After giving birth to pre-mature twins who spent time in the NICU, Persephonie moved to Salt Lake so family could help her with her three children. However, family assistance proved to not be enough and work was hard to find. This is even more difficult because one son needs extended medical care, and Persephonie frequently has to take off work to care for him. “Luckily I have Medicaid so they cover [the medical bills], if not I have no clue how I would even begin to start paying those things back.” With limited income opportunities and mounting expenses, she turned to WIC and SNAP to help her children. “We moved out here and thought we had extra help, we didn’t have jobs and needed to feed our family so that is where the food stamps came into play.”
Despite her difficulties, Persephonie sees this as a temporary setback and expects to be providing for her family again once her son is doing better. “This isn’t something to be on forever this is something to help you get on your feet, and once you are able to be on your own get off it.” SNAP has been incredibly helpful to her, and she was eager to share her experience with it. She muses that without food stamps, “I would probably be homeless or my kids would be place in child endangerment because I wouldn’t be able to feed my kids. Yeah I would be homeless if I didn’t have the help that I needed.”
“This isn’t something to be on forever this is something to help you get on your feet, and once you are able to be on your own get off it.”
