Kimberly Rogers Inquest Alerts

Welfare system punishes people, professor testifies

by Keith Lacey
Northern Life

Thursday, December 05, 2002

An expert who has written about the thousands of women who survive on social assistance told a coroner’s inquest Ontario’s welfare system is a dysfunctional mess focused on punishing destitute people without any focus on helping them escape the cycle of poverty.

Margaret Little, a Queen’s University women’s studies professor and author of a book detailing life for women on social assistance, told the inquest social assistance recipients can’t survive on current welfare rates without community assistance.

The current system is also bogged down in bureaucracy with little focus on helping clients, she said.

Little said she’s interviewed thousands of women on social assistance over the last decade and their life stories are similar and devastating.

“In the last two or three years, there has been such a dramatic change…it was all quite overwhelming for me,” she said.

In a recent set of interviews with 30 female recipients, not one could afford to eat three meals a day, said Little.

One woman she interviewed offered her “a stale muffin and popcorn” which was all the woman could afford for dinner that evening, she said.

Food is the first thing women she’s interviewed will cut from their daily lives, said Little.

Women with children will cut back on their own food intake to ensure their children are fed as nutritiously as possible, she said.

“They really are scraping by and not getting enough food to survive on,” she said.

Most food banks do a great job, but they are forced by the volume of business to limit each client to one visit per month and food banks don’t offer fresh fruit or vegetables, she said.

The inquest has heard the basic shelter allowance for a single person is $325 per month and $510 for a single mother with one child.

It’s virtually impossible to find affordable accommodation in this price range, said Little.

“The welfare cheque is simply not enough to live on,” she said. “None of us could live on it.”

Little was the final witness at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Kimberly Rogers, 40.

Rogers was sentenced April 25, 2001 to six months of house arrest, 18 months’ probation and ordered to pay restitution after pleading guilty to collecting $13,5000 in welfare benefits while collecting $32,000 in student loans between 1996 and 1999.

Rogers died from an overdose of anti-depressants. She suffered from chronic depression, migraines, panic attacks, insomnia and physical pain following 1997 knee surgery.

Her badly decomposed body was found in the sweltering heat of her West End apartment the morning of Aug. 9, 2001.

Most welfare recipients can’t afford to pay for a phone and this limits their opportunities to look for work or seek out community support, she said.

Only a small percentage of women she’s interviewed know the government offers a small clothing allowance for recipients looking for work, she said.

One woman she talked to sawed off heels from one pair of shoes onto another pair and used glue to try and place a tooth back in place before attending a job interview, said Little.

“These people are making heroic efforts to search for work…not only do they not have enough to live on, but they can’t afford to look for work and most of them don’t know about any clothing allowance,” she said.

Another common theme in her work is women on welfare benefits are petrified they will be forced to give up their children to social agencies, said Little.

Because the current system dictates all “gifts” should be declared as income, one woman didn’t know whether to declare two quarts of milk her mother left her as a gift, said Little.

The current system insists clients accept any job made available no matter what qualifications that job requires or be involved in a community placement project if a job isn’t available, said Little.

The system doesn’t consider high unemployment rates, the client’s desire to work or train in a certain area or the fact almost all people who accept low-paying minimum wage jobs are back on the system within months, said Little.

One woman she interviewed in Newmarket was seven months pregnant and was forced by her welfare worker to get three signatures from employers to show she was actively pursuing work, said Little.

“To me, it’s inhumane to asked a woman seven months pregnant to do this,” she said.

Current policy is built on the notion people on welfare don’t want to work and a large majority are ripping off the system, when the facts aren’t there to support this myth, said Little.

Allowing people to return to school as adults or pursue training in fields of interest is the only solution to allowing people to escape the system, find good jobs and become economically self-reliant in the long term, said Little.

The majority of welfare case workers work extremely hard, but most are bogged down by a system with ridiculous caseload ratios, said Little.

“Time and time again, women tell me they can’t get a hold of their worker,” she said.

The system is designed for case workers to not deal directly with clients, but to work diligently to detect fraud and some workers are punished and demoted for going out of their way to help clients, said Little.

“They (the government) has created the notion everyone is cheating the system” and that’s not the case as the prevalence of fraud is extremely low compared to the numbers on social assistance, she said.

In earlier testimony, Kim Pate, the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and an expert on women in conflict with the law, testified conditional sentences to be served in the community were adopted by Canadian courts in 1996.

“It’s still considered a jail sentence, but one to be served in the community,” she said.

Research has indicated an increasing number of women are being handed conditional sentences rather than jail because they are less likely to be violent offenders, pose a threat to society or re-offend, she said.

The problem is conditional sentences imposed against women tend to be more restrictive and punitive than against men, she said.

Many women given such sentences don’t have jobs and have to care for children or loved ones and are often forced to serve their sentence in isolation with little support, she said.

Research also shows women tend to be “more compliant” and will follow the strict rules of house arrest usually involved in conditional sentences out of fear or ignorance, she said.

“Most don’t want to be seen as not doing what they are supposed to do,” she said. “They often feel they deserved to be punished.”

Pate believes an advocate should be assigned to act on behalf of women charged with most non-violent crimes.

The advocate could talk to the accused about why they committed an offence and whether it was out of desperation or fear and provide options to the court while holding the accused responsible, said Pate.

If any sentence would be too severe or onerous, the advocate could advise the sentencing judge before sentence was imposed, she said.

There is no person she knows of who can survive on current welfare rates without accessing community and social services support, said Pate.

“The load on the community becomes greater and greater,” she said.

There have been suggestions that Rogers would have been better off in jail than serving house arrest while pregnant, but Pate didn’t agree.

The reality is Rogers would have still faced her welfare ban as dictated by Tory policy once she got out, she said.

The conditions of confinement inside a jail also lead to mental health deterioration and it would only be natural for an expectant mother to be worried she might not be able to keep her child once released, said Pate.

Research shows people with mental issues like depression and panic attacks have their condition worsen if in jail or under house arrest, she said.

Closing submissions were scheduled for Thursday.

The jury will now begin two to three weeks of deliberations.