The divorced 44-year-old hits one roadblock after another while trying to support her children. The list of available programs is endless, but none quite fit "Jane,"a Decatur mother of two teenagers who asked that her real named not be used.

If she had never finished high school, Calhoun Community College and affiliated agencies would help her through GED classes, but Jane finished high school and attended college for three years.

Where, Jane asks, are the programs to address the needs of a divorced mom with a business education who wants to work and support her family, rather than rely on food stamps and welfare checks?

In desperate moments when the house payment is due, leaving little for groceries, she considers applying for government help. But she would prefer to have a job and keeps thinking she'll get one any minute.

"Everybody wants experience, but they don't want to look at your college and experience from 20 years ago. They don't want to note that you're older and more mature. They want a 20-year-old," said Jane.

Sometimes those hiring say she is overqualified. Sometimes employers — who aren't supposed to ask — want to know if she has children, and then back off, grouping this mother of teens who can stay home alone with the moms of sick toddlers. "They've been burned by moms who don't show up," she said.

She quit college and went to work to put her husband through college, but after 20 years together, he divorced her, moved to another state and remarried.

"Just dealing with the legal issues and paperwork for child support and job applications becomes a full-time job," said Jane, who most of the time has represented herself because she can't afford an attorney.

Jane has filled out dozens and dozens of job applications, she's checked with temporary staffing agencies, and she's a regular at the state employment office's Career Center. "I check every day, and they send stuff out that I apply for, but I never hear anything back."

She's come very close to a job several times, only to find that the employee decided not to leave, or the company decided to eliminate the position or make it a part-time job.

"I went through all kinds of testing for one job and out of 200, I got called back with the top 50, and then made the top third, but I never heard anything else from them. These days, you e-mail and fax and they never respond. They say they're getting 200 applications for every clerical job, and you don't know if they got your application; you can't follow up like you used to because of technology."

She searches the Tennessee Valley for jobs, but with high gas prices and an old car that regularly needs repairs, she wonders how far is too far to drive to a job.

She answered some work-at-home ads that seemed more scam than legitimate. She worked as a caregiver and then for a small company that soon closed. A full-time job, hopefully with insurance and other benefits, still eluded her.

Her elderly parents, with health problems, live a long way off; with the price of gas and car repairs, she can't visit them. Her church family has become her family, and their help and her faith has pulled her through so far. "People have to help each other in this world," she believes, so throughout her own problems, she had continued to share in whatever ways she could.

She's been trying to hold it together for her children, but she needs a job. Like all mothers, she wants to help them go to college and fulfill their dreams, but first she must buy the groceries.

This financial situation is painful for this former stay-at-home mom who for years helped in her children's schools — and most of all, she doesn't want to embarrass her children.

Since her divorce several years ago, she's spent much of her time in the court system, trying to get the child support she is due and get health insurance reinstated for her children. She figured the back child support and alimony ordered by the court a lost cause; she only hopes her ex continues working in another city, where mandatory child-support dollars are taken out of his check and sent to the family — a necessity for keeping a roof over their heads, although it, too, may need repairs soon, along with the dryer, lawn mower and air conditioner.

There is no one place a divorced mother can go for help before you reach the crisis stage, she said. The Displaced Homemaker Program, formerly available at Calhoun, dried up for lack of funding, she was told. With luck, a group such as Habitat for Humanity may come in after you lose your house and help build another.

"Now at 44, I have no savings, no retirement, and no Social Security benefits ahead because I was a stay-at-home mom who hadn't worked much. I couldn't even qualify for full unemployment benefits after I was laid off," Jane said.

"It's amazing to me how society doesn't protect the plain, old-fashioned housewife who stayed home and took care of everybody and everything — and then gets left with almost nothing."

The state employment office in Decatur has 404 registered, according to assistant manager Mike Fowler. Many of them may have jobs but want better ones.

"I haven't noticed an increase in this field as compared to production and other types of jobs," he said. "But you probably have to have a different set of skills than you did even 10 years ago."

There aren't many jobs now where you just answer the phone and type letters. "Most companies want people with specific skills who can operate certain computer software," Fowler said. "Even at the entry level, they expect people to come out of high schools with computer skills. But the expectation from employers is that people they hire will have advanced skills, and that's probably more the problem."

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