Heaven Hollinsworth is only able to work one to day a week, as she balances her job with trying to find a nurse who can help take care of her disabled 3-year-old daughter.
The money she makes from her $15 per hour job as a home health care aide helps bridge the gap between the disability payments she gets for her daughter and her rent — but it doesn’t stretch much further.
For more than a year, Hollinsworth tried to enroll in Tennessee’s nutrition benefits program — called SNAP benefits and formerly known as food stamps — to help pay for groceries. She applied in late 2022, but has faced one bureaucratic dead end after another.
“I think it’s very important they get on top of this,” Hollinsworth, 23, said last week just after legal advocates intervened to get her and her daughter onto the program. “There’s nowhere to go and no one to talk to. The wait times are ridiculous. I was stressing out tremendously about something I could not control.”
(READ MORE: Veering from Republican-led states, Tennessee opts into summer food program for kids)