When you arrive in the early morning hours at the Shelter for Mothers with Children in Need in Kojetín, you first catch a stillness and silence that it is wrapped in. Without the sign at the entrance, you would not guess it is this house. On the ground floor there are three windows with bars, which can evoke conflicting feelings. For some, it creates a prison-like impression; for others, a feeling of safety and certainty. For me that day, it was more a symbol of an unassailable fortress. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to ring the bell, the door opens slightly, a client peeks out and whispers conspiratorially: “You have to ring the bell; I’m not allowed to open the door for you,” and then she reliably shuts the door in front of my nose again. So I try once more, and this time I apparently have luck with the right button. The drop gate is lowered.
The shelter for mothers with children in need has been operated by Charita Kojetín since 2001. Like other facilities of this type, it provides clients with accommodation for an absolutely necessary period of time, during which they should try to resolve their difficult life situation. “Most of our clients currently are mothers with low income and wage enforcement orders. Their financial situation is further worsened by the fact that the fathers often do not pay child support,” says Vlaďka Zvonková, a social worker at the facility. Clients come not only from the area around Kojetín, but also, for example, from Bohemia. The average age of the clients is around thirty.
The shelter has a capacity of seven rooms—always one room for one mother with children not in maintenance (i.e., dependent children). The number of children varies among the individual clients. “We have had a mother here with five children, with four, and we have also had a mother with six children. But this exceeds the shelter’s capacity. The average is two or three children, which is still manageable,” describes the situation, and social assistant Alena Köhlerová adds that some mothers only bring their children during holidays, which temporarily increases the number of residents in the house. “In winter we’re often completely full. When a mother comes who needs urgent accommodation, we give her contacts for another shelter, but in winter a similar situation usually exists in all other facilities too,” explains the social assistant and adds that the Kojetín shelter could in principle increase its capacity, but that would likely mean it would be half-empty in the summer. “In winter someone is always calling, but in summer one can get by anyway, even in an unsuitable flat. In winter, though, there are problems with malfunctioning heating and other concerns,” adds Köhlerová. A client with children can stay in the shelter for at most one year. In that time, she should be able to resolve at least part of her poor life situation. As Vlaďka Zvonková notes, sometimes one can literally speak of “asylum tourism” when mothers move from one shelter to another in another city after their stay ends, and repeat this cycle. In exceptional cases, the stay can be extended, for example when a child needs to complete schooling and moving to another city would not support the child’s psychological well-being. “One client had an adult son who was seriously ill. He lived in Kojetín with her daughter. She could not find an apartment in the city. If she had gone to the shelter in Olomouc, she could not have been with her son. That is why we allowed her to stay longer until she found other accommodation,” describes the specific situation, says social worker Zvonková.
Indebted mothers
Financial hardship is a major problem for the mothers. Many clients struggle with debts and enforcement proceedings, which is amplified by fathers’ unreliability in that they do not pay child support. That does not mean they do not care about their children. Many of them are interested in them, visit, and bring gifts. Some are in prison, some do not work, and some behave irresponsibly. Even though court-ordered child support is not generally an enormous amount, for a single mother with children, every penny matters. Income levels among mothers differ sharply. Vlaďka Zvonková explains: “A mother on parental leave is definitely better off than a mother on the labor office register. A mother with two children on parental leave has about ten thousand. If she is good at managing money, she can get by even on very little.” As Alena Köhlerová adds, even when staff try to teach mothers frugality, they are usually unable to save anything from the money available to them. A bright exception does exist, however. Vlaďka Zvonková recounts: “We had a mother here who managed to save like this and left after a year with twelve thousand. But it was all about how she approached it. She cooked from water, didn’t indulge herself, and didn’t even buy the children a small chocolate.” Her thrift is in sharp contrast to the approach that is much more common among clients—immediately after receiving benefits or other money, they buy expensive sweets and other things for the children. Sometimes mothers owe tens of thousands even though they did not invest in anything substantial: “One client borrowed seventy thousand. When I asked her what she did with the money, she answered that she bought a bag of cement for construction and discussed the rest with her family,” illustrates Alena Köhlerová. Non-bank lenders often take advantage of clients who do not think through loans enough. As Zvonková confirms, clients are often willing to sign almost anything. Both staff members agree, though, that current non-bank lending is akin to usury. They lend huge sums to people who clearly have no financial backing and nothing to secure the debt, so repayment is uncertain. Clients do not owe money only because of loans. “We had a mother here who didn’t pay rent for her stay at the shelter. We tried to cooperate with her, helped her process social benefits so she’d have at least some money, but I don’t know where the real issue was. Even though she was entitled to them, she did not arrange them,” says Zvonková. It may seem unethical for a facility to pursue a mother in distress for a debt. In practical terms, however, that would hurt the clients most—they would get used to the idea that rules need not be followed and that everything will be forgiven. One cannot run away from problems forever.
The reality of debt counselingIt is a natural question whether it would not be appropriate—within the context of coping with difficult circumstances—to educate mothers in financial literacy. Social assistant Alena Köhlerová responds: “It is voluntary. If they show interest, we naturally pass on the information.” Her colleague Vlaďka Zvonková adds: “As for debt counseling, we decided not to delve into it too deeply. For a while, we tried to advise and help clients, but soon it began to get out of hand. It was just too much. Since then, we refer mothers to debt counseling services.” But clients rarely use those services. For them, solving debt issues through such counseling is a long race. The nearest counseling office is in Olomouc, and getting there means non-negligible travel costs. Counseling services also expect active cooperation and follow-up on certain steps. To that, clients are usually unwilling. Clients are generally not able to resolve their poor financial situation on their own. They rely on state support and contributions from family members. Few of them find work. “It is a classic cycle. They are not motivated to go to work, because there are already so many debts that there is no chance of paying them off with their low incomes for life. If a client went to work, part of her salary would be deducted for debts. For her, then, it is more advantageous not to work. She has her minimum income from social assistance, and does not think about the future,” says the resigned social worker Vlaďka Zvonková. Alena Köhlerová emphasizes that some clients would like to work, even if only to have something else to occupy their minds. But work simply is not available for them. Ideally, a shelter is linked to another institution—e.g., a care home, nursing home, etc.—where they can do cleaning and assist in various ways. But that is not very common. So the staff is happy about every working mother. Even such bright exceptions are found, although it is not rare to encounter cases where a mother avoids possible employment. “Sometimes it happens that a client lies. We help her find a job, send her to an interview. She claims she went and did all the required steps, but no job is available for her. So I call, because I suspect it may be some form of discrimination. But I find the opposite. The position is free and open to everyone, but the client had not gone there at all,” describes the difficult search for truth, says Zvonková.
Mrs. Ivana and her children
Social assistant Alena Köhlerová takes me to the room of a client who agreed to the interview. To protect her privacy, I will refer to her as Ivana from now on. A dark-haired woman greets me with a welcoming smile. The room is cold, and only later do I learn it is because the window is open, letting in fresh, almost spring-like air. Ivana takes her nine-month-old daughter from a bunk bed and sits down at the table beside me. She speaks Czech with a Slovak accent and occasionally searches for the right Czech words. I learn she has five children, but only two daughters live with her in the shelter. She arrived in Kojetín in November 2009. Before that she lived for a while with her partner in a hostel and had moved through several other shelters. The other three children are in a children’s home in Olomouc. She visits them whenever possible, for example during holidays. “They were just here last week,” Ivana recounts happily. “But it’s not that good—a room this small for six of us,” she adds. I can imagine how a six-person family could fit into a room of about 20–25 m². The older three children are in the father’s care, but Ivana wants to request that they be returned to her. “The children are happier with me than with their dad, but they are very wild. They had one upbringing with their father, another in the home, and another here, so they let themselves go. I hope that when I get the children into my care, my financial situation will also improve, because then I will receive money for them. Otherwise, I don’t know how I will manage. Is it normal that six people should live on eight thousand? That’s not enough even for the three of us who are here,” she outlines her financial situation. Ivana pays all necessary expenses only from social welfare benefits. Without help from her family, she would not manage. “ My parents help me. For the three of us, that is enough, but for the other children, it is not enough. When they come to visit, I have to pay for their stay at the shelter. Then there is travel from Olomouc and back. The fathers do not contribute. The father of the youngest daughter does not work, so the little one pays nothing, she only occasionally brings something,” Ivana explains, and adds: “My debts are paid off. I became indebted when I took the children into my care. I had to pay for everything, but nobody contributed to that, so they took them away from me again.”_For the shelter staff, Ivana is something like a light at the end of the tunnel. Because she managed to find a 2+1 apartment to rent in Kojetín starting 1 April. “I’ll pay the same as here, but these are bigger rooms and a separate kitchen. Mrs. Alenka helped me,” she says with a grateful smile. “I wouldn’t be looking for anything if it were just the three of us. I’m going into this rental because I want to take my kids out of the children’s home.”_ When she talks about her children, she starts crying. It is obvious how much she misses them and how much she longs to be with them. Unlike some other mothers, she does not only speak about it—she is truly trying to solve the situation. That is why she found a rental apartment, as social assistant Alena Köhlerová later confirms (the “Mrs. Alenka” mentioned earlier).
Life as a sinusoid
Not all client stories carry such hope as Mrs. Ivana’s. Mothers often fall into skepticism and do not see an outlet from their difficult situation. “Sometimes it drags us into the same apathy our clients are in. We just pack up and move on,” Vlaďka Zvonková admits candidly. “It is sinusoidal. Just as people experience it in life, so does the professional team. One moment you are down, one moment up. When a client manages to get an apartment, as with Mrs. Ivana, it is a huge source of joy,” and as she adds, it encourages not only her but the whole team. Regular supervision helps everyone a lot. I close the door behind me at the Shelter for Mothers in Need in Kojetín and am glad that I do not have to worry where I will put my head in a year and how I will come out financially. Even though, as we know, the paths of fate are unpredictable…
Jana Kopřivová
The report was published in the journal Sociálna práca / Sociální práce, no. 1/2010 Social Work and the Fight Against Poverty, www.socialniprace.cz
Photo: Charity Kojetín archive
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