Children Here By, Alex Kotlowitz.

¶ … children here by, Alex Kotlowitz. The writer of this paper explores the ways the system failed this family and argues the outcome for the family would have been different had a reformed system been used. There was one source used to complete this paper. Throughout history, authors have used their works to get points across to society that they felt were important.

In the book There are no Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, the reader is treated to an inside view of how a social welfare system can fail a family and what the consequences of that failure can be. THE STORY The story revolves around the real life Rivers family. The family has eight children and one mother who raises them in Henry Horner Housing Projects in the worst part of Chicago.

It is the true life portrayal of what they endure because of their poverty and what they must live like without the means to move away. In reading this book it is easy to pinpoint the three ways that the social system failed the Rivers family. The first way trhat the family was failed was when they were allowed to live in a project that was in such a state of disrepair that raw sewage was coming up and bubbling in the kitchen sink.

The social services system should not allow recipients to live in conditions that could be life threatening from a health standpoint. Where were the social workers? Did no one realize what was going on in this housing project by way of ignored maintenance? The second way that the social system failed the family was in not providing mandatory counseling and classes for LaJoe, the mother of the children in how to better their lives. Under the AFDC system multiple generations lived on the welfare doles from grandma down to grandchild.

How could LaJoe be expected to know how to do any better when she had never seen an example of how it can be done? The social system let her down and consequently let those children down by sending a check that was not enough to survive on and never showing her a way out and off of the system.

The old saying "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and feed him for life" was never more evidenced and proven than it was in this story. The third failing of this social system when it came to the Rivers family was its refusal to monitor. The social workers should have known what was happening by monitoring on a regular basis.

Providing job training and daycare for LaJoe, coming to the house every month to talk to her about changing her circumstances and mandating that she attend counseling are all monitoring methods that should have been in place and were not. If only one change could be made to the social welfare system for the benefit of the families that are on it I would change the case loads of the social workers.

Currently social workers have so many cases that there is no way for them to get involved with the families and help them help themselves out of the system. They are barely able to file the reports and deal with the problems that arise.

If I could change one thing I would provide enough funding that each social worker only had 30 cases to handle so they would be able to get involved, meet with the family on a regular basis and have the time to locate programs and things that the family could take part in to better their lives. Had the Rivers family received benefits under the new reformed system of welfare I believe their lives would have been changed significantly for the better.

The temporary assistance family has measures in place that work to forece a family to change its attitudes.