welfareworker-blog - Tumblr blog

[welfareworker-blog]

Aw, thanks!

I'm not gonna lie... It's a tough job. Between clients working the system, clients pulling at your heart strings, and jaded coworkers... It's tough. I've laughed and cried alongside my clients, and I've gotten into arguments with coworkers.

SO many other workers are jaded. I used to be. After trying so hard, and finding out a client lied I was angry. I lost my faith in people. But there is a happy medium. Some workers never find it though.

It's easy to feel like you aren't making a difference. We usually don't get follow up with what happened with our clients. Did they lose their house? Have their baby? Find a safe place?

We do make a difference. We just don't immediately see the results.

Oh, and here, education is about the same. Workers working with people with no children under 18 don't need any education, workers working with families need 30 units of a social science, but many of us do have a degree. Surprisingly, I haven't noticed a big difference in empathy between the groups.

Honestly, sometimes I get so jaded about my job. I think I’m one of the only (if not the only) eligibility workers who has social work education. (Obviously it’s possible to be a decent human being without that, but I’ve learned so much about working with vulnerable populations and advocacy!) Sometimes I’m so excited to graduate just so I can move on to another job with like-minded people. So many of my coworkers are alarmingly judgmental of our clients and it’s pretty toxic sometimes. I know, I know, everyone feels overworked and underpaid. I do too. But I can’t stand laziness at work, or snide comments about why people can’t just get a job. And sometimes at work I feel stuck and like I can’t make a difference.

But then I get on tumblr, and see posts from users like @askawelfarecaseworker and @welfareworker and social work blogs and I’m just reminded that my job IS important, I AM helping people, and there are other welfare workers our there who are great at what they do. It’s so validating to see other welfare workers who care about social justice and advocating for clients.

[welfareworker-blog]

At least one clear trend emerges among Southern states, where the concentration of HIV infections tend to be higher:

It’s likely no coincidence that many of those same states lack the comprehensive sexual education requirements that would help educate their residents about HIV transmission from an early age. Health classes in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana aren’t required to provide any kind of medically accurate information about HIV. And in two of those states — Texas and Florida — public schools don’t have to offer any type of sexual health education whatsoever.

CLICK THE HEADER LINK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

[welfareworker-blog]

An interesting problem for me to have is not having enough work. My exact job is placing recipients of public assistance that need to meet work requirements into work training and volunteer placements. They typically go through a 7 week intensive job 'boot camp' first, and anyone who is employed drops out before they see me. People are getting employed and dropping out before they see me. Great problem to have! ...but I have nothing to do at work now. :/

[welfareworker-blog]

Innocent people can be questioned by police in such a way that they end up convincing themselves that they’ve committed a crime. And this belief can be so strong, they can sometimes follow that belief up with a false confession.

Early last year, a team of lawyers and statisticians published a paper stating that 4.1 percent of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death in the US are falsely convicted. To investigate this phenomenon, a study led by psychological scientist Julia Shaw from the University of Bedfordshire in the UK investigated the possible cause, and found that, if questioned in the right way, innocent people can fabricate stories in their minds with so much detail, they can falsely convince themselves that they committed a crime.

“Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same kinds of complex details as real memories,” Shaw said in a press release. “All participants need to generate a richly detailed false memory is three hours in a friendly interview environment, where the interviewer introduces a few wrong details and uses poor memory-retrieval techniques.” …

[welfareworker-blog]

One would think, but our guards our rented from an outside agency.

Actually, what bothered me more was how excited a lot of workers were to watch it.

Ah yes. There was a fight in our parking lot, so our SECURITY GUARD films it and posts it on YouTube.

[welfareworker-blog]

So I found out this company is helping deaf people to find jobs.

There is an unemployment rate of 70% in the deaf and hard of hearing community. ( I know it might be a skewed figure). But this is just for your information to look up in.

[welfareworker-blog]

Ah yes. There was a fight in our parking lot, so our SECURITY GUARD films it and posts it on YouTube.

[welfareworker-blog]

This is such a smart, helpful idea. The anonymous aspect of it especially. The pantry’s faculty supervisor Laura Thompson also brought up a great point about how the project is beneficial for all those involved.

[welfareworker-blog]

...Causes users and clients alike to bang their head in frustration at least 20 times per day.

[welfareworker-blog]

Making it though the day without getting a client upset with me

[welfareworker-blog]

[welfareworker-blog]

Let me tell you about my panda mini-washer

As an apartment dweller, this is a game changer. My current apartment doesn’t have a laundry facility and the closest Laundromat about a 30 min bus ride which is just not practical. The mini-washer is a life saver

The panda mini washer hooks up to the sink, is incredibly lightweight (about 28 pounds, so light even I can lift it) and easy to use. 

It has a surprisingly large capacity. The basket from the first picture represents about one and a half loads. The jeans took up a whole load while the rest filled the bin only half way. 

Here’s the inside. The left is the washer the right is the spin dryer. Yes, it even drys.

Basically you shove your cloths into the washer, fill it up with water and let it go. I use my shower head to fill it up so it goes faster, the sink hook up took about five minutes to fill the whole tub, with the shower head is is down to a minute an a half. I do it in three wash cycles, a five minute rinse with baking soda, a five minute wash with soap and a three minute rinse with water. You have to drain and refill between each cycle so it’s a little more labor intensive than a traditional washer. 

That’s the spin dryer. It’s about half the capacity of the washer so one wash takes about two loads to dry. The spinner is much more effective than I was expecting. A three minute spin gets my cloths about 90% dry. I hang them up to air dry for that last 10%. 

The machine cost me about 150$. When you factor in two dollars for the bus, five for the machines (per week), the mini-washer pays for its self after only about six months worth of laundry. 

I’m not great at expressing emotion, but I’m hoping you can tell how excited I am.  Let me just say that the panda mini-washer is great and I highly recommend it to anyone currently using a Laundromat.  

[welfareworker-blog]

In the 1970’s, minimum wage for unskilled labor for a 40 hour week allowed the employee to own a car, rent an apartment (without a roommate), pay their utilities, buy their groceries, go to concerts, purchase clothing, go out to dinner, take vacations, further their education and etc.

Why do people complain about “burger flippers” making $15?

Because, large corporations, while pocketing record profits, are now villainizing those same minimum wage workers, who’s labor and hard work earned them those profits.

By not paying a minimum wage that stays in step with the cost of living, the minimum wage workers continually get poorer, while the corporations get richer. They get away with it by convincing some that it’s those “lazy, uneducated minimum wage workers’ fault.

Also did I forget to mention that raising the minimum wage will only increase costs by 23 cents?