Breaking the Cycle of Dependency:
One Family's Story of Overcoming Welfare

Aired November 10, 1999

It is the 10th day of November, 1999, and this is INFOhio After Nine, and I'm David C. Barnett. Many of those who are on welfare for years are now among the newly-hired. They are making headway working their way off of public assistance. As part of our series on welfare reform, "The Changing Face of Welfare," we've been telling you some of these stories and now, 90.3 WCPN® correspondent Harry Boomer tells us about another family that's breaking the cycle of dependency.

Tracy Davis–I have six children. I have two boys and four girls, Michael, Bianca, Heaven, Julianna, Joshua, and Selma.

Harry Boomer–That's 29-year old Tracy Davis. She grew up in the St. Clair-Court Rd. area on Cleveland's east side.

TD–I started having children young, but that didn't stop me from going to school. I graduated high school when I was pregnant with my third child. I got married right after I graduated to the kids' father, and I went to college, right from having all my kids.

HB–Davis says she attended Wooster Business College. A few years ago, she and her husband separated. He used to keep the kids during summer break. Davis says a couple of years ago, while the kids were with their father, they got the shock of their young lives. They found their dad's body.

TD–They seen a cartoon on TV that he liked very well, so they went in the back room to wake him up, and he just wouldn't wake up, so it was really hard on them. They talk about him as if he's still here. I'm glad I gave them the time with him. All they remember is good times that they had with their father, and that's good.

HB–She says he died of natural causes in his sleep. Davis, who was on welfare for a number of years, now lives on the near west side of town. She moved her family into their own place about a month ago.

TD–I'm doing fine. I got a good job now, I'm on my feet, and have my own place now, and the kids are more content, and the place I work at right now, the Great Lakes Science Center, that's where Cleveland Works had placed me, and I'm there, seven months later. I'm hanging in there.

HB–An ancient African proverb states what Hillary Rodham Clinton titled her book: it takes a village to raise a child. Davis's instructors, and now her coworkers, make up her village, a support system she says she could not have made it without.

TD–I had family problems. I was staying with my father and we had mixed communication, and it was a small house, and we were just six kids in a three-bedroom house, and it was just a lot of things I was going through. I had my mother-in-law pass away, we had a hard time with that, and I was going to school at the time. I can go to people and talk to them and I didn't have any family relatives that I can talk to, but I can talk to them, because they were like a family, because I was there every day, so they were really good people and the people that I work with right now at the Great Lakes Science Center, we're like one big family. We have little cubicles, we can come into each other's cubicle and talk to each other about our problems, anything. Anybody that has something to talk about finds somebody to talk to, because it takes a lot off of a person, and it helps you go down the right road.

HB–Davis says she appreciates the camaraderie of her coworkers, and the help her father has given her over the years. She also says she is glad to get off welfare. She still has sixteen months of eligibility left. Ohio has a three-year lifetime limit on being able to receive benefits. Seven months ago, Davis made the leap to self-sufficiency.

TD–I didn't want to take advantage of it, because I knew I could do better for myself on my own, and I'm not handicapped or disabled or anything, so I just don't want to take advantage of something that somebody really needs, because there's a lot of people out here that do need assistance, and I know I have the background and the education, I just wanted to do better for me and my kids. I didn't want my kids to be known as growing up on welfare, because I was that type of child, I grew up on welfare since I was 18, and it's not good because the peers that are around, the kids that are around, they make fun, which that's not nice also, because they may be on it, and they just don't want to-kids don't want to be nice to each other these days.

HB–With a big smile on her face, Davis says it's great to have her own place, a place her kids can be kids.

TD–My kids are more content. They have their own rooms and their own space, no one hollered at them, they don't have to be quiet if they don't want to, unless I have to tell them to be quiet (laughs).

HB–Tracy Davis knows all of her troubles are not over. She knows she can't provide everything her six children need, and with the holidays approaching, Davis worries that her kids won't have much with which to celebrate. For INFOhio, I'm Harry Boomer in Cleveland.