Ain't No Trust. Judith Levine
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times that I was on aid, I could say it was kind of like a mixed thing. Some of the caseworkers that I had were really good. Really interested in your well-being. Trying to help you as much as they can. Then, I found some that was just little dooky-heads . . . really didn’t care what happened, you know, and would tell you. I had one tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t care . . . I don’t care what happens.’”
One caseworker, however, stood out in her memory for having really taken an interest in encouraging her to stick to her goals. Edwina had left welfare for work but had lost her job. When she went to reapply for welfare benefits, she met a caseworker who dissuaded her. Edwina listened to her, returned to searching for a job, and eventually found a job she liked. She had not been on welfare since. Normally, Edwina said, she might complain that the caseworker was not being cooperative, but there was something about her warmth and respectful tone that Edwina found sincere. “But what she told me was, ‘You have made a [transition] from being on public aid [to] having a job. Don’t fall back into the hole again. Try to find something else. You know, we have programs. Try to get into a program. Don’t go back. You took two steps forward. Don’t take twelve steps back, you know. You owe it to yourself and your children.’ . . . I appreciate her giving me that talk. There are a lot of people who don’t take the time out to do that.”
One might interpret Edwina’s story the same way she did, that the caseworker was going out of her way to help her. Of course, one might also see the caseworker as guided by her new post-reform job requirements of deterring applicants from joining the rolls and encouraging them into the labor market instead. What made the difference for Edwina was the respectful tone the caseworker used. Many women felt like cogs in the large machine of the welfare office. Making a human connection with a caseworker was rare, but when it happened it was valued.
Caseworkers, of course, have their own perceptions of their actions and their interactions with clients. In several informational interviews that I held with caseworkers, they expressed a great deal of frustration with clients who did not follow procedures or were nonresponsive in other ways. It is impossible to know from interviews with recipients whether their perceptions accurately reflect what happened during their visits to the welfare office. Other researchers who have studied caseworkers themselves, however, do find evidence in support of my respondents’ reports.13
My own observations also lend some support to the women’s claims. In multiple visits to welfare offices, I observed caseworkers and other office personnel speaking to recipients in impatient and demeaning ways. At one office, I sat on a bench in front of a reception counter waiting to meet with a member of the staff with whom I had an appointment. Several clients were sitting on the bench with me. The woman working at the long counter began barking at them as if they were naughty schoolchildren.14 With a stern expression and in an angry voice, she began yelling orders that were difficult to interpret. I was not sure whether she was trying to tell them they should not be waiting there, they should be coming up to her, or some other directive. She treated them as if they were doing something wrong before ascertaining why they were waiting. The clients looked shocked and confused. It seemed to take them a minute to realize the woman was speaking to them, presumably because they could not figure out what they had done wrong or what she wanted them to do to fix it. The woman’s approach to the clients—scolding them like children, assuming they were doing something wrong before finding out the facts, and not explaining calmly what she needed them to do—illustrated many of my interviewees’ comments about welfare office personnel.15
Caseworkers and counselors in job-training programs may themselves be of two minds about reform’s requirements. In informal interviews with one caseworker and three different job-training counselors, I asked about the challenges of dealing with clients under the post-reform regime. All four stressed the importance of clients’ following rules and expressed frustration with clients who did not meet reform’s requirements. They said they had no patience for certain clients, especially those who did not bring required paperwork, who missed meetings, or who were evasive when asked questions. As they spoke, they exhibited the harsh tone of which clients accused them.
But then I asked them a different kind of question. I asked what they thought of reform itself. Each of the four surprised me. Each said that they thought the policies reform had put in place were too harsh. They agreed with reform’s goals, but they did not think it was flexible or forgiving enough for women who needed more time to find stable employment that allowed them also to care for their children. Most of the women I interviewed said the same thing. They too thought they should not rely on welfare long term and should find employment, but they thought they needed more support, more time, and more understanding when it could not happen immediately or when crises intervened. Thus caseworkers, job-training counselors, and clients may think similarly, but their different roles force them into adversarial positions. Caseworkers’ and job-training counselors’ job is to enforce reform’s mandates, and that required task overrides their personal views of reform. Clients get to see only the person fulfilling that job task and rarely the person who has a more humane understanding of a client’s challenges.
We see here how the structure of the welfare office, and of job-training programs to which welfare offices send welfare recipients, shapes the nature of interactions between low-income mothers and caseworkers or job-training counselors. Because caseworkers and counselors are rewarded for moving clients from welfare to work and not for treating them sensitively, making sure they understand policies, or making sure they get all of the benefits to which they are entitled, their jobs are structured so that they have interests at odds with those of welfare recipients who are trying to retain benefits and who wish for sensitive treatment.
ISSUES OF DISTRUST IN THE WELFARE OFFICE
The dynamics described in this chapter, in which welfare recipients often view their caseworkers as disrespectful and uncaring, have profound consequences for their experiences on welfare. After all, it is the caseworkers who must help the women navigate the complex rules and procedures of the welfare system.
These dynamics also have implications for how welfare policies play out. If welfare recipients are not aware of or do not understand welfare rules and the work incentives they contain, they cannot take advantage of such incentives. And even when the women do know the rules, if they do not trust their caseworkers they may not believe that these incentive policies truly will be applied. As a result, they may not take the steps necessary to receive them. This was equally true for the women I interviewed in both time periods.
Knowledge of the Written Rules
It may at first seem that it should be easy for welfare recipients to grasp what welfare policy rules are. However, the rules that are written in legislation, the rules as they are actually implemented by caseworkers, and recipients’ interpretation of the written and implemented rules all differ from each other. The gaps between these three things lead to difficulty in caseworker and client communication about policies. Often the women I interviewed described welfare rules differently than they were written up officially. As we will see below, they might say that they would be cut off Medicaid benefits if they got a job, when the written rules said this would not happen. When women did not describe rules in the same way as they were written, I say they had “a different understanding of the rules” rather than an “incorrect understanding.” This is because it is possible that rules were not implemented according to how they were written. The women’s understandings of the rules would be “wrong” if indeed rules were implemented as written. However, if they were not, then the women might have a correct understanding of the rules as implemented, even though that understanding was different from the rules as written. As we shall see, many of the women at both time periods reported that the rules as written were not the same as the rules as practiced.16 As described in more depth below, I myself found a brochure in a welfare office informing clients of a policy that the state had voted to discontinue a year and a half earlier. Clearly, the written legislation (that this particular policy should be stopped) and the policy implemented, or at least communicated, in the welfare office were in conflict with each other.
The rules themselves, of course, differed before and after reform, which somewhat affected the interviews’ content. Even so, many of the women in both time periods either stated that they did not know particular