#Welfare system

[brieflyinfatuated]

Thinking about how DS9's Season 3, two part finale is not an epic, interplanetary war- no evil aliens hell bent on the extermination of the human race. But there IS a run in with a twenty-first century social welfare system...

[makingcontact]

The Rest of the Story: Indigenous Resistance

U.S. Supreme Court building, credit: wikimedia commons In this episode, we revisit two stories concerning indigenous rights we’ve covered in the past. In the first half, Rebecca Nagle joins us to discuss the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act and why the legitimacy of the law is so important to tribal sovereignty. We also talk about the right’s legal strategy in the…

[potofsoup]

Happy 10th year of me doing this dorky comic! Hope people don't mind the fact that I haven't really dabbled in Cap stuff for a few years, except for my weird yearly July 4th ritual. On AO3 here, and tumblr tag here. (2022 was about Dobbs, 2020 was about seeing the stars, 2019 was about building new systems, 2018 was about voting, 2017 was about immigration.)

@histrionic-dragon tagged me yesterday and posted a bunch of cool links of ways to help: https://histrionic-dragon.tumblr.com/post/721837010124488704/almost-captain-americas-birthday

Rail workers paid sick leave: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid

Lots of posts out there on the 2023 Minnesota legislative session, but here's the OG tumblr roundup post.

California is trying to divest its two largest pension funds from fossil fuels, but apparently today they decided to table it until next year. :/ I guess more meetings are needed! (productive ones, not ones that could have been an email.)

[pro-birth]

🗣️

I WAS NOT MY MOTHER’S ENEMY BEFORE MY BIRTH.

🗣️

MY CHILDREN WERE NOT MY ENEMIES BEFORE THEIR BIRTH.

🗣️

GENERATIONS ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY OPPRESSED BY A SYSTEM THAT DEVALUES MOTHERS, CHILDREN, AND THE UNIQUE ECOLOGY THEY SHARE AS BONDED INDIVIDUALS.

🗣️

IF YOU WANT TO HELP THE WOMEN OF TOMORROW, STOP EXCUSING THEIR DEATHS IN THE WOMB TO ENABLE THE OPPRESSION OF A SYSTEM THAT HATES US FOR EXISTING.

🗣️

IF YOU WANT TO HELP THE WOMEN OF TODAY, STOP TELLING THEM THAT LEGAL CHILD KILLING IS THEIR ONLY ANSWER TO RESIST OPPRESSION AND MAKE REAL CHANGES IN OUR WORLD.

🗣️

THE SYSTEM WILL ONLY BE BURNED TO DUST IF YOU STOP ENABLING THE UNJUST KILLING OF TOMORROW’S ACTIVISTS.

🗣️

THE SYSTEM WILL ONLY CHANGE WHEN WE NO LONGER BASE THE FOUNDATION OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS ON THE INDUSTRY OF CHILD KILLING.

🗣️

IF YOU CONTINUE TO PIT WOMEN AND CHILDREN AGAINST ONE ANOTHER IN A SYSTEM THAT BENEFITS FROM THIS FALSE WAR, THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

🗣️

WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE NOT ENEMIES. STOP SCAPEGOATING FEMALE BIOLOGY AND CHILDREN TO BENEFIT A SYSTEM THAT DEPENDS ON YOUR INTERNALIZED ANTI-NATALISM AND SEXISM TO THRIVE.

[arctic-hands]

For real tho health freaks who scream about how sugar and salt will kill us all and try to push for restrictions on things like candy and chips for SNAP recipients or politicians who try from time to time to replace food stamps all together and give out Government Approved Staples like bread and peanut butter and Government Cheese are gonna kill a whole lotta sick and disabled people like

Diabetics

POTS sufferers

Hypotensives

People with peanut allergies

People with celiac disease or wheat allergies

The lactose intolerant

People who can't eat solid food

People who are undernourished for any reason and need all the calories they can pack on

So-called "picky eaters" who can't tolerate certain tastes and textures without getting violently ill

A myriad of other human conditions that cannot be neatly tallied into categories because the human body and human experience is vast and infinitely variable

But I don't think ableds really care about us and our health like they like to claim so they can harass us about it, do you?

[without-ado]

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." —Dom Helder Camara

l Dorothea Lange l Migrant Mother l 1936

[guiltyidealist]

It should be a criminal offense if an insurance company is responsible for a delay in a policyholder's necessary health care.

Withholding prescribed treatments, even for just a day, can be anywhere from inconvenient to catastrophic for the victim. Medical providers may not withhold necessary treatment from any patient on any grounds, as it is their duty to provide it-- it should be justly illegal for any "middle man" to interfere with a medical provider's legal and ethical obligation to treat a patient.

Severity of the charge and its legal consequences should depend upon the scope of the offense (length of delay) and its consequences to the victim (impact on the person).

The testimonies of the victim, the pharmacy, and the medical provider who prescribed the treatment should be key considerations for the determination. Additional important testimony should come from the victim's other medical providers, housemates, family, educators/mentors, colleagues/coworkers, or employers.

The charge should become criminal record for the company. The company (perhaps the agent's office) should be fined per day delayed.

Some taxation can be applied; just to pay off the folks who do the filing, advocacy, testimony, processing. A hefty majority of the fine should be compensation owed to the victim.

If delays became a criminal charge on companies' records, then companies would have a strong motive to terminate agents who aren't performing with punctuality. It would become their best financial interest to invest only in timely agents who would, in turn, gain a best interest to invest only in timely subordinates.

I posit that insurance delays would wane significantly, resulting in more timely delivery of treatments to policyholders, and many people's qualities of life would improve drastically for it.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

okay since humans are viewed as 'pets' by the aliens in alien stage... I think it'd be really funny if ALNST is like the equivalent of horse racing or fancy dog shows in our world (except the contestants are culled on live TV when they lose the competition). So while there are diehard fans and a respectable amount of casual fans for it, there is also a significant amount of folks who just don't care about it at all.

(I know ALNST is a huge thing in-universe as shown in the TOP 3 video, but i just think it'd be interesting if it's not as far-reaching as the alien show-runners/sponsors want audiences to think.)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The Progressives’ design for the penitentiary did alter the system of incarceration. Their ideas on normalization, classification, education, labor, and discipline had an important effect upon prison administration. But in this field, perhaps above all others, innovation must not be confused with reform. Once again, rhetoric and reality diverged substantially. Progressive programs were adopted more readily in some states than in others, more often in industrialized and urban areas, less often in southern, border, and mountain regions. Nowhere, however, were they adopted consistently. One finds a part of the program in one prison, another part in a second or in a third. Change was piecemeal, not consistent, and procedures were almost nowhere implemented to the degree that reformers wished. One should think not of a Progressive prison, but of prisons with more or less Progressive features.

The change that would have first struck a visitor to a twentieth-century institution who was familiar with traditional practices, was the new style of prisoners’ dress. The day of the stripes passed, outlandish designs gave way to more ordinary dress. It was a small shift, but officials enthusiastically linked it to a new orientation for incarceration. In 1896 the warden of Illinois’s Joliet prison commented that inmates “should be treated in a manner that would tend to cultivate in them, spirit of self-respect, manhood and self-denial. . . , We are certainly making rapid headway, as is shown by the recently adopted Parole Law and the abolishment of prison stripes.” In 1906, the directors of the New Hampshire prison, eager to follow the dictates of the “science of criminology” and “the laws of modern prisons,” complained that “the old unsightly black and red convict suit is still used. . . . This prison garb is degrading to the prisoner and in modern prisons is no longer worn.” The uniform should be grey: “Modern prisons have almost without exception adopted this color.” The next year they proudly announced that the legislature had approved an appropriation of $700 to cover the costs of the turnover. By the mid-1930’s the Attorney General’s survey of prison conditions reported that only four states (all southern) still used striped uniforms. The rest had abandoned “the ridiculous costumes of earlier days.”

To the same ends, most penitentiaries abolished the lock step and the rules of silence. Sing-Sing, which had invented that curious shuffle, substituted a simple march. Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary, world famous for creating and enforcing the silent system, now allowed prisoners to talk in dining rooms, in shops, and in the yard. Odd variations on these practices also ended. “It had been the custom for years,” noted the New Hampshire prison directors, “not to allow prisoners to look in any direction except downward,” so that “when a man is released from prison he will carry with him as a result of this rule a furtive and hang-dog expression.” In keeping with the new ethos, they abolished the regulation.

Concomitantly, prisons allowed inmates “freedom of the yard,” to mingle, converse, and exercise for an hour or two daily. Some institutions built baseball fields and basketbaIl courts and organized prison teams. “An important phase in the care of the prisoner,” declared the warden of California’s Folsom prison, “is the provisions made for proper recreation. Without something to look forward to, the men would become disheartened. . . . Baseball is the chief means of recreation and it is extremely popular.” The new premium on exercise and recreation was the penitentiary’s counterpart to the Progressive playground movement and settlement house athletic clubs.

This same orientation led prisons to introduce movies. Sing Sing showed films two nights a week, others settled for once a week, and the warden or the chaplain usually made the choice. Folsom’s warden, for example, like to keep them light: “Good wholesome comedy with its laugh provoking qualities seems to be the most beneficial.” Radio soon appeared as well. The prisons generally established a central system, providing inmates with earphones in their cells to listen to the programs that the administration selected. The Virginia State Penitentiary allowed inmates to use their own sets, with the result that, as a visitor remarked “the institution looks like a large cob-web with hundreds of antennas, leads and groundwires strung about the roofs and around the cell block.”

Given a commitment to sociability, prisons liberalized rules of correspondence and visits. Sing-Sing placed no restrictions on the number of letters, San Quentin allowed one a day, the New Jersey penitentiary at Trenton permitted six a month. Visitors could now come to most prisons twice a month and some institutions, like Sing-Sing, allowed visits five times a month. Newspapers and magazines also enjoyed freer circulation. As New Hampshire’s warden observed in 1916: “The new privileges include newspapers, that the men may keep up with the events of the day, more frequent writing of letters and receiving of letters from friends, more frequent visits from relatives . . . all of which tend to contentment and the reestablishment of self-respect.’? All of this would make the prisoners’ “life as nearly normal as circumstances will permit, so that when they are finally given their liberty they will not have so great a gap to bridge between the life they have led here . . . and the life that we hope they are to lead.”

These innovations may well have eased the burden of incarceration. Under conditions of total deprivation of liberty, amenities are not to be taken lightly. But whether they could normalize the prison environment and breed self-respect among inmates is quite another matter. For all these changes, the prison community remained abnormal. Inmates simply did not look like civilians; no one would mistake a group of convicts for a gathering of ordinary citizens. The baggy grey pants and the formless grey jacket, each item marked prominently with a stenciled identification number, became the typical prison garb. And the fact that many prisons allowed the purchase of bits of clothing, such as a sweater or more commonly a cap, hardly gave inmates a better appearance. The new dress substituted one kind of uniform for another. Stripes gave way to numbers.

So too, prisoners undoubtedly welcomed the right to march or walk as opposed to shuffle, and the right to talk to each other without fear of penalty. But freedom of the yard was limited to an hour or two a day and it was usually spent in “aimless milling about.” Recreational facilities were generally primitive, and organized athletic programs included only a handful of men. More disturbing, prisoners still spent the bulk of non-working time in their cells. Even liberal prisons locked their men in by 5:30 in the afternoon and kept them shut up until the next morning. Administrators continued to censor mail, reading materials, movies, and radio programs; their favorite prohibitions involved all matter dealing with sex or communism. Inmates preferred eating together to eating alone in a cell. But wardens, concerned about the possibility of riots with so many inmates congregated together, often added a catwalk above the mess hall and put armed guards on patrol.

Prisoners may well have welcomed liberalized visiting regulations, but the encounters took place under trying conditions. Some prisons permitted an initial embrace, more prohibited all physical contact. The rooms were dingy and gloomy. Most institutions had the prisoner and his visitor talk across a table, generally separated by a glass or wire mesh. The more security-minded went to greater pains. At Trenton, for example, bullet-proof glass divided inmate from visitor; they talked through a perforated metal opening in the glass. Almost everywhere guards sat at the ends of the tables and conversations had to be carried on in a normal voice; anyone caught whispering would be returned to his cell. The whole experience was undoubtedly more frustrating than satisfying.

The one reform that might have fundamentally altered the internal organization of the prison, Osborne’s Mutual Welfare League, was not implemented to any degree at all. The League persisted for a few years at Sing-Sing, but a riot in 1929 gave guards and other critics the occasion to eliminate it. One couId argue that inmate self-rule under Osborne was little more than a skillful exercise in manipulation, allowing Osborne to cloak his own authority in a more benevolent guise. It is unnecessary, however, to dwell on so fine a point. Wardens were simply not prepared to give over any degree of power to inmates. After all, how could men who had already abused their freedom on the outside be trusted to exercise it on the inside? Administrators also feared, not unreasonably, that inmate rule would empower inmate gangs to abuse fellow prisoners. In brief, the concept of a Mutual Welfare League made little impact on prison systems throughout this period.

If prisons could not approximate a normal community, they fared no better in attempting to approximate a therapeutic community. Again, reform programs frequently did alter inherited practices but they inevitably fell far short of fulfilling expectations. Prisons did not warrant the label of hospital or school.

Starting in the 1910’s and even more commonly through the 1920's, state penitentiaries established a period of isolation and classification for entering inmates. New prisoners were confined to a separate building or cell block (or occasionally, to one institution in a complex of state institutions); they remained there for a two- to four-week period, took tests and underwent interviews, and then were placed in the general prison population. In the Attorney General’s Survey of Release Procedures: Prisons forty-five institutions in a sample of sixty followed such practices. Eastern State Penitentiary, for example, isolated newcomers for thirty days under the supervision of a classification committee made up of two deputy wardens, the parole officer, a physician, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, the educational director, the social service director, and two chaplains. The federal government’s new prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, opened in 1932 and, eager to employ the most modern principles, also followed this routine. All new prisoners were on “quarantine status,” and over the course of a month each received a medical examination, psychometric tests to measure his intelligence, and an interview with the Supervisor of Education. The Supervisor then decided on a program, subject to the approval of its Classification Board. All of this was to insure “that an integrated program . . . may lead to the most effective adjustment, both within the Institution and after discharge.”

It was within the framework of these procedures that psychiatrists and psychologists took up posts inside the prisons for the first time. The change can be dated precisely. By 1926, sixty-seven institutions employed psychiatrists: thirty-five of them made their appointments between 1920 and 1926. Of forty-five institutions having psychologists, twenty-seven hired them between 1920 and 1926. The innovation was quite popular among prison officials. “The only rational method of caring for prisoners,” one Connecticut administrator declared, “is by classifying and treating them according to scientific knowledge . . . [that] can only be obtained by the employment of the psychologist, the psychiatrist, and the physician.” In fact, one New York official believed it “very unfair to the inmate as well as to the institution to try and manage an institution of this type without the aid of a psychiatrist.”

Over this same period several states also implemented greater institutional specialization. Most noteworthy was their frequent isolation of the criminal insane from the general population. In 1904, only five states maintained prisons for the criminally insane; by 1930, twenty-four did. At the same time, reformatories for young first offenders, those between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five or sixteen and thirty, became increasingly popular. In 1904, eleven states operated such facilities; in 1930, eighteen did. Several states which constructed new prisons between 1900 and 1935 attempted to give each facility a specific assignment. No state pursued this policy more diligently than New York. It added Great Meadow (Comstock), and Attica to its chain of institutions, the first two to service minor offenders, the latter, for the toughest cases. New York‘s only rival was Pennsylvania. By the early 1930’s it ran a prison farm on a minimum security basis; it had a new Eastern State Penitentiary at Grateford and the older Western State Penitentiary at Pittsburgh for medium security; and it made the parent of all prisons, the Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia, the maximum security institution. Some states with two penitentiaries which traditionally had served different geographic regions, now tried to distinguish them by class of criminals. In California, for instance, San Quentin was to hold the more hopeful cases, Folsom the hard core.

But invariably, these would-be therapeutic innovations had little effect on prison routines. They never managed to penetrate the system in any depth. Only a distinct minority of institutions attempted to implement such programs and even their efforts produced thin results. Change never moved beyond the superficial."

- David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America. Revised Edition. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002 (1980), p. 128-134

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A Winnipeg mother says she was scarred for life when her first child was taken away at birth by social workers, who told her she was unfit to parent her newborn daughter because she was just 17 at the time.

"I don't know how one could fully heal from that trauma," said the woman, now 41, whom The Canadian Press has agreed not to identify because of her family's involvement in the child welfare system. "Having a baby taken away from birth … the bond is broken."

New census data suggests Indigenous children continue to be overrepresented in the child welfare system.

Statistics Canada released data from the 2021 census that says Indigenous children made up 53.8 per cent of all children in foster care.

This has gone up slightly from the 2016 census, in which 52.2 per cent of children in care under age 14 were Indigenous. At the time, only about eight per cent of kids that age in Canada were Indigenous.

[...]

There are about 10,000 children in care in Manitoba and about 90 per cent are Indigenous.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[oliver-and-cat-friends]

Help Oliver and his siblings have a simple cat house and enough food.

Donate or Share the link below! ✨️🐈

We currently have 8 cats with us ✨️🐈‍⬛🐈 🤣

Thanks!

[muddypolitics]

(via Florida's Child Welfare System Is Found to Be Complicit in Sex Trafficking)

According to a stunning new report published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel Monday, Florida’s foster care system has for years proven to be a breeding ground for sex trafficking victims, placing vulnerable kids and teens directly in the path of drug use, sexual and physical violence and, often, death. More damning, though, is the revelation that Florida’s elected officials have long been well aware of the crisis and have taken little to no action to save the state’s most at-risk girls.

The Sentinel’s analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) showed that when a girl enters the state’s welfare system, her chances of being sex trafficked increase. Already a “top venue” for trafficking due to high volume of tourists and hotels, Florida has seen alarming increases in reports of child sex trafficking to the Florida Abuse Hotline, with 3,182 reports last year alone. Despite the increased risk, as of last month, the Sentinel reports there are just 18 family foster homes approved to care for trafficking victims in the entire state, and documents reviewed by the Sentinel show the state has for years known that sex traffickers specifically target underaged girls within its care.

Jayden Alexis Frisbee, the Sentinel reported, is one of the girls lost to Florida’s welfare system. She died last year at the age of 16 after she was shuffled between 16 different group foster homes within the span of a year and a half, only to repeatedly run away and fall prey to sex traffickers in the area. After she was beaten, abused, and drugged, she died in a Jacksonville Studio 6 motel bathroom. She had become the state’s responsibility but, following her death, officials took over a month to identify her body.

The insufficient care and concern well documented across the DCF is in part due to the Florida legislature’s 1998 decision to privatize the foster care system. Each county works with a private contractor who then hires subcontractors to run group homes. This vote, the Sentinel explains, took place after years of negative headlines detailing “neglected, abused or missing children” within the foster care system caused outrage amongst the public. The transfer of power to private organizations, then, was a means of “deflect[ing] blame away from the state.”

The original story is from the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

unfuckingbelieveable that this is the current state of child welfare in Florida, and yet desantis is going after... non-hetero KIDS and DRAG QUEENS.

to protect the CHILDREN

[electrosquash]

New laws just dropped

The so-called cost recovery for foster children is to be abolished. The Bundesrat approved an amendment to the law that allows young people to keep their earnings from a vacation job, for example. Until now, they have had to pay up to a quarter of these earnings to the youth welfare office and thus contribute to the costs of their placement in a foster family or youth welfare facility.

FUCKING FINALLY

[joy-yet-again]

how am i supposed to confront my fears if even thinking about them makes me have a panic attack 😭

[arctic-hands]

I've had more than one anarchist I associate with be surprised to learn I'm actually not an anarchist. But like. I'm a huge proponent of the Welfare State, and you kind of need a state for that

[puppiedogs]

i called the ssa office to ask something and in the pre-recorded message they say, like it’s not fucking Insane, “if you’re calling with regards to a disability claim, due to a staffing shortage, current processing times for disability claims are between 250 and 300 days, after which it will take three to four weeks for you to receive your decision by mail” as though that’s just something that happens whoopsie sorry about that like die actually. how do these people sleep at night