One Step Forward, Two Steps Back:
The Story of One Welfare Family

Aired October 27, 1999

This is INFOhio After Nine, I am David C. Barnett, welcoming you to the 27th day of October, 1999, and on this overcast morning with a few flecks of blue sky peeking through, we're going to examine the atmosphere of change that surrounds Cuyahoga County's welfare system. County commissioner Tim McCormack joins us live in the studio to discuss the challenges of funding, the many changes that have been mandated by the state and the problems of finding social services in Cuyahoga County, after we return to the compelling story of a woman who is trying to do the right thing. Thousands of welfare recipients are now working as part of the new state system of welfare reform. Most of them are mothers who are beginning to feel better about themselves, but that improved self-image doesn't always trickle down to their children. 90.3 correspondent Harry Boomer reports on how a welfare mother and her three children seem to be taking one step forward and then two steps back.

Harry Boomer–Dion Linder has at least one good reason to celebrate. She started a new job yesterday.

Dion Linder–I found me a job. I work at the Cleveland Bottle Company, I make $5.15 an hour, I work five days a week, 40 hours a week.

HB–Dion is hoping that her new job will help pave the way to a better life for herself and her three children. The first time we heard from Dion, she was staying with a girlfriend in a one-bedroom apartment on East 30th and Cedar. You won't remember the address because I didn't tell you then. Dion was afraid that her girlfriend and her two children would lose the apartment they were gracious enough to share with her and her two kids.

DL–The manager at the office, he got a phone call that I was staying with my friend, and she received a letter to come to the office three days after she had got the phone call, they told her that they found out that she had somebody staying with her, and that she was being evicted for, I think they call it, lodging.

HB–Since that time, Dion and her kids have moved four times. Now they live in an abandoned building.

DL–It's a two-bedroom apartment, but there's no hot water, there's no heat, the electricity isn't on in the apartment but the landlord that owns the building, he somehow rigged it up from downstairs in the basement so we could have lights in the apartment.

HB–Dion knows she runs another risk that scares her to death. She fears social workers will take her kids away, even though she has a new job now, and is praying to find a new place, a decent place for her family to live. Until then, she says, she'll try to make do.

DL–They need beds to sleep on. My kids are sleeping on mattresses sitting on top of buckets. They keep them off the floor so the roaches won't be eating them up and the rats won't get to them. My kids have to sleep under four or five blankets. Right now, we want heat so bad that "hot water" don't make no sense. I come over my mother's house and give my kids a bath, and I had to borrow a space heater from a friend so we could get some heat, so I want to get my kids out of there. They hate being in there and I hate being in there, too, so, I need help with a lot of stuff, and the system ain't giving it to them because they've got access to it. I've talked to so many social workers to know what they're supposed to be able to do for me, but they're not doing it.

HB–To complicate matters, Dion is getting a new self-sufficiency coach, who she says isn't familiar with her history. She fears her new coach won't understand what she's been going through.

DL–About her being my new caseworker, I'll be going to see her next month. When I go see her, she'll ask me for my statement, I don't have one to give her, she's going to sanction me, or wither she's going to cut me completely off, and then what am I going to do? So it's a lot of things that, that a lot of people that are sitting in higher chairs should think about before they start making big changes like that in people's lives, because it's hard out here. It's real hard, and they don't understand that because they're not living it, and it's stressful, too, it's real stressful.

HB–Dion says her children are coping as best they can, but she admits it's hard on them.

DL–Moving a lot is really affecting them a lot, because they don't get along with each other that much, they don't act like brothers and sisters, they act more like cousins or like neighbors, that they don't really like that much no more. They're doing really good in school. The school they go to they don't like, they go to Mt. Arbor, and they don't like the school that they go to, but they still do good in school, and I'll be trying to work with them with their attitude and, I guess, what they're going through right now, it just ain't working. They act right for a minute, then they just start back. They're hardheaded, they're not bad, they're not destructive, they're just hardheaded, they don't focus on anything for a long time, but Demetrius, he's 8 years old. He's a straight-A student, he made merit roll and honor roll. He wants to box, he wants to do boxing, and I can't put him into no type of boxing training or nothing because I don't have a way to get around like I need to, to keep taking him to classes. Demetria, she's 6. I already can't explain what she's going through, I just really can't. She's doing good in-no she's not. Her grades are good in school, but her attitude is not. She don't listen to her teacher. When I tell her to do something, she listens to me, and then it'll be the next day and she forgot what I said, and she'd do it all over again, and Kayla, she's 3, and she does everything a three-year old would do at her age. She don't listen, she don't look, she don't stop, she just goes. I love my kids, I want the best for them.

HB–Dion Linder says she's doing everything she can to keep her family together, fearing every day, the system will tear it apart. She's banking on her new $5.15 an hour job to secure their futures. For INFOhio, I'm Harry Boomer in Cleveland.