In January 1998 Ann-Marie Young arrived for her 10 a.m. appointment with a caseworker at the state Department of Children and Families office in Fort Lauderdale at 8 a.m. Because she was eight months pregnant and had felt sharp pains earlier that morning, she was hoping to bump up her appointment so that she could go to see her doctor as soon as possible. But Young says the receptionist scolded her for arriving two hours early, then told her to sit and wait. Seven hours later at about 3 p.m., while still waiting to meet with her caseworker, Young went into labor. "Then everybody wanted to help me," she says.
Elbert Ventura
Ann-Marie Young was shown a road to self-sufficiency, but it led to a dead end
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Help is something of which Young has received little in the last two years. A former welfare recipient who now participates in the state's WAGES (Work and Gain Economic Self-Sufficiency) program, the single mother is supposed to be supplied with job training and support services. But thus far she's come up against a system that has kept her from finding work while trying to take care of four children. Her experience at the DCF office 19 months ago was just the beginning of a nightmarish odyssey that, as others attest, is not unique.
Sitting in the cozy living room of her Lauderhill bungalow, Young tells her kids to keep the noise down. Her one-year-old, Malcolm, sits on her lap while the others -- ages four, six, and eight -- huddle around the TV, gleefully playing a video game. The 25-year-old Young moved to Florida from Jamaica in 1983, and until the age of 16, she lived a decent life with her aunt and uncle. "When they passed away, it all fell apart," she says. That same year she became pregnant with her first child by one man, then had three more kids with another. She dropped out of school, but with the help of her grandparents, who also live in Lauderhill, she's been able to keep her head above water -- barely.
When Young joined the WAGES program two years ago, she was hopeful. "I just want[ed] to work and do my own thing," she explains. WAGES was set up in 1996, shortly after state and federal welfare-reform bills were signed into laws demanding that welfare recipients get off the rolls and find jobs -- a process known as "workfare." WAGES is a transitional program that offers these people support services, such as job training, self-improvement classes, and childcare.
In Young's case the problems began with Parent Information Resource Center (PIRC), which was hired by Broward County in 1996 as the case-management provider for WAGES programs in the county. Young began meeting with a PIRC caseworker in 1998, when she was unemployed and seeking childcare. Family members were able to look after her kids nights and weekends, but she needed full-time subsidized daycare in order to find work.
She finally found a job, with a temp agency, last December. Because WAGES is a transitional program, those who find full-time work and thus are no longer in training, report to the DCF, not WAGES, for support services. But Young says she was told by the DCF she was not eligible for childcare. Why? Because her PIRC caseworker had told the DCF to "sanction" the single mother. Young claims the sanctioning process was never explained by the PIRC caseworker (who no longer works for the agency) despite persistent questions. Lisa Margulis, director of social services at the privately run Cooperative Feeding Program in Fort Lauderdale, says that, in Young's case, sanctioning shouldn't have been an issue. "She wasn't even getting benefits [to begin with]," she explains, adding that Young had yet to reopen a case with the DCF. "You can't sanction someone who doesn't have a case."
Despite numerous phone calls, PIRC officials refused to comment for this article, and John Heckathorne, WAGES specialist at the DCF, said he could not find the reason for the sanction in Young's case file. PIRC's contract with the county expired in June, and Lockheed-Martin has been serving as WAGES case-management provider since July. The decision to go with a new provider was based solely on bids, according to Khalil Zeinieh, WAGES director for Broward.
But back in December, Young was in a tough spot -- one that can be described only as Kafkaesque. She was told the sanction would be lifted only after she attended ten days' worth of WAGES seminars. Because she still needed someone to look after her kids, Young had to drop the temp job, and she wasn't able to begin attending "Positive Image," a self-improvement seminar, until April. She claims she was told to attend the seminar for five days, then report to her PIRC caseworker for reassignment. But when she looked for the caseworker, "she was on vacation," Young says, gone for two weeks. After the caseworker returned, she yelled at Young for not finishing the seminar, then told her she'd have to start all over again.
Reluctantly Young complied, beginning a ten-day training stint at the switchboard at WAGES' Jobs and Benefits office in Fort Lauderdale in June. But again childcare became a problem. Young's shift ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., but her caseworker, Young says, assigned subsidized childcare from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This meant that Young, who doesn't own a car, had plenty of time to get on a bus and drop her kids at the daycare center before reporting to work in the morning. But she wasn't able to pick them up on time at the end of the day. When she pointed out this dilemma to her caseworker, she was told the childcare schedule would be revised accordingly.
