@Green Witch,
I told Arella Mae (above) that I worked as a welfare case worker. My team worked with people that were considered employable.
Several years ago, on these same boards, I enlightened someone huffing and puffing about welfare recipients by telling him the truth: that some recipients are people who lack sufficient intellect to hold a job. However, I worked for welfare in 1969-70 when a retail job could still maintain a family.
While there were women like Arella Mae's mom who used welfare as a springboard, there were women who had no idea how to be a worker largely because of the still lingering notion that women's place is in the home.
One client told me that she had been trained for jobs that don't exist, like salad girl at a restaurant. According to her, there was no such thing. I have some doubts about her statement, both now and then. I wondered then whether she went in search of work and asked to be a salad girl rather than a bus girl, but, that is water under the bridge.
Another client who dropped out of college to help her fiance through school (they married shortly after he dropped out. When he finished his degree, he left her with the kids.) complained that she was sent to "job centers" where she was taught how to be on time and how to punch a time card and how to use a cash register. As she said, she paid her ex-husband's tuition doing those things.
Today, the idea of training is more . . . fill in the blanks. Many jobs have disappeared when companies (shirt makers or furniture builders) moved overseas.
