Appal Need

Since retiring from business in the fall of 1998, I have volunteered as an independent family advocate in Northern Campbell County. Although I work through several churches and social organizations in East Tennessee and Kentucky, I remain independent from the official organizations because it detaches me from the formalities and history attached to formal establishments.

Over the years groups and individuals have come in, tried to solve a problem and left without achieving their aims. Cycles of coming in and backing out have created a wall of distrust of outsiders by residents.

There continues to be a lack of knowledge about the gravity of the social problems that exist.

The area of concentration for my work is Central Appalachia, from Clairfield to Jellico in Northeastern Tennessee, bordering Whitley and Bell Counties in Southeastern Kentucky. This extreme rural area has a population of 6,045 (1,442 families). They are predominantly white (99.7 percent), fewer than half have a high school education and 31.9 percent are classified as in poverty. This is in contrast to the country as a whole, which has a 9.2 percent level of families in poverty, and Tennessee, which has a 10.3 percent level.

I have worked with approximately 250 families whose average income is $8,935 per year. Of the 58 families I now serve, 80 percent are on welfare or social security. Except for four children, the approximately 135 children are considered economically disadvantaged and qualify for food subsistence programs at their respective schools.

The distressing part of my work has been witnessing the declining standard of the family as the center of support for the children, because of income disparity and because drugs have infiltrated most of the homes. Most adults I work with now use for pleasure legal pharmaceuticals such as synthetic opiates designed for the treatment of chronic pain, and the production and use of methamphetamines is on the increase.

I also question the declining representation of morality on television and the consequence it has on the families. Unfortunate-ly, television is the major source of entertainment and information.

Visualize a house of 600 square feet with inadequate heat, potable water and sewage treatment, occupied by two or more children and a single parent on supplemental social security or disability who is addicted to prescribed medicine, alcohol and illegal drugs. This picture is complicated further by the harmful background of the extended family. With few exceptions, there is little question that social problems of the current generation have been visible in prior generations.

In several cases I work with three generations of a family. There is a noticeable pressure on the children in these families to isolate themselves as much as possible from social contact outside the family unit. This means children are influenced by a support system that may not prioritize moral or intellectual development. They are in “generational poverty.”

Families that have been trapped by poverty for generations establish their own codes of ethics. The father may be absent, leaving the woman with the financial burden. If a father is present, he is likely dominant and irresponsible, and physical and sexual abuse of women and children is common. In most cases the children come from different fathers.

In cases where the home is a loving one demonstrating support and moral development, a child won't recognize the family's physical poverty until about age 10. When the child does become aware of this, he or she may become despondent and angry. This child ultimately resents a lack of privacy, others' perception that he or she is socially inferior, a lack of food, poor hygiene and teeth and a caregiver who cannot interact socially. The child eventually challenges the caregiver, irrespective of love, and starts finding ways to escape. Intense stress and social risk occurs when the child leaves the local school at grade eight for a regional high school.

Isolation creates a reservation state of mind. Those who live on subsistence programs have limited choices, and welfare is as much an imposed form of segregation as are race and color. Charity that diminishes self-sufficiency creates an environment of complacency and a loss of self-worth and hope. I continue to find hopelessness when individuals are challenged to take a step to break from welfare. Many are taught by their families to depend on the conscience of society that supports the poor through government and private giving.

In fairness to many of the families I serve, they find few job opportunities that pay above minimum wage with health benefits within 30 minutes' travel time. In many cases an individual is financially better off staying on welfare than taking a job at minimum wages with no health benefits.

I feel that the effect of generational poverty so disables the children that in many cases, the only alternative is to remove them from their families. It isn't reasonable to assume that there is always a responsible caregiver in the immediate or extended family. In many cases these children are afraid to reach out for help because of retribution from their families. The family recovery plans now in place by the state expose children to greater risk by not putting the child first.

There is no excuse to see suffering children. We avoid moral responsibility by sending these children back into an unhealthy, uncaring and malicious environment. What is most outrageous is the loss of hope these children experience and the hollow and uncompromising minds of the adults who have been given this greatest of gifts, the life of a child.

This is not to negate the work that is being done throughout the diocese with impoverished residents of Appalachia. But the reality is that the need is desperate and growing worse.