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Strong and confident, she’d actually been doing okay. She was a single mother raising five children alone, working two part-time jobs to support them and going to school to improve her earnings potential. Nevertheless, that child support check from her ex-husband was the lynchpin of her fragile budget.

When the ex-husband began dating a new woman, he went all out to impress her.  He skipped his child support check one month and instead bought presents for the new woman in his life. Britney found herself without rent money and no food in the cupboard. Three of her five little ones had outgrown their shoes and all of them needed new winter coats, but money earmarked for that project now would be needed to feed the family.

 “People seem to be able to cope with just about anything that affects only them,” a Together We Cope case manager observes. “But when you have to look into the eyes of children whose very existence depends on you, a lot of your coping skills go out the window.”

Britney was in tears when she called Together We Cope, panic overtaking the confidence that had carried her so far in her life. Meeting with a client advisor, they went to work on a household budget that had to be balanced before Together We Cope could give her financial assistance. Unfortunately, without the child support check from her ex-husband, Britney’s budget just didn’t balance. She would get food and clothing immediately from Together We Cope, but she needed to show she’d be self-sufficient in the coming months in order for Together We Cope to provide further assistance.

 “It was painful to have to tell this hard-working woman that she must have the means to meet her bills every month  before we could help her further,” the advisor recalled.  “We were able to give her immediate assistance with food from our pantry, shoes and winter coats for the children from our resale shop, and that went a long way toward calming her. But her real problem was paying the rent every month. I urged her to take a temporary third part-time job, just to get that budget balanced until the child support matter could be sorted out,” the case manager said.

Britney will always believe she got a miracle that day she left the Together We Cope office, her stomach in knots at the prospect of an eviction and nowhere to go with five children. As she drove home to her children, she passed by a daycare center with a sign out in front advertising for a part-time worker. She turned around, walked into the center and got the job. Back at Together We Cope the next day with a letter confirming she now had a third job, Britney had a balanced budget and Together We Cope paid her rent that month.

In time, the legal system caught up with Britney’s former husband and the child support checks resumed. But, in the interim, she found a caring partner in Together We Cope to get through a specific crisis.

 “Britney isn’t someone who was looking for someone else to solve all her problems. She works hard to make a good life for herself and her children, and hit this one bump in the road that could have ruined all her efforts,” her case manager said.