Chapter 17: Overcoming Dysfunction

(This is Chapter 17 of "Up and Out," a book condensing my long experience about how to best help poor people.  I pledged earlier to get it up online as soon as possible, so it would be available for free to everyone trying to cope with helping the Katrina evacuees.)

(These are not things that need to be done during the first part of this emergency.  Rather, this is for the time after that, when Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives.  That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in.  The following is for that time.)

(For other chapters, look under "Categories" and click on the chapter you want.)

UP AND OUT: A GUIDE TO TRUE COMPASSION FOR THE POOR

PART II: MOVING UP AND BREAKING OUT OF POVERTY

Section 1: First Aid for the Poor

Chapter 17: Overcoming Dysfunction

What is meant here by dysfunction may seem to psychologists to be confusing.  Psychologists may focus solely on emotional dysfunction stemming from emotional damage already suffered by the client.  Here, however, the focus is on those dysfunctional lifestyles and behaviors that do so much to cause such emotional damage in the first place. 

The dysfunctions focused on here are those behaviors that help trap the poor in their poverty.  Scholarly names for these dysfunctions are lacking.  They could be called occupational dysfunctions or parental dysfunctions or social dysfunctions or other such names.

Whatever emotional damage has been done to the clients in the past, however, their dysfunctional behavior seems clearly to have been learned.  They learned it while growinig up.  Their children in turn are learning it from them.  It is damaging people right and left.

But whether their emotional scars are healed first or not, these behaviors can be changed.  They can learn, and perform, better.  As they do, their children are also learning from their new and better behaviors.  The vicious cycle of family dysfunction can be broken by learning, and by practicing, better behaviors.

So it is helpful to look at their dysfunctions, whatever their underlying emotional situation, as habitual behaviors that can be improved and even reversed.  Experience has confirmed this.  It has worked over and over, in many, many lives.

Here are some of the most important areas of dysfunction affecting the lives of our clients.  If theee dysfunctions were not addressed and modified, our clients were less successful.  These needed these changes just to stay employed and to get ahead financially.

Dysfunctional Parenting

We found that most of our clients were severely dysfunctional as parents.   In Austin we found that if our clients had teens, they were already delinquent before the clients came to us.  (There was only one exception to this pattern.  That teen was under psychiatric care and heavily medicated.)  That is, their teens had already committed crimes and were involved in the criminal justice system.

We saw how the clients handled their children who were not yet teens.  They did not handle them well.  Mostly, they were out of control.  Obviously, if they did not get their children under control before they became teenagers, it was certainly not likely to happen then. They also needed help in damage-control for their delinquent teens. 

So we understood that our clients bedly needed training in good parenting.

If they did not become better parents, soon enough, their dysfunction as parents could cost them job after job.  Having just one teenager who was delinquent could cause a client to miss day after day of work.  The client would have to attend school conferences, go to court hearings, and deal with emergency after emergency.  So many days would be lost from work that the client would lose job after job. 

If there were more than one delinquent child in the family, the employment problems would be even more severe.

So training in better parenting was essential to help clients keep jobs.

Financial Dysfunction

Our clients used the funds they had very badly.  With limited income, we found client after client who spent over $100 a month on phone bills.   We also found client after client who spent over $100 a month on cable TV.  This was when they did not have enough money to keep food in the house the entire month!  Or when they did not have enough for transportation to a job the entire month. 

Many spent money on unneeded, foolish things, while lacking money for necessities.  They "managed" by not paying their utility bills or their rent.  Then when cut-off notices came for their utilities, or when eviction notices came, they started looking around town for charitable assistance for paying their back utility bills and back rent. 

They also managed by not paying other bills.  Or they managed by borrowing from loan sharks at such high interest rates that they might never be able to pay off the loan entirely. 

In addition, they managed by not buying car insurance and by not paying their traffic or parking tickets.  This was one of the causes of the many outstanding traffic warrants they were likely to have.  Of course, these unpaid tickets led to ever-increasing penalties.  They also had sometimes to go to jail if they could not pay.  These caused additional absences from work, and sometimes loss of jobs.

With disasterous financial habits such as these, even getting a good job with good pay still would not get them out of poverty.  Until their spending was under control, until they learned to spend more wisely, and until they learned to save money, they would never get ahead, even with a good income.

Further, their financial dysfunction could cause them to lose jobs.  They might not be able to keep paying for child care all month.  Or they might lack reliable transportation to work.  Or they might have to miss work over and over to run around town trying to find a charity to help them with unpaid bills.

They might actually even have their utilities cut off, with all the problem of no lights, no hot water or bathing, no clean clothing, no refrigeration of food, no heat or cooling.  Just the lack of a working refrigerator can mean having to shop for food every day.  Such an emergency can easily result in missing days at work.  Or they might be evicted and actually become homeless, with all the problems that brings for keeping a job.

We taught them a budgeting course specifically designed for them and their problems.  It was a great help in turning their lives around financially.  For the first time, they learned to live on what they made, to pay off their outstanding debts, and even, before long, to save money.  It was a life saver for them.

Our volunteers surprised us by wanting this course for themselves.  They said it helped them.  Apparently, these mostly college-educated people were not put off by material written at a sixth grade level!

Nurtitional Dysfunction

This sounds silly.  But is was a very serious problem.  The nutrition of our clients was so bad that they and their children were sick much more than the rest of the population. This caused them to miss work more often than if they and their children were healthier.

Clients often complained of being hungry, of having 2 or 3 days at the end of each month when they were out of food.  Soon we could see why.  It was not that they did not have enough money.  It was because they spent it badly.  They also ate badly.

At the first of the month, with a new welfare check and a new supply of food stamps, they would go to the grocery and load up one or two grocery carts with luxury foods - steaks, roasts, ribs, ice cream, etc.  These would last a week or two.  Then it was simpler fare, while that lasted.  Then it was a day or two with no food in the house at all.

To a surprising extent, they lived on junk food.  Often they cooked very little, but would take the family to McDonald's or order pizza delivered.  They would consume loads of chips, soft drinks, twinkies, candy, ice cream and sweets.  Living on junk food is not only a very unhealthy way of eating.  It is also very, very expensive.

With the help of a professional dietician, we designed a nutrition course.  It taught them how to eat better and healthier, for less money than before, and using less time.  That may seem impossible, but is not so hard as many may think. 

For instance, it is not hard to be sure of having enough food, and healthy food, for an entire month, even on a small income.  One way is to do what I did in Bakersfield when there were several refugees living in the parsonage. 

There were nine of us at the table for meals.  My salary as pastor of an Hispanic church was not large.  So at the first of every month, when I was paid, I bought a 50-pound bag of pinto beans and a 25 pound bag of rice.  That way I could be sure we would eat all month, even if I ran out of money before the end of the month.

Not only that, but the food was healthy.  Beans, combined with rice or corn or any other grain, make a perfect protein.  It is just like the protein in meat.  No meat is necessary in such a diet.  Furthermore, it is a high-fiber, low-fat diet, which is a very healthy way to eat. 

We always had plenty of food.  Breakfast was hot oatmeal.  Otherwise, we lived mostly on beans and tortillas, or beans and rice.  It was simple food.  We made about a quart of salsa a day, and cooked a chicken at least every other day, with plenty of vegetables.  There were plenty of salads, including guacamole salad.

Eating in the parsonage was a lot like eating in a Mexican restaurant.  (A low-fat Mexican restaurant!)  Even with frequent guests, we always had plenty to eat all month, every month.  No one ever lacked for enough food.  We never ran low on food toward the end of the month.  We stayed well.  And we did it with very little money.

Another possibility is making this kind of bean-and-grain diet into a "soul food" diet.  If beans were served with cornbread, instead of corn tortillias, and plenty of greens and other vegetables were added, that is the traditional foundation for soul food.

A bean-and-grain diet does not have to be fattening, by the way, especially if fats are not addedto the food.  I lost 25 pounds on it.

While this kind of food is not what everyone would choose, it does demonstrate that it is quite possible to eat well and healthily all month on a low income.

This was not the kind of nutrition taught in our course, however.  It was not nearly so limited.  It included a wide variety of tasty, healthy meals.

It showed how to make meals once a week and freeze them, so that only re-heating was needed.  The cost was low, and the total time was less than in normal cooking.

It also meant being able to have a hot, tasty meal about 20 minutes after arriving at home after work.  That can mean a lot when a parent arrives tired and hungry, with tired, hungry, screaming children in tow. 

The course included menus for two weeks, so that no food was served more than once every two weeks.  It included training in shopping for food, storing it right and cooking it.

In fact, our book was so popular with our volunteers that many bought it for themselves!

When clients learn to eat better, they and their children are healthier.  They are sick less.  This means fewer days of work missed.  So parents are fired less often.  Better nutrition helps save their jobs.

While they saved money on food, they still did not run out of food before the end of the month.  Also, the money they saved on food left more money for transportation and baby sitters.  This too helped them keep jobs.

Time Management Dysfunction

Our clients were so dysfunctional in time management that it was absolutely amazing.  They lacked the most primitive time-management skills.

For instance, one reason they lost jobs for being late over and over was that they, and their children, got up so late in the morning.  So the children were almost always late to school and the parent late to work.

The reason they all got up so late was that they all stayed up so late the night before.  Usually they would have been watching television.  They lacked any concept of getting to bed early to prepare for getting up early.

Even if they got up early, but had not prepared ahead of time for a quick departure, they would still leave late.  For instance, they would not already have lunches to take with them, which should have been done the night before.  So they would have to fix lunches before leaving in the morning.  Instead of getting their schoolbooks ready to go the night before, they would have to hunt them in the morning.

They would not have clothes ready to wear.  When many of them washed clothes, they just left them in piles around the house.  Then in the mornings there would be a mad rush to find something to wear.  Kids would be digging through piles of clothes.  When they found what they were looking for, it would be wrinkled from being wadded up in the pile.  So they would have to iron it.

Instead of doing their schoolwork the night before, they had been watchinig television.  So they would be scrambling around trying to finish homework that morning, trying to get the parent to help, before they could all leave.

Often, the concept of hurrying was totally missing.  Some of them had literally never hurried in their lives.  The idea of keeping one eye on the clock, moving quickly and leaving some things undone if necessary, in order to get to school and to work on time, was foreign to them.

Training in simple time management is an incredible help for such people.  It too can help save their jobs by helping them get to work on time, all the time.

Sanitary Dysfunction

Many of our clients badly needed training in the very basics of house cleaning and sanitation.  It was not unusual for the yard of their home to be covered with edge-to-edge trash.  The inside of the house might be no better. 

Our volunteers who visited clients at home were sometimes glad they already had all their shots first!  They ofteh saw a great deal of filth and nastiness.

Just to avoid illness from filth and disease-carrying roaches and rats, many of our clients badly needed to understand the necessity for cleanliness and good sanitation.  They needed to know how important it was to the health of their families it was to have, at the very minimum, clean and sanitary bathrooms and kitchens.

This is a real health problem for many clients and their families.  It is one more reason many of them are sick so often.  It causes their children to miss school, and them to miss work, more often than they should.  It can put them at risk for losing a job due to too many absences.

Incidentally, at the LIFT Project we had to write curriculum ourselves for the courses our clients needed to work on their dysfunctions.  There were good courses available for such things as budgeting, for instance.  But they were not what our clients needed.

In the first place, they were written for middle class readers.  The problems they addressed were the problems of the middle class, not the problems faced by our clients.

In addition, even the simplest were written in a way that was above the reading skills of our clients.  We needed material written at about a sixth-grade level.  So we had to write the needed course materials ourselves. 

Together with experte on each subject, we produced curriculum for training courses that worked well for our clients, and could easily be taught by our volunteers.  It was very helpful to them in working on their dysfunctions. 

Again, it may be hard for middle-class people to comprehend the dysfunctions that impede clients from moving up and out of poverty.  Changing these things may seem simple to middle class people. They may respond, "Well all they need to do is just use common sense!  These are things anyone should know."

They may not realize, however, that unlike their clients, they were trained to do these things from childhood.  They take them for granted.

But to many clients, these certainly are not simple matters, easily solved by common sense.  Often, they were unknown in the families in which they grew up.  It can be a mystery to them that middle class people seem to manage such things with apparent ease.

Learning to overcome these dysfunctional behaviors helps clients improve their lives tremendously.  It helps break the cycle of dysfunction in their families, as their children learn new ways from watching their new behaviors.

Most especially, it helps them cope with a working life.  It helps them to work their way up and out of poverty.