or other disturbance life gets very rough and it is clear why she needs ready access to a stepped-up level of medical and social support. It is perfectly understandable why Joan equates working for money with taking an unnecessary and dangerous risk. In my view I wonder what it would take to create a government funded financial support system that permitted Joan to access medical and other health funding, and even life cost money from time to time, while also participating in the regular economy when she is well.
Ah, but maybe that’s another story.
Judith
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Catch 22
Yeah! This week I got to interview a young woman who has been on ODSP for three and a half years.
I met Joan in the context of work done to improve diversity and inclusion in public education in Ontario. (Now that’s REALLY another story!) Joan is attractive, poised, articulate and thoughtful. Her main reason for being a recipient of ODSP is that she uses a motorized wheelchair and needs help with the cost of buying and repairing this and other accessibility equipment. These expenses can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year – a prohibitive cost to any but the well paid in our society.
Joan has sought employment on a number of occasions and finds two sorts of limitations to this way of living. Her own physical characteristics make working in winter highly fatiguing. On top of this, access and transportation barriers are worsened by cold and snow.
However in summer months Joan has participated in a number of leadership and training programs, some of which were paid. Unfortunately, she says, none of them gave her access to the world outside of the “disability” field. She would like to, and has tried to, break into a world of contribution, even employment, beyond the “disability” realm but has been unable to find this opening. She has applied but never heard back from the places she applied to.
Joan volunteers 15-20 hours a week. She makes presentations about inclusive education, reviews and makes decisions about applications for specialized programs such as summer camp for children with disability labels, is a program advisor for a children’s rehabilitation organization and is a member of a committee that helps decide who will receive certain awards.
Joan told me that being an ODSP recipient makes volunteering possible in that it pays for her equipment and its repairs, plus her medications. Being on ODSP also makes volunteering, and the likelihood of finding paid work, harder in that she must continuously negotiate not receiving too much money for what she does. In fact she has turned down some opportunities because the level of negotiation that would have been required seemed too exhausting! Herein lies her Catch 22.
Joan also admitted that she sometimes lies and does not report every small stipend she receives. To quote Joan: “If I am honest about being reimbursed for my volunteering, it would get deducted from my ODSP and what is the point of that? Other opportunities open up, but I might turn them down because it would make things complicated. I would have to negotiate with them carefully and I am limited by the consequences ODSP implements around my making money.”
Joan went on to say that she has chosen not to try for some awards and honouraria because even if she received an amount like $5000 just once the explanations and reporting she would have to do are so onerous as to make it potentially too risky and so not worth the effort.
The problem in this arrangement as I see it is that Joan is also giving up two ways that would help her get to her goal of working outside of the “disability” field. On the one hand she is limiting her resume as she both avoids reporting some activities and avoids other opportunities outright due to receiving ODSP. On the other hand, as is well known in the employment sector, volunteering is a strong path to paid work, unless of course you are constantly limiting the scope of areas where you put yourself forward.
So here is Joan, ready, willing and able to work, at least in the summer – well educated, well trained, well known, already performing at employment type activities 50% of the week, skilled and experienced in many ordinary tasks of the NGO sector – and unemployed, poor and expecting to continue in this condition. And what is the persistent barrier? If she went to work for real she could not afford the cost of sustaining her wheelchair, her medications and transportation that was safe, warm and effective in the winter – (a wheelchair accessible taxi??).
I truly wish this was a unique story because then some sensible people would work it out with Joan and it would all be OK. Unfortunately Joan’s story is far from hers alone.
Judith
I met Joan in the context of work done to improve diversity and inclusion in public education in Ontario. (Now that’s REALLY another story!) Joan is attractive, poised, articulate and thoughtful. Her main reason for being a recipient of ODSP is that she uses a motorized wheelchair and needs help with the cost of buying and repairing this and other accessibility equipment. These expenses can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year – a prohibitive cost to any but the well paid in our society.
Joan has sought employment on a number of occasions and finds two sorts of limitations to this way of living. Her own physical characteristics make working in winter highly fatiguing. On top of this, access and transportation barriers are worsened by cold and snow.
However in summer months Joan has participated in a number of leadership and training programs, some of which were paid. Unfortunately, she says, none of them gave her access to the world outside of the “disability” field. She would like to, and has tried to, break into a world of contribution, even employment, beyond the “disability” realm but has been unable to find this opening. She has applied but never heard back from the places she applied to.
Joan volunteers 15-20 hours a week. She makes presentations about inclusive education, reviews and makes decisions about applications for specialized programs such as summer camp for children with disability labels, is a program advisor for a children’s rehabilitation organization and is a member of a committee that helps decide who will receive certain awards.
Joan told me that being an ODSP recipient makes volunteering possible in that it pays for her equipment and its repairs, plus her medications. Being on ODSP also makes volunteering, and the likelihood of finding paid work, harder in that she must continuously negotiate not receiving too much money for what she does. In fact she has turned down some opportunities because the level of negotiation that would have been required seemed too exhausting! Herein lies her Catch 22.
Joan also admitted that she sometimes lies and does not report every small stipend she receives. To quote Joan: “If I am honest about being reimbursed for my volunteering, it would get deducted from my ODSP and what is the point of that? Other opportunities open up, but I might turn them down because it would make things complicated. I would have to negotiate with them carefully and I am limited by the consequences ODSP implements around my making money.”
Joan went on to say that she has chosen not to try for some awards and honouraria because even if she received an amount like $5000 just once the explanations and reporting she would have to do are so onerous as to make it potentially too risky and so not worth the effort.
The problem in this arrangement as I see it is that Joan is also giving up two ways that would help her get to her goal of working outside of the “disability” field. On the one hand she is limiting her resume as she both avoids reporting some activities and avoids other opportunities outright due to receiving ODSP. On the other hand, as is well known in the employment sector, volunteering is a strong path to paid work, unless of course you are constantly limiting the scope of areas where you put yourself forward.
So here is Joan, ready, willing and able to work, at least in the summer – well educated, well trained, well known, already performing at employment type activities 50% of the week, skilled and experienced in many ordinary tasks of the NGO sector – and unemployed, poor and expecting to continue in this condition. And what is the persistent barrier? If she went to work for real she could not afford the cost of sustaining her wheelchair, her medications and transportation that was safe, warm and effective in the winter – (a wheelchair accessible taxi??).
I truly wish this was a unique story because then some sensible people would work it out with Joan and it would all be OK. Unfortunately Joan’s story is far from hers alone.
Judith
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Silence
Today is muggy and hot, with a smog alert announced this morning, which means elderly and other vulnerable people are encouraged to stay in air conditioned surroundings and drink lots of water.
The food bank being where it is – in a bus free industrial area - as I entered and left today I saw two elders walking along, braving the heat and thick air to get their food allowance.
Unbelievably there WAS bread today – long, squishy white loaves that had been sliced lengthwise instead of the typical cross cuts. No matter – it brought a chuckle! As I write my personal assistant is packing sandwiches into the freezer. Remember I have plenty of peanut butter!
Silence is an intrical part of being poor. In many ways it forms a large part of the texture of the day.
For example, today being intensely hot, the food bank was no place of idle banter. The ubiquitous noise of fans and limping air conditioners, and fork lift trucks in the back met no challenge from conversation, excepting only in the tiny computer room where you are issued the dry erase card that permits you to enter the waiting anteroom before the actual food room. When my assistant and I reached the distribution volunteer he performed his duties without uttering a word except to agree that I could have two cans of tuna instead of one can and a pack of hot dogs.
Surprisingly he was both adept and generous. He made all my selections for me (tuna excepted) with clear experience regarding what I could and could not have. He was clearly not confused at all by the complexity of the selection criteria he was required to follow. Yet as we approached the end, where only candy and old vegetables remained, he too began to pop in to my bag an extra carrot and a small sack of chocolates. I was moved again by how my colleagues of meagre circumstances find ways to be generous and to express their compassion for each other’s situations!
My assistant went to the kitchen as soon as we got home and now my freezer is well stocked with curried vegetable soup.
The relative silence of ODSP case workers is also notable. As I mentioned in a recent posting it seems that these people go to extensive effort to deal with the random rulings spit out by the electronic inners of the system that distributes the money. On the occasions I have attended interrogations the behind-the-desk staff have worked their way around to giving me favourable answers, but never have they disclosed their opinions, chatted about their working conditions, answered a direct question or explained why they invariably leave me waiting in small rooms while they do some mysterious thing out of sight and earshot. “I will be right back” is the best you will get.
I believe that the expectation of silence is behind my friends’ initial reluctance to be interviewed for this blog. That I am writing a blog is in itself grounds for keeping quiet and avoiding my questions! I am not surprised – I am pointing out that silence is built into poor people’s way of life.
I believe it stems back to the situation I outlined in my first posting. Everything about ODSP and about other systems designed to “benefit” the poor is based on the Victorian poor laws. The harmonic that we still live with is the legislated certainty that it is a crime to be poor.
Criminals naturally don’t want to tell everything about how they live. Since it is clear that few if any human beings can live on the income that ODSP provides, nearly everyone in this circumstance must be hiding something somewhere – or they would be dead. But moneybags is, or at least so it seems, continuously aiming to close down these strategies. Keeping silent is clearly a smart thing to do.
But silence prevents people from acknowledging and celebrating many of the contributions that they make. Whether it be the volunteer who hands out extra cans of beans and extra carrots or the person who makes sure that another person gets back to their own apartment when Wheeltrans gets them only to the front door (and receives a little extra cash for the service), people cannot say who they are or what they are up to for fear of upsetting their fragile accommodations. But then we cannot say how much the world is benefitting from our activities either.
It is my intention to let the world know how deep the contributions go and how extensive their variety is. I must do so carefully. I am risking much by doing this.
Judith
The food bank being where it is – in a bus free industrial area - as I entered and left today I saw two elders walking along, braving the heat and thick air to get their food allowance.
Unbelievably there WAS bread today – long, squishy white loaves that had been sliced lengthwise instead of the typical cross cuts. No matter – it brought a chuckle! As I write my personal assistant is packing sandwiches into the freezer. Remember I have plenty of peanut butter!
Silence is an intrical part of being poor. In many ways it forms a large part of the texture of the day.
For example, today being intensely hot, the food bank was no place of idle banter. The ubiquitous noise of fans and limping air conditioners, and fork lift trucks in the back met no challenge from conversation, excepting only in the tiny computer room where you are issued the dry erase card that permits you to enter the waiting anteroom before the actual food room. When my assistant and I reached the distribution volunteer he performed his duties without uttering a word except to agree that I could have two cans of tuna instead of one can and a pack of hot dogs.
Surprisingly he was both adept and generous. He made all my selections for me (tuna excepted) with clear experience regarding what I could and could not have. He was clearly not confused at all by the complexity of the selection criteria he was required to follow. Yet as we approached the end, where only candy and old vegetables remained, he too began to pop in to my bag an extra carrot and a small sack of chocolates. I was moved again by how my colleagues of meagre circumstances find ways to be generous and to express their compassion for each other’s situations!
My assistant went to the kitchen as soon as we got home and now my freezer is well stocked with curried vegetable soup.
The relative silence of ODSP case workers is also notable. As I mentioned in a recent posting it seems that these people go to extensive effort to deal with the random rulings spit out by the electronic inners of the system that distributes the money. On the occasions I have attended interrogations the behind-the-desk staff have worked their way around to giving me favourable answers, but never have they disclosed their opinions, chatted about their working conditions, answered a direct question or explained why they invariably leave me waiting in small rooms while they do some mysterious thing out of sight and earshot. “I will be right back” is the best you will get.
I believe that the expectation of silence is behind my friends’ initial reluctance to be interviewed for this blog. That I am writing a blog is in itself grounds for keeping quiet and avoiding my questions! I am not surprised – I am pointing out that silence is built into poor people’s way of life.
I believe it stems back to the situation I outlined in my first posting. Everything about ODSP and about other systems designed to “benefit” the poor is based on the Victorian poor laws. The harmonic that we still live with is the legislated certainty that it is a crime to be poor.
Criminals naturally don’t want to tell everything about how they live. Since it is clear that few if any human beings can live on the income that ODSP provides, nearly everyone in this circumstance must be hiding something somewhere – or they would be dead. But moneybags is, or at least so it seems, continuously aiming to close down these strategies. Keeping silent is clearly a smart thing to do.
But silence prevents people from acknowledging and celebrating many of the contributions that they make. Whether it be the volunteer who hands out extra cans of beans and extra carrots or the person who makes sure that another person gets back to their own apartment when Wheeltrans gets them only to the front door (and receives a little extra cash for the service), people cannot say who they are or what they are up to for fear of upsetting their fragile accommodations. But then we cannot say how much the world is benefitting from our activities either.
It is my intention to let the world know how deep the contributions go and how extensive their variety is. I must do so carefully. I am risking much by doing this.
Judith
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Contributions That Make Things Work
I am in hot pursuit of four new interviews. In the meantime, I have been to the food bank again. This caused many reflections on other contributions I have been experiencing from poor people. I thought I would share this with you.
Once again there was no bread at the food bank, and in fact there wasn’t any in the back either so my “helper” and I were unable to take liberties. However, the absence of bread proved to be a conversation opener as I was waiting in the “holding tank” to go in and make my selections.
The person I am thinking of is a young woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, of slight build and gracefully dressed. She was accompanied by her son and daughter, both apparently between the ages of eight and twelve. They arrived just after we did.
The cause of our waiting proved to be that there was only one volunteer actually distributing food, another volunteer whose job it is to check us off in the computer system was absent from his office, and we were immediately preceded by a very chatty man who wanted to demonstrate his swollen feet to the computer volunteer when he finally did arrive. And so, the line was moving lethargically this particular afternoon.
As I believe I have written about before, an issue with being poor and being served is the constant message in the ambience that you are needy and helpless. My response to this ambience is to intentionally and ongoingly create strategies to shift the emotional atmosphere for myself and others. And so, I engaged the young woman briefly in joking conversation about the process of choosing, (and I use that word in ironic jest) from the meagre selection that would become available to us when we were ultimately allowed into the food room.
I started by asking her to bet whether or not there would be bread, but she wasn’t taking me up on that one. Her immediately response was “No bread!” and we laughed. As I peered through the window at the person with the big feet chatting up the volunteer, I noted out loud that there was a plentiful supply of peanut butter. We had a quick and affirming chat about how many cans of cranberry sauce and how many jars of peanut butter we had already collected from previous visits.
At this point I learned a strategy! The woman told me that she had frequently made peanut butter cookies for her kids. Now, as I’m sure you recognize, there is no flour or butter at the food bank. I realize that she had adopted a similar strategy to one that I frequently use; that she takes what is available and uses her small resources to buy something so that together she can make a food that is acceptable and nutritious. I’m not saying that I’m a genius for inventing this strategy – it is pretty obvious in fact. But I felt affirmed as she expressed a bit of her own story.
By this point, her kids were sitting quietly and we were chatting happily. It soon came time for me to enter the food room.
Once again the distributing volunteer was very generous, openly acknowledging that she was giving me more than she was supposed to, i.e. an extra can of salmon. There was fresh fruit this time. Perhaps the greatest moment was the point where the volunteer virtually thrust a packet of chocolate candy into my assistant’s hands. Although I cannot eat these things, I recognize her gesture as one of bringing a sense of abundance and gratitude into the space. I happily took the candies knowing that my personal assistants will make short work of them.
This reflection is about how poor people contribute to each other. The food bank is ninety percent run by volunteers, and ninety percent of those volunteers are also recipients. (These statistics are visual, not accurate.) Like the majority of the service system, the food bank could not run if it weren’t operated by the people who are served by it. Without access to the decision making, the intake or output processes, or any of the planning, it is poor people who are stepping in to the situation, working their way around the glitches, and making it work for each other.
Here are some of the contributions poor people make to the free food distribution system:
- Sorting the food, including disposing of rotten fruits and vegetables that arrive daily. As my assistant and I entered through the receiving area, we noted one young woman busily packing rotten potatoes into a disposal container.
- Distributing information, both globally and personally. A couple of small rooms are devoted to both legal and social questions and someone is always there to hand out pamphlets. Aside from that, individual questions are bantered around in the waiting rooms and in the line ups and around the coffee urn.
- Managing the emotional temperature. The line ups, the waiting, the sense of being personally inadequate, the struggles to meet the quirky schedules, the endless interrogation about whether you are poor enough to deserve this benefit, and oh yes did I mention the WAITING? – all this and more is trying on the temper. From friendly banter to authoritative restatement of the rules to sharing a cigarette to offering somebody a task, people take care of each other’s mood, ensuring that tears and outbursts are rare and easily deflected.
- Finding tasks. It doesn’t take very much observation to realize that several people who are volunteers are not actually doing anything productive. This can be annoying when one is waiting at the food room and there is only one volunteer there who is authorized to distribute food. But aside from this annoyance, the fact that many people are actually doing nothing is a time honoured way of keeping as many people involved as possible in a work related situation. I’m not kidding – I’m sure we have all observed as one person is digging a hole and two people are watching at a road construction site. There are many similar situations at the food bank – one person managing the sign up book and one person watching (and sometimes two), one managing the forklift schedule and three drinking coffee, etc.
It was a major disruption in my life that brought me to living in south Etobicoke, in poverty, in the first place. I am benefitting greatly from this particular contribution of poor people showing me the ropes, managing my mood and including me in activities.
My next story will be about silence and learning to break it tactfully.
Judith
Once again there was no bread at the food bank, and in fact there wasn’t any in the back either so my “helper” and I were unable to take liberties. However, the absence of bread proved to be a conversation opener as I was waiting in the “holding tank” to go in and make my selections.
The person I am thinking of is a young woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, of slight build and gracefully dressed. She was accompanied by her son and daughter, both apparently between the ages of eight and twelve. They arrived just after we did.
The cause of our waiting proved to be that there was only one volunteer actually distributing food, another volunteer whose job it is to check us off in the computer system was absent from his office, and we were immediately preceded by a very chatty man who wanted to demonstrate his swollen feet to the computer volunteer when he finally did arrive. And so, the line was moving lethargically this particular afternoon.
As I believe I have written about before, an issue with being poor and being served is the constant message in the ambience that you are needy and helpless. My response to this ambience is to intentionally and ongoingly create strategies to shift the emotional atmosphere for myself and others. And so, I engaged the young woman briefly in joking conversation about the process of choosing, (and I use that word in ironic jest) from the meagre selection that would become available to us when we were ultimately allowed into the food room.
I started by asking her to bet whether or not there would be bread, but she wasn’t taking me up on that one. Her immediately response was “No bread!” and we laughed. As I peered through the window at the person with the big feet chatting up the volunteer, I noted out loud that there was a plentiful supply of peanut butter. We had a quick and affirming chat about how many cans of cranberry sauce and how many jars of peanut butter we had already collected from previous visits.
At this point I learned a strategy! The woman told me that she had frequently made peanut butter cookies for her kids. Now, as I’m sure you recognize, there is no flour or butter at the food bank. I realize that she had adopted a similar strategy to one that I frequently use; that she takes what is available and uses her small resources to buy something so that together she can make a food that is acceptable and nutritious. I’m not saying that I’m a genius for inventing this strategy – it is pretty obvious in fact. But I felt affirmed as she expressed a bit of her own story.
By this point, her kids were sitting quietly and we were chatting happily. It soon came time for me to enter the food room.
Once again the distributing volunteer was very generous, openly acknowledging that she was giving me more than she was supposed to, i.e. an extra can of salmon. There was fresh fruit this time. Perhaps the greatest moment was the point where the volunteer virtually thrust a packet of chocolate candy into my assistant’s hands. Although I cannot eat these things, I recognize her gesture as one of bringing a sense of abundance and gratitude into the space. I happily took the candies knowing that my personal assistants will make short work of them.
This reflection is about how poor people contribute to each other. The food bank is ninety percent run by volunteers, and ninety percent of those volunteers are also recipients. (These statistics are visual, not accurate.) Like the majority of the service system, the food bank could not run if it weren’t operated by the people who are served by it. Without access to the decision making, the intake or output processes, or any of the planning, it is poor people who are stepping in to the situation, working their way around the glitches, and making it work for each other.
Here are some of the contributions poor people make to the free food distribution system:
- Sorting the food, including disposing of rotten fruits and vegetables that arrive daily. As my assistant and I entered through the receiving area, we noted one young woman busily packing rotten potatoes into a disposal container.
- Distributing information, both globally and personally. A couple of small rooms are devoted to both legal and social questions and someone is always there to hand out pamphlets. Aside from that, individual questions are bantered around in the waiting rooms and in the line ups and around the coffee urn.
- Managing the emotional temperature. The line ups, the waiting, the sense of being personally inadequate, the struggles to meet the quirky schedules, the endless interrogation about whether you are poor enough to deserve this benefit, and oh yes did I mention the WAITING? – all this and more is trying on the temper. From friendly banter to authoritative restatement of the rules to sharing a cigarette to offering somebody a task, people take care of each other’s mood, ensuring that tears and outbursts are rare and easily deflected.
- Finding tasks. It doesn’t take very much observation to realize that several people who are volunteers are not actually doing anything productive. This can be annoying when one is waiting at the food room and there is only one volunteer there who is authorized to distribute food. But aside from this annoyance, the fact that many people are actually doing nothing is a time honoured way of keeping as many people involved as possible in a work related situation. I’m not kidding – I’m sure we have all observed as one person is digging a hole and two people are watching at a road construction site. There are many similar situations at the food bank – one person managing the sign up book and one person watching (and sometimes two), one managing the forklift schedule and three drinking coffee, etc.
It was a major disruption in my life that brought me to living in south Etobicoke, in poverty, in the first place. I am benefitting greatly from this particular contribution of poor people showing me the ropes, managing my mood and including me in activities.
My next story will be about silence and learning to break it tactfully.
Judith
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