Welfare

The Waverly Center in New York City is the setting for this cinema veriť study concerning the nature and complexity of the welfare system. Various sequences illustrate the daunting diversity of problems that confront this welfare office each day: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric conditions, abandoned and abused children and the elderly. At the heart of the welfare institution are the rules and regulations invoked by welfare workers which, more often than not, confound the clients, thus exacerbating the gap between ideology and actual practice between the rules and the way they are applied.ؤ Eligibility is determined by the interview and the autobiographical narrative, the idiosyncratic nature of which invariably eludes the application of the welfare formula. The inability to extract the truth or a clear-cut situation to which the regulations fit leads to a vicious cycle of referrals. The camera returns again and again to the waiting room.