IMAGINE being a single mother living with your three children in one room. An injury has left you unable to work, the father of your children is not paying child support and your income is zero dollars.

The Department of Financial Assistance refuses to give you a cent, the Bermuda Housing Corporation is trying to throw you in prison because you're unable to pay your rental arrears and the Department of Family Services wants to put your children in foster care. So much for the safety net.

It may sound like a nightmare, but it is very much reality for one desperate client who came to the Coalition for the Protection of Children (CPC) for help this week.

Life has been a struggle for the 33-year-old mother since a severe case of tennis elbow stopped her working as a cleaner at the Fairmont Southampton Hotel.

She had surgery on the problem and her doctor has now advised her to stay off work for some months to aid her recovery.

But she has no health insurance, and so the mother now owes $4,000 in medical bills on top of the $26,000 of arrears she owes to the BHC.

Only help from the CPC has allowed her to keep the family's $350-a-week room at the Leopards Club to keep them from going back on the streets. For several months, they were flitting from one abandoned house to another, often sharing their makeshift home with rats.

It is the children ? two girls, aged six and seven, and a 16-year-old boy ? who suffer most. The CPC has also bought a school uniform for the boy and has also given them food.

The family's sad story is not unusual, said Sheelagh Cooper of the CPC.

"The system is failing Bermudians," she said. "This is happening to people with a history of menial jobs that don't pay well enough to pay the bills. It's not all that surprising we are raising a generation of young people who are angry.

"They feel abandoned by the community, they have no stake in the economy and they see no way out. They feel they have nothing to lose."

She explained the vicious cycle of Bermudian poverty that she sees all too regularly.

"Everything costs more when you're poor," Ms Cooper said.

"If you don't have a washing machine, you have to go a laundry, where it costs $70 to do a week's laundry for a mother and two children.

"If you don't have your own transport, you have to take a taxi to the laundry.

"We have to buy people bus passes, so they can look for work or travel to work. They cost $55 a month for an adult and $45 for a school term for a child.

"The Government could help these people so much by giving free bus passes and subsidised school uniforms to people in need.

"It used to be the efforts of philanthropic individuals could help out those who were struggling.

"But the situation has gone far beyond that now and it's time for Bermuda to take poverty seriously and tackle it in an organised way."