Entitlement culture to the extreme

There must be something redeeming about Angel Adams, but the unemployed mother of 15 living on taxpayers' dime seems intent on hiding it.

We've been told her 12 children who currently live with her are polite and take care of each other. The older kids' teachers say they are doing well in school. Adams must be doing something right.

But rather than gratefully accepting the help society has offered, Adams lashes out: She does not want to comply with social services' guidelines, yet insists the rest of us should pay for her needs. She demands aid but takes no responsibility for her financial problems.

At a time when many families are having a tough time making ends meet and government coffers are stretched thin, this "welfare queen" has understandably infuriated the masses.

Adams' plight has been the talk of the town since last week when her story appeared on the front page of the Tribune and was televised on Channel 8. While the story has drawn sympathy for her children, the same can't be said for Adams.

Here is a woman who continues to have children when she can't afford a roof over her head. She loses a subsidized apartment because she fails to pay the nominal rent. She moves into a two-bedroom apartment from which she is eventually evicted. She winds up with a week's money for a local motel room and is facing life on the street.

And yet she claims it's everybody else's fault.

Adams, facing allegations of child neglect, has had 28 hearings in the last 21 months before Hillsborough Circuit Judge Tracy Sheehan. In July 2008 Adams had 13 children and, to her credit, had never been involved in the system. She had been a parent for 17 years without any report of maltreatment. She apparently loves her kids, and they love her. They don't want to be separated.

Today Adams blames the sheriff's deputies who investigated the neglect accusations for her troubles. She feels railroaded by the system and seems to hold Sheehan and the Department of Children and Families' regional director, Nick Cox, in disdain.

Yet as Cox reminds us, what has happened in Adams case is not about Adams. It's about helping her kids. It's not their fault they were born to a mother with a bad attitude and poor judgment.

Adams, Cox says, is severely testing the "family centered practice" DCF has employed in recent years that puts an emphasis on keeping families together. He does not want her to be the face of his program.

"Angel Adams does not represent the vast majority of people we help," he said.

And she has received help. Cox found temporary housing for the family near Brandon. Hillsborough Kids Inc. agreed to pay $6,000 to the Tampa Housing Authority to take care of an unpaid bill that will allow her to reenter the subsidized housing program.

There are other provisions as well. We suspect she receives a healthy monthly stipend to feed her family, and she will get a break on utilities payments when she finds a new home. She has a free public defender to advocate for her.

Unfortunately, Adams appears to have no interest in improving her life or circumstances for her children.

She appears almost a parody of the entitlement culture that afflicts so many in modern America.

Government does have a role in providing a "safety net," as President Ronald Reagan put it, for those in need. But the help should be, for the most part, temporary and aimed at helping people become self-reliant.

Adams' attitude illustrates why it is important to be careful a helping hand does not become an invitation to a lifetime of dependency.