How does a government facilitate comprehensive care for its constituents without sacrificing equity?

When reading this chapter and after reading all the discussion, it seems to me that we focus a lot on the people who take advantage of the system, which I totally agree with; however, I would also like to say that the system is not perfect either. In some ways, the system holds people back from moving forward when they are presented the opportunity.

In my Into to SW class we did a project that was focused on helping a woman who was using federal assistance for child care and food stamps who was being offered a promotion at work. The catch of this situation is that the position paid $1.00 more than she currently made, which would put her over the income limit to receive her government assistance, however $1.00 more if income per hour (fulltime=$160.00 a month) is still not enough to cover her and her two kids grocery needs, let alone childcare.

I don’t remember what our group decided regarding helping this woman. Its kind of a no win situation. We could advise her to either not take the promotion and stay off government assistance, while being held down in a low paying position forever just to be able to get by. Or do we tell them to take the promotion and try to get by while improving herself by moving up in the corporate world? Keep in kind that if she takes the promotion she will not meet her monthly income needed to live if she now has to pay for food and childcare.

I have thought a lot about this activity recently. As you all know I just has a baby 3 weeks ago. My first. I go back to work the week after the semester is over, and the baby will be going with me. Thank God!--- Because infant care, per house, cost more than I make an hour, but make more than the CCAP income limit. Therefore, if I couldn’t take my baby to work with me, since I have no family in Denver, and cant receive CCAP, I would either have to quite my job, or pay to go to work.

So, as I agree that far to many people take advantage of the system, sometimes the system creates some of the problem itself.

This is a cartoon that I found kinda funny because I thinik that people dont realize that they are getting some form of assistance while also talk bad about others that do. There are many different types of assistance other than food stamps and housing.



I also found this cartoon which reminded me of many of the other students post for this weeks discussion in regard to people continually having children even though they cant afford them.