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Social service workers get a taste of life in poverty

JANESVILLE — Mary Morris was not having a good week.

The single mother’s youngest son, 3-year-old Mike, had been taken from her because she couldn’t pick him up from daycare on time.

She was making $110 a week at her part-time job, but a thief stole last week’s paycheck. She didn’t know how she would feed her children or pay her bills.

Mary was really Betty Gilbert, an ECHO board member. Gilbert joined more than 50 social workers, Rock County employees and others who work with people in poverty for a simulation at the Rock County Job Center on Friday.

Organizers divided participants into fictional families and gave them situations typical to those in poverty to teach them about what their clients go through every day.

Jessica Schafer, who organized the event through the Rock County Homeless Intervention Task Force, urged the participants to take the simulation seriously.

“Poverty is not a game,” she said. “It’s not a game for the one in 10 Americans who are currently receiving food stamps. You’re going to walk a mile in their shoes.”

The Morris family—Mary, 12-year-old Matt (Ann Forbeck, social worker with the Janesville School District), 10-year-old Melinda (Mark Fuller, member of the homeless intervention task force) and Mike (Jessica Petitte, public health nurse for the Rock County Health Department)—struggled to pay for childcare, utilities, transportation, housing and food during four 15-minute “weeks.”

They formed a plan early: Mary would pawn some jewelry and furniture to get more money and try to get her unemployed ex-husband to watch Mike.

But the plan quickly crumbled in the chaos of the simulation. Gilbert grew frustrated as she tried to find time to cash her check, collect food stamps, buy food, get to work and pick her children up from school and daycare.

“I’m frustrated because I want to get to work,” she said. “I have to work or else I don’t get money next week.”

Things quickly went from bad to worse. While Mary worked to get Mike back from the authorities, Matt got arrested for skipping school. Later, the neighborhood con man convinced Matt and Melinda to rob a business, and they both were sent to juvenile detention.

By the end of the month, Mary had lost her job because she took too much time working with legal aid and human services to get her children back. She had spent all her money on necessities such as daycare, food and transportation. She couldn’t pay her mortgage and utility bills and held $6 in cash.

“It’s like everything keeps coming at you,” Fuller said.

The most frustrating thing was lack of time, Gilbert said: She wasted precious minutes waiting in line, filling out paperwork and being shuffled from agency to agency.

Playing a child, Forbeck felt frustrated because her mother wasn’t taking care of her, she said.

“I was getting angry at you,” she told Gilbert. “You didn’t come to pick us up.”

The fictional situation closely resembled that of a family Forbeck worked with in the school district, she said. In that case, the family ended up losing its home and moving in with another family.

Gilbert didn’t know what would have happened to the Morris family.

“I was trying very, very hard, but I just couldn’t do it,” she said.