Dionne described everything about parenting as new to her since she had spent so many years childless and had not spent much time around children. Having earned a sufficient living selling drugs, she was also not familiar with the welfare system. She thus found the interaction style of caseworkers a shock when she started receiving benefits after her son’s birth. “I’m not comfortable at all because . . . they don’t know how to talk to you. They don’t know how to present theirself to you. So I am sitting here nicely—just like I’m sitting here with you, you know. It’s like they holler at you like you some kind of little kid, you know. I’m looking at this lady like ‘Is you crazy?’ . . . The caseworkers, they are very snotty. Some of them, you can’t talk to them.”
Dionne really had no preconceived notions of what it would be like to interact with caseworkers. She had applied for welfare expecting help and not the treatment she described. Dionne had been no saint, for sure. But, as she indicated in her quote above, she did indeed speak with me in a calm and professional manner—or “nicely,” to use her words. She also did not have children young or have a lot of children, conditions that might raise the hackles of caseworkers tired of doling out aid. But she described the same treatment that Julie Callahan, mother of two at twenty-three years old, described.
Though most women after reform reported negative interactions with caseworkers, some had positive interactions in welfare offices. In contrast, no women before reform described specific incidents of positive interactions with caseworkers, though a few made general statements about some caseworkers being helpful. Caseworkers after reform earned praise when they treated the women respectfully, when they followed through on what they had promised to do, when they were flexible, when they went out of their way to help, or when they cheered on women who were trying to transition to work.
Georgia Burke, an African American mother of seven children, liked her caseworker’s reliability. “Say like the food stamps don’t be on your card when they supposed to be there. He, instead of letting his paperwork pile up, he puts it in that same day as he tells you. He don’t wait. When he say he’s gonna do it, he does it.”
When caseworkers let their “paperwork pile up,” the cost for recipients is high. They may have to wait to receive benefits that they desperately need. By doing his paperwork right away, Georgia’s caseworker showed that he recognized how important the food stamps were to her family’s well-being. He was thus not only serving her needs but showing her respect.
Melissa Jacobs, a married twenty-eight-year-old white mother of three, was happy with one of her caseworkers for the same reason. As we sat at the dining room table in her apartment with her children loudly playing around us and her husband in and out, she described her experiences. “The caseworker was very respectful. She did everything like it was supposed to be. I didn’t have no interruptions on my case. I didn’t have no problems until she retired and then they switched me [to another caseworker].” Note that Melissa appreciated that she had “no interruptions” in her case, and remember that a main frustration that Bethany Grant, whom we met in the Introduction, had with her caseworker was that she “messed up” Bethany’s case and that Bethany was without benefits for several months during the cold Chicago winter as a result. Melissa’s new caseworker was less reliable than the one she appreciated, and she had complaints both about the way she was treated and about the difficulty of getting her benefits consistently. The difference between her actual experiences with each caseworker was what taught her who could be trusted to deliver and who could not.
Monisha Hall, an African American mother who at twenty-six was busy managing three children under the age of five, was grateful that her caseworker was willing to be flexible in the bureaucratic process of assessing her eligibility for cash assistance. Otherwise, she would have had to wait longer for her check to come through. Monisha lived in her sister’s apartment, and her sister charged her rent. Monisha’s caseworker had told her that she needed a notarized letter from her sister stating the amount of the rent so it could be included in a calculation of Monisha’s expenses and hence her needed income. Many women described caseworkers who were sticklers about every rule, but when Monisha forgot to bring the letter, her caseworker did not demand that she get it. “I was supposed to bring in . . . a notarized letter from my sister about the rent ’cause she was charging me like a hundred dollars. And I had forgot to get it. And [my caseworker] was like, ‘All right.’ She just let it go. She was like, ‘I know you say it’s your sister, I know what’s going on, I know how much you give her, so you don’t have to bring it back.’” From this experience, Monisha learned she could trust her caseworker to be on her side.
Still, many of the positive descriptions were coupled with statements about how rare such caseworkers were. Kala Amos, a twenty-five-year-old African American mother of three who hoped to be a police officer and had held two jobs as a security guard, appreciated her caseworker because she did “what [she] say [she]’ll do.” Also, her caseworker would call her to remind her of appointments or paperwork she needed to bring in, which Kala said the caseworker was not required to do. Kala did not think her caseworker is typical, however. “She real nice. You gotta have a good relationship with your caseworker in order to get your paperwork done. You can’t have no attitude. But some of the caseworkers down at the Aid office, they’ll make you have a attitude ’cause some of ’em so snide. They don’t know how to talk to you. And you grown. And you down there trying to get yourself together and they be having attitude. Not all of ’em, but some of ’em do. But the caseworkers that I’ve had, I never had a problem with mine.”
Kala’s comments are interesting for several reasons. First, she was saying that getting “your paperwork done,” by which she meant completing all the bureaucratic requirements to apply for benefits and to keep them coming, could not be done without a good relationship with one’s caseworker. Second, she was acknowledging that not all clients exhibited a good attitude, but she attributed that to the belittling attitudes of caseworkers who treated clients like children even though the clients were “grown” and were trying to “get themselves together.” Third, she felt she had had good caseworkers but said she had observed bad ones.
Even women who reported positive interactions with a caseworker explained that in addition to their positive experiences, they had had negative interactions with other caseworkers or had observed negative interactions between other caseworkers and other clients. Unlike most women who had much shorter periods on welfare, Alpha Walker, a mother of seven, had been on AFDC and then TANF for a total of seventeen years. She had certainly seen her share of caseworkers. With a resigned sigh, she said, “Some of them are all right. I mean, they know how to talk to you and they try to help you. But some of them, they talk to you snotty and they act like it’s they money coming out they pocket.” Here Alpha’s reference to “money coming out they pocket” echoes Julie’s use of the same phrase when describing Ms. Driscoll’s attitude. Similarly, Kala’s comment above about caseworkers treating “grown” clients inappropriately harkens back to Dionne’s surprise at caseworkers who treated clients like children. As I mentioned earlier, often women who did not even know each other observed the same behaviors in their caseworkers.
Edwina Bright was an African American mother of four children—two grown daughters who were married and lived with their husbands and two teenage sons. Edwina was particularly thoughtful, often took time to really think before answering a question, and exhibited no active hostility about her time on welfare. Edwina had held many jobs and had stably transitioned from welfare shortly after reform policies began. At the time of our interview, she had held her current position for four years. Her job, as a janitor who also did a lot of the landscaping at her building, was unionized, which was very rare among the women in either time period. Back when she had received welfare, Edwina