"My Week On Welfare" - Jackie Torrens

A social media campaign to tackle welfare stigma is about to launch. Actor, writer and documentary maker Jackie Torrens, who initiated the project and herself was on welfare as a young mother, shows what it will look like. Photo contributed.

Poverty has long been a concern for me as a person and as an artist. I wouldn't consider myself poor relatively speaking but I know what it is like to go hungry because I haven't had enough or any food, and being faced with the choice of going hungry or swallowing my false pride and getting my butt to the food bank, and being on welfare.

If you have every found yourself in a position with your back is up against the wall and you have to ask for help and need to apply for social assistance, you will know and understand, what a dis-empowering and demoralizing experience it is. This is just the tip of the downward spiral of poverty. Poverty is like living in another country, and if you haven't lived there, it is difficult to fully understand the experience if you have never been.

Last night I watched a very poignant documentary, "My Week On Welfare" that addresses the harsh realities facing those individuals living on welfare/social assistance,( the nice word) in Nova Scotia. Actor, writer and documentary film maker Jackie Torrens directed this excellent film and in collaboration with other poverty activists, has started a social media campaign to fight the stigma of being on welfare. 

Please join the fight against poverty if you care, and want to advocate for change, take action. It's this artist's antidote to worry!

People First

I have had a back ground of working with youth at risk, young offenders, those with mental and physical challenges. I grew up with a brother who died at the age of 59 with MS from the young age of 16 years, and my late husband suffered greatly with paranoid schizophrenia which took his life at 27, and an alcoholic father who died form his disease. I know all too well the stigma that comes from being labelled and being treated like someone who does not belong and is made to feel shamed or guilty for illness. This is not the shame or guilt that belongs to the person who is labelled.

Those institutionalized and marginalized by society, because of these particular labels that have been placed upon them, are not being given the respect nor care they need. Many fall between the cracks are placed in locked facilities or don't get the help they need, and their families are left alone, placed in a position of trying to wade through a system that is broken. Things desperately need to change.


When I found out about this group that has existed in Nova Scotia for 25 year and has produced a recent film Freedom Tour by People First Nova Scotia I felt I had to post this on my blog. CBC Radio will be covering this story tomorrow morning, Wednesday May 28th .

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 Artist - Isha Brown


I know our past shapes who we are in the present, and we do not have to become victims of what has happened to us. However we all at some point, need help, we need to reach out for it and we also, need help to be offered to us. We live in difficult troubled times to say the least. It is heartening to learn of others making the real effort to make a difference in the world and in the lives of others, leading through example. I heard one such story this morning, that brought me back to my own experience in 1979-80 that forever changed me and my life.

I fell in love with the man I married, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia that was drug induced at the early age of 16 and he was also a brittle diabetic, which is uncontrollable diabetes.

I had been studying Mime in Toronto when I met Bill, in the Young Street Mission, just around the corner from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, where I was living, not because I didn't smoke or drink, I was in fact trying to live a Christian life, but mainly I was living there because it was close to school and comparatively cheap. 

It was for me at least, love at first sight I think. We began dating in January 1980, moved in together in April, married in June and by September he was dead. I mention this experience in my life because I believe it is very relevant to the documentary I heard this morning, for the second time on CBC Radio, Maritime Magazine

The level of medical help my husband received in Ontario was very good compared to what was available in the Maritimes, where I am from and where we moved to after we were married. Regardless  of where we were, it was not enough to save his life, when is came to his mental illness.

This is a story of hope, and makes me feel things are just beginning to slowly change for those marginalized, stigmatized, outcast, incarcerated, institutionalized, afflicted with mental illness, disease, poverty, and homelessness.  

It is appalling to me that such situations exists, in a country full of resources and wealth only available to a certain few, who control the purse strings many of who are in political power, or in the back pockets of politicians. I know it is not that simple, and that these issues are systemic and cultural, and there are no cut and dried answers. However, I do believe in the power of the individual, and that it can be a catalyst for empowering change, like none other, especially when we can reclaim or claim our own individual power. Many of us need a hand up to do this, and those of us that are in a position to give a hand up to others, need to do so.


After hearing this program on two occasions, I felt had to write to say how happy I was to hear of this project and certainly do hope and pray that it continues to be successful. I know personally of Claudette Bradshaw, who is behind this project, her commitment and those like her who are actively helping others. My hope is that the powers that be i.e. government, red tape, and interference, etc., will not hamper and restrict this vital work and effort.
 
As a front line Youth Care Worker for so many years, I know all too well how troubled kids, youth at risk and young offenders fall between the cracks, because of a system that fails abysmally to assist these kids and their families, only to become adults that are more often than not, in poverty, homeless, suffering from addiction, and with mental health issues, only to find themselves as adults incarcerated or living on the street, outcast, instead of receiving the help they are in desperate need of, in order to get on their feet.
 
I pray this program stays around long enough to see some real results to enable much needed change for those most in need, without the bureaucrats screwing it up some how! 

I subscribe to a blog called, Colony of Losers, which explores the issues surrounding mental illness especially in regard to it's stigma and the ignorance of those not understanding people suffering from it's affects, which ultimately affects us all directly or indirectly at some point. I hope you take a few minutes to visit the Colony of Losers, as it might just change or save your life or that of another's.