What I feel you're failing to consider is that less further engagement may in fact be the preferable option, at least from their perspective. They feel like they are able to survive and change their own situation for the better, but just that others are in the way and make this impossible. So no, they're not looking for engagement.
That doesn't make their assessment of the situation wrong. It just makes it very inconvenient for government workers (whose jobs depend on said engagement) and people who want to virtue signal from afar. They feel like the policies, that by necessity are cheapest-possible-forced-help-from-10000-feet policies are more of an obstacle than help. Frankly, I can come up with more than a few cases where this was entirely right.
Of course, it also doesn't make their assessment of the situation right. Those same policies help people on a large scale as well.
However I would like to point out that there is a lot of research that less intrusive, and more unconditional help certainly seems to be more effective in quite a few places. A few random examples:
1) https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/14/less...
2) Even in what seems like black and white cases. To take one really extreme example. NOT helping kids who get abused by parents ... turns out to be more effective than helping them https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
(and there's a famous study from the 90s that claims that giving troubled kids free membership to a sports club near them is far more effective than anything psychiatry/social work/... can do for them, and certainly more effective than prison. Not even checking if they actually attend)
