puddles and experience this world.
For Abby to raise her child alone, she decided she needed financial help. In 1996, Abby started receiving $434 in welfare or Aid to Needy Families with Children per month. She also was eligible for food stamps and subsidized rent and the state paid her college expenses. Under the Vermont workfare plan, she was told that her ANFC would be cut off in eighteen months or by February 1998 if she didn't find a job by then. She called the deadline unfair.
Abby's situation is pretty typical in a few ways. At least half of women on welfare became pregnant as teenagers. Also, she's never received child support from the father. Two years ago, Madeline's father, Poncho, was visiting her but contributing little, only about $150 since the baby's birth. Whatever he paid would have been taken out of Abby's welfare check but so far, the state hadn't tried to collect it from him. Abby said she didn't want to press him about it.
A year later, in August of 1997, Abby plays with her daughter in a park along Lake Champlain. She said the previous year had been constructive. She was continuing her art studies at Community College. She was even working six hours a week doing clerical work at a non-profit arts organization. She was still on welfare but she said she wasn't concerned about the deadline, now only eight months away. The only dark cloud was that Poncho had moved to San Francisco several months before. Abby said she'd given up on any future with him and now seemed ready to press him to pay child support.
Abby: We've spoken already about him coming back and I said that's fine, if you want to come back. Maddy would be happy to see you but you need to commit to her. You need to have an apartment. You need to have a job and you need to be paying child support before you're going to be allowed to see her.
In the end, Poncho did come back to Burlington, but not to stay. Last fall he headed west again and disappeared into San Francisco.
with these kids and learn about teaching art and about who these kids are.
Abby may be doing this for her own reasons, but the state believes that higher education is important to the futures of all welfare parents. So much so that it's one of only four states that subsidizes welfare recipients who go to college. Jackie Levine of Vermont's Department of Social Welfare says the point of Vermont's deadline is not to force parents off the rolls immediately but to provide an incentive for them to eventually become more self-sufficient.
Levine: There is not a drop-dead point. We want parents to work as much as they can work, and to do the best that they can for their kids, but we also feel that we are here to help those who aren't able to work and also those whose skills or job availability is insufficient to meet the needs of the family.
relationship with someone who that has a young child.