Kathie
GARDINER, MAINE

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"It's all a big juggling act just to meet your basic needs-which bills you pay depends on who is making the most noise. I've been working steady and off welfare for seven years but my family's still poor. Sometimes people forget that about welfare reform-it needs to be about helping us leave poverty, not just welfare."

My name is Kathy and I live in Gardiner with my 2 daughters ages 10 and 12 and my mother who is retired. I work for a social services agency. I was off and on TANF for years, but have been off since I got this job several years ago. I really love my job, but financially we are still really having a hard time. My family still gets Medicaid and I sometimes need food stamps too. I work full time-sometimes evenings and weekends too. Even with a little help from child support, we are still living just about at the poverty level. I usually earn between $16,000 and $17,000 a year.

My biggest worry is that I can't afford childcare. I've been on a waiting list for a childcare subsidy for months, but there are a lot of other people who need it too and our turn never comes. I'm lucky because sometimes my Mom is able to help out, but she isn't able to help all the time, and there are many days when my girls are latchkey kids. I worry about this a lot. Even though we live in a pretty small town, I know that it can be dangerous anywhere these days, and we've had lots of long talks about keeping the door locked and being very careful. Usually my girls only have to be alone for an hour or two, but at least once a week I have to work in the evening. That's when I worry the most.

Sometimes people forget that about  welfare reform - it needs to be about helping  us leave poverty, not just welfare.

After paying my basic bills for a month and being really careful about what I spend, I usually only have about $50 left over-that's not enough to deal with the emergencies that always seem to come up. Before he died last year, my Dad taught me how to repair my own car and I do a pretty good job, but can't do everything. There have been many months when I haven't been able to both pay the rent and fix the car. Sometimes, I have to go to the food pantry several months in a row or get help from the town for oil.

I am very, very grateful for the help we get from Medicaid. After I left TANF I was married for a little while and we weren't eligible for Medicaid. This was before the Cub Care Program and Medicaid coverage for parents were available. We could have gotten health insurance from my job, but it was over $100 a month and there was no way we could afford it. I went without gynecological exams for several years. My oldest daughter has asthma and she needed to see a lung specialist during this time-we just couldn't afford it. One winter she missed a lot of school just because we couldn't get her all the care she needed. My youngest daughter has a heart problem and needed to see a cardiologist during this period. They both have chronic ear problems. I still owe bills to health care providers from that time that I can't even begin to tackle

I know that the only way that things will improve is if I can go back to school and get a degree, but my finances are so tight right now I can't imagine how I could come up with anything extra to go to school. I know I would have to keep working while I went to school in order to keep us afloat. I really wish that there were some kind of program to help parents like me who are working and need more education to improve our wages. 

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