This is an area where we can agree.

I will go so far as to concede that I don't think welfare programs generally are so great. It still beats the alternative if the alternative is living in a car, growing up improperly nourished, or dying of something that could have been treated for pennies if one had a regular doctor.

There's gotta be a way. I'm not willing to just give up on the welfare (general usage, not government program) of strangers because the government screws up so much. We can't let it run itself, is all. The public has to stay on top of it every minute. This is of course more time than anyone has. Maybe it could be divided up?

People scorned Hillary's book It Takes A Village, but you know something? The title is right: it really does take a village to raise a child. That's why it's a proverb. Too bad that some don't want to hear it because of who said it.

I speak as one of the villagers who, de facto, do some of the raising. The kids who are dumped (there's no other word for it) at the library for hours and hours at a time get more discipline from the staff, and more tutoring, and more etiquette lessons, than they apparently -- judging by their surprise -- have ever gotten at home. Considering the number of people we see, and the number of us available (4 staff for a 3-story building at any one time), that's a pitiful amount of attention for any child.

And then there are the "community service" kids who come to us because the court assigns them. They need a minder of their own, but we don't have one, so it's me. I've stopped taking the ones that come from a county probation office, because they bring their posses with them and we get no support from their probation officers once the placement is made. The probation people are having a hard time understanding why this is a problem in a public building with no security guards. I suggested they allow the kids to work off their sentences in their offices to gain better understanding.

Yet I'm reluctant to place blanket blame on the parents. Some of them deserve a swift kick, but some of them -- I meet them too, sometimes -- can't teach what they don't know. And some of them are dealing with other damage: past physical and psychological abuse, working two or three jobs (= poor supervision of kids), bullying and other negative peer interactions, substance abuse in the family and its possible hereditary nature, other health problems, and the economic and emotional fallout of divorce.

We haven't got villages anymore, so we have Feds, and the states' Departments of Public Welfare. You have a suggestion? I'll listen to anything.

I agree that some things need to be taken apart. The problem is, from where I sit and what I see, if nothing is put together to replace it, on the low end of the social scale, the natural vacuum will be filled by prisons and half-way houses. Talk about your expensive solutions...

This is the end of the welfare question I look at every day. These people are not rich, many of them are only sophisticated in a pop culture way, and their kids are the ones paying the biggest price. I don't want to pay enormous amounts for other people's upkeep either, but as I'm looking at it, it's pay now or pay later. How does this get fixed?

Regards--
Mary Anne