Forgive me if this is obvious, but have you done the following three things:
1. Go through the list of resources on 211 Arizona (Note: 211 is an emerging, but not yet nationally-adopted, standard for a first-point-of-entry on social services, just like 911 is for emergency services) -- see https://211arizona.org/ .
Your goal here is to do a breadth-first search: look for things that you haven’t yet applied for, plausibly might get, and can get quickly. Don’t go too deep down a rabbit hole, but rather try to quickly sort and validate or reject various ideas on there.
2. Reach out to your local Congressional office for help—ask them if there are any programs they know of that can help, especially as a survivor of domestic violence.
3. Also, if you haven’t gone to your local food bank, please, please consider this SOCIAL PERMISSION TO GO TO YOUR LOCAL FOOD BANK. It literally exists for exactly this purpose.
Thank you for your response. Yes, I’ve done these things. The unfortunate reality is that my state is not very charitable. The decision makers here fund the Department of Child Safety with federal money intended for social safety net programs.
The TANF benefit, for instance, is like $200 per month per family but requires recipients to spend a certain amount of hours every week in an office doing stupid busy work as punishment for not being employed, thus reducing the time/energy they could otherwise be using to find some income generating activity to do for more than $200 per month.
Consequently, no one bothers signing up to get TANF, and the state shrugs and says “no one is signing up for this program, therefore we will spend the money on more important things like separating poor families by force for being plagued with problems we have criminalized.”
There are nonprofits and stuff, but they are constantly swamped here since they are effectively all there is. The need in AZ is enormous and festering. Any attempt to address it socially, however, tends to be met with overwhelming contempt.
Forgive me if this is obvious, but have you done the following three things:
1. Go through the list of resources on 211 Arizona (Note: 211 is an emerging, but not yet nationally-adopted, standard for a first-point-of-entry on social services, just like 911 is for emergency services) -- see https://211arizona.org/ .
Your goal here is to do a breadth-first search: look for things that you haven’t yet applied for, plausibly might get, and can get quickly. Don’t go too deep down a rabbit hole, but rather try to quickly sort and validate or reject various ideas on there.
2. Reach out to your local Congressional office for help—ask them if there are any programs they know of that can help, especially as a survivor of domestic violence.
3. Also, if you haven’t gone to your local food bank, please, please consider this SOCIAL PERMISSION TO GO TO YOUR LOCAL FOOD BANK. It literally exists for exactly this purpose.
Thank you for your response. Yes, I’ve done these things. The unfortunate reality is that my state is not very charitable. The decision makers here fund the Department of Child Safety with federal money intended for social safety net programs.
The TANF benefit, for instance, is like $200 per month per family but requires recipients to spend a certain amount of hours every week in an office doing stupid busy work as punishment for not being employed, thus reducing the time/energy they could otherwise be using to find some income generating activity to do for more than $200 per month.
Consequently, no one bothers signing up to get TANF, and the state shrugs and says “no one is signing up for this program, therefore we will spend the money on more important things like separating poor families by force for being plagued with problems we have criminalized.”
There are nonprofits and stuff, but they are constantly swamped here since they are effectively all there is. The need in AZ is enormous and festering. Any attempt to address it socially, however, tends to be met with overwhelming contempt.