path for dependency, The

Policy Review, Mar/Apr 1997

Thirty-three-year-old Coleen Clancy of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had been on and off of welfare since 1982. She began to break the cycle of dependency in 1995, when she signed a "self-sufficiency contract" with the Planning Council of Milwaukee. In it she pledged to leave welfare within five years. She currently holds two jobs, one at a school cafeteria and the other as a bus driver, and no longer receives welfare benefits.

A working mother who supports two children, ages 9 and 12, Clancy says she benefited from assertiveness and goal-setting seminars that were offered at a local YMCA. She believes that the federal welfare system did not offer her an incentive to improve, and attributes her success to her faith in God and the support of her own community.