Okay, first let me clear up a little misconception/miscommunication here... I'm not trying to put word into anyone's mouths and not trying to twist anyones words to fit a desired outcome of ther discussion... It is a discusssion but is also a subject that I have had a lot of firts hand experience with and have given alot of thought to...

With that said, I'll continue with another *chapter* (for lack of a better term) in this discussion...

In the mid 70's there was a push for "deinstitutionalism"... Long word but short definition... What occured was a rethinking, some fueling by costs and others by compassion, of not keeping mentally ill people indefinately in state run mental hosiptals so...

... hundreds of thousands people who had been treated (ha) and housed for some period of time in these hospitals were released...

As I was a social worker in "adult services" these folks became my clients... My case load averaged 70 with at least 50 of these being folks who had been thru Eastern Sate Hposital in Petersburg, Va... Might of fact, about every 2 weeks I would drive the "welfare car" from Richmond to Petersburg and collect anywhere from 2 to 5 new clients, take them directly to the eigibilty department, get them signed up for General Relief ($56 a month at the time) an' use Title XX money to get them into flop houses where they would have a furnished (ha) room, get them Food Stamps even tho most of the places I could place them in had no cookin' facilities, get them set up with Mental Health folks, etc...

The problems with this was that for about 90% of these folks, we could get them somewhat stabilized and involved in some adult day care program (also Title XX) but for these 90% they would be back in Central State within 6 monhs... This was what Janie knews all to well as the "revolving door"... It was a vicious cycle... These folks didn't have enough resources to actaully have half a chance of breaking the cycle... And they had no support system other than the programs that we had then...

But as the Title XX funds were taken away under Reagan the minimal programs and reources that we had started to dry up yet we still had this revolving door cycle...

...Well, over the years the revolving door has become ever increasingly the prison door as we are now housing our mentally ill in prisons... Ask any prison guard anywhere in the United Sates and if this guard is honest he or she will confirm this... Oh sure, we still have state run mental hospiatsl and folks do land in them early in ther cycle but further down the road it's prison for them...

Now, there is something else I need to say here and Janie will abck me up on this... There isn't much upward mobility in our country... Kids who grow up in poverty tend to end up as adults living in poverty... I used to take case files home with me at night and I saw the same cycle over and over and over... Some of these case files would go back to when these folks were born, would talk about the no-father-figure, about abuse, about foster homes, about arrests, etc...

Yeah, some folks think that if poor folks would just do this or that then they could break the cycle... Problem is, and I mean no disrespect here, some of you have told how you went thru periods of times when thigs weren't working for you... Mighta been a health issue or and employment issue or a divorce or a death... But things weren't working for you and you might have found yourself having to scrape and scramble... The difference is that you knew how to scrape and scamble and you worked you way out of your unfortunate situation... Well, you ask, why can't other folks do this??? Well, these folks don't have the same upbringing that provides the life skills to scrape and scamble their way out... Most of them have never been "out" and "out" if foriegn to them...

Okay, this may be a genralization and folks in Mudville love to say "Hey, but what about ___________, Bobert??? You are generalizing..." Yes, it is a genralization but it is based on obseravtions I made of being a social worker for at least a couple thousand folks over about a 10 year period...

So if we are going to look for solutions one thing that won't work is trying to tell folks not to do drugs or have babies... That is not a realistic approach... What is a realistic approach is for us to accept the reality that folks are going to do drug, have babies, get drunk, get arrested for fightin' with their spouses, significant others, faily, friends, their socail workers, etc... This is reality and they only way out of this reality is to restore the funding that we once had and do all the things right while our clients do everything wrong and hope to get to some of their kids in the process...

Hungry kids don't do well in school and kids that don't do well in school don't stay in schools... Just restoration of the money we used to spend for school breakfast programs would help but it isn't just about breakfast programs but child care subsidies which have now been frozen for the last 6 years... And head satrt programs... And livable wages... And decnt health care... And, and...

Okay, I was going to provide a "case study" about ***downward mobilty*** where kids who have everything end up living under bridges and I promise that I will do that but I felt that before I could tell that story I needed to clear out a little more misconceptual deadwood...

Again, I mean no disrespect to anyone here... This just happens to be something that I *wish* sometimes I knew nuthing about...

Bobert