Sunday, February 27, 2000
Family proud to be off welfare
Seeing mother work teaches self-reliance by BY MARK CURNUTTE The Cincinnati Enquirer
A year ago, Nakia Colbert talked about what she wanted to do when she grew up.
“I really want to go to college and be a judge and a lawyer,” the West End girl said in January 1999.
This year, Nakia is concentrating on how she's going to achieve her goal.
“You got to do things on your own,” she said last week. “You can't depend on anybody but yourself.”
Nakia, now 14, and her mother, Jennifer Colbert, were featured in The Cincinnati Enquirer's fifth annual Tristate Child Index in 1999. Nakia and her siblings were five of 18,000 Tristate children who moved off public assistance between 1997 and 1998.
In 1999, another 6,000 local children were no longer receiving Ohio Works First or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families benefits in Kentucky and Indiana.
But just because children are no longer on welfare doesn't mean they are necessarily better off, child advocates say. The working poor struggle as much — if not more — than the welfare class, they say.
Jennifer Colbert, 32 and a long-time Lincoln Court public housing resident, said her life “is still a challenge,” but she's improving her situation and trying to set an example for her children. She wants to buy a car.
Last month, she left the job she had held for two years with Children's Protective Services at Hays Elementary in the West End. She now works for Cincinnati Public Schools, recruiting Lincoln Court residents to enroll in Queen City Vocational Center.
She'd previously never held a job for more than a month or two.
“My kids said, "Ma, why are you changing jobs?'” Ms. Colbert said. “I told them, "It's not for me. It's for y'all. When it's time to move on, you move on. You do the most you can do.'”
Her job is part of the sweeping Hope VI federal grant that's rebuilding Lincoln Court.
Nakia said she remembers living on welfare. Until she was 11, Nakia envisioned that she would “sit on the couch and wait for the mailman to bring the government check.”
Then she saw her mother complete the Cincinnati Metropolitan
Housing Authority's Kaleidoscope job readiness program and go to work.
Now, the Porter Middle School student knows life without public assistance.
She has a preference. “I don't ever want to go on welfare.”
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