I went shopping for produce yesterday (garden still a work in progress) and a woman in front of me in the checkout, with 2 small children (one seemed to be having a tantrum the entire time she was in the store) had WIC vouchers for all her purchases.
On the conveyor belt were a number of small lots of food, each with its own WIC voucher that the checker had to total up, check to make sure the food items precisedly matched the voucher, and so on.
It was an eye opener to me (I rarely shop, for one thing) but around here many, many people use EBT cards and usually not for bulk oatmeal; usually frozen pizzas, candy, chips and soda and the like.
I thought to myself: If [when...] the WIC vouchers disappear and the EBT cards don’t work, there are going to be many hungry and desperate people in my valley. Who could have prepared but did not and will not. I saw the two children - now well fed, but maybe very hungry in a while. What will Mommy do? Is there a Daddy around? It sort of brought home the reality.
I once visited a client's home and found it to be in horrible shape and no food for the kids. I told the welfare Mommy she better have something worked out by that afternoon or else. I drove past the house every couple hours and laughed the rest of the day. Sugar Daddies were busy with their hammers (the metal kind) replacing windows and screens and fixing holes in the porch. Others brought in bags upon bags of groceries. I suppose someone was keeping track of services rendered and owed. It was too fun so I gave them a few extra hours so when I stopped in that evening, I nodded to a gentleman putting on a new front door and none of us ever questioned or offered any explanation of the grand improvement.