Natalie recognizes that her education is limited and she needs volunteer experience before she can hope for any type of paid position since she has no support from Social Services to enable her to enrol in courses being offered. She continues:

You don't get any further ahead. It's like right now, I'm going to go volunteer full-time…They only pay so much for childcare. They won't pay for the van to pick up my son at school. That's uh - gonna cost me I think twelve to thirteen dollars a week out of my own pocket that I don't have but I'm going to have to find because I need to better myself by getting this training and getting myself out there.

Jill has worked in a variety of jobs including video stores, fast food restaurants, and a government-sponsored job as a project worker in a school. The latter was aimed at helping her to acquire some marketable skills. Her role was "answering the phones, doing secretarial work, and just being the gopher." Michelle babysits for some of the neighbourhood children in her home after school while Beth holds down an early morning job as a newspaper carrier in her area with a friend. Beth's husband, Doug, takes the occasional odd job at the [arena], working in the coat check. Doug mentions that he once had a job working for a recycling company, but financially it just was not feasible for him to work there and so he quit. Doug tries to dispel a myth about welfare when he states, "Everybody thinks er…ah…that we enjoy being on income assistance. I don't, I hate it with a passion. If I had a chance…I told 'em one day. I said I like to burn it 'cause I hate it so much…I'd rather be working full time than on welfare."

The participants were specifically asked whether or not they felt their activities were restricted in any way due to financial reasons. The issues explored in the interviews encouraged respondents to make clear references to instances when they had been unable to do something they wanted to do. Beth states that it was hard for her to manage financially. She feels that something beyond her control that cost money was "always coming up" with one of her three children. For example, her eldest was scheduled to start an anger management and violence prevention program and she had to pay the registration fee of $64.