Jailing people for being poor, splitting families for being homeless ? not much makes sense about Bermuda's current approach to tackling poverty for campaigner Sheelagh Cooper.

But those suspecting she is another bleeding heart wanting Government and therefore the taxpayer to throw more money at the problem should think again.

According to Mrs. Cooper the current approach is costing us dear while doing little to help people out of the poverty trap. "We are keeping people at a level of poverty they can't break out of. It costs us more in the long term.

"We don't need more money, we need to spend it properly," she said.

Often meeting single mothers who were very bright, Mrs. Cooper said the system made it nearly impossible for them to break out of the rut of low-paid jobs which put them in crisis in the first place.

"They need to get back to school to learn skills to make a decent living.

"The problem is ? that is not allowed by Financial Assistance. They won't let them go back to school.

"They must come back with a list of places they went looking for jobs in order to get the next cheque."

Quoting the adage that it is better to stop sawing inefficiently and sharpen the saw, she said: "I would suggest a better use of time would be for Financial Assistance to cover the costs of school for these women to get paid for further education."

She said payment could be linked to attendance to ensure accountability.

Instead the women were being forced to look for jobs which didn't exist ? low skilled jobs which could pay enough to raise a family.

"They are on a treadmill, it's disheartening and depressing."

Cruel ironies abound in the twilight world of Bermuda's underclass.

"I would like to emphatically encourage Government to immediately stop the practice of removing children from mothers simply because they are homeless. That practice has to stop now.

"It's a simple matter ? use the money currently being used to fund foster parents to assist the mother to find a place and pay for it to keep the family together.

"It is rupturing families all over the island. This practice makes women afraid to seek help for obvious reasons.

"Government says to mothers ? when you find and secure a place we believe is adequate we will return your children to you.

"But if they could have they would have ? there isn't anything out there. So children languish in foster care ? more and more distant from their mothers."

Such children had often already effectively lost one parent through divorce and were now separated by the state from their remaining one. "So they are essentially parent-less," said Mrs. Cooper.

She said the situation was creating immediate misery and a new generation of bitter children from broken families.

"You see children who are angry in places like the Sunshine League."

Bermuda also needs to stop the Dickensian practice of a debtors' prison which also is a way of splitting families, said Mrs. Cooper.

"It is appalling to me that a mother can be put in prison because of debt while her children are left to fend for themselves or put in a foster home.

"While a women can go to prison for debts she often has thousands of dollars owed to her in child support. This is unconscionable. It needs to stop.

"I have no problem with women being given a work detail to work off their debt. Most women would welcome that opportunity."

She said the debts mothers ran up were often medical bills for a sick child.

"People think children in Bermuda have free health care. That is not entirely true. If a child is seriously ill the specialist treatment is not covered. Those bills can add up very quickly."

But instead the current set-up sees the taxpayer forking out more than $65,000 a year to jail a mother plus countless more thousands on housing her offspring.

Sensitivity training is needed for some in the so-called helping agencies said Mrs. Cooper.

"There are people working within both the Financial Assistance and Family Services who in my mind are not qualified to have the kind of power over people's lives to take a child away from a mother and place them in foster care. That's a huge amount of power.

"Two or three years in Bermuda College doesn't come close to the level of education and understanding required to have that sort of power."

Performing work helpful to the community would be a much better way for mothers to pay back what's owed.

"The same thing could be done with deadbeat dads," suggested Mrs. Cooper.

Maintenance payments, or the lack of them, also distorts the lot of the struggling single mom.

She said Financial Assistance understandably looked at the income of a family before handing out cash.

"That's a very good thing. However if the father is mandated to pay $100 per child per week and he hasn't paid for years that money is still being calculated in her income.

"It means right away they don't have an accurate picture."

She said Financial Assistance also didn't have an accurate picture of the cost of living and vastly underrated the costs of necessities.

So she welcomed Premier Ewart Brown's pledge to look at establishing a meaningful poverty line.

"There are hidden costs of poverty. The basic things cost more. It can cost an average mother $70 a week to do the laundry. The taxi trip to the laundromat can cost $15 each way, so that is $30 right there."

Many families lacked electricity said Mrs. Cooper meaning the couldn't buy in bulk.

"If you buy ready-made food it's less nutritious. It's a big problem when the electricity is turned off, it costs a lot to get it put back on."

Evicted families lucky enough to find a new place sometimes had to use other people's names to get electricity put on in their new place because they lacked credit with Belco.

Finding suitable and affordable child care is a massive headache for hard-up moms said Mrs. Cooper who said many had no choice but leave their kids with cheaper carers operating in overcrowded conditions.

"We have to consider subsidies to allow poor women to get adequate child care. The care a child receives in their early years is vitally important."

She welcomed Government's resolve, announced in the Throne Speech, to draw up a poverty line which will properly define what's needed to survive in pricey Bermuda.

Once it has established what it costs to live in adequate housing, pay bills and buy nutritious food then a minimum wage should be established to ensure people lived above that poverty line, argued Mrs Cooper.

But she said policies were needed to devise ways to control forces which drove housing costs up at the top end and wages down at the bottom end.

Housing subsidies needed to be given to both Bermudian as well as expatriate employees ? or to neither suggested Mrs. Cooper who said the subsidies inflated rents.

The other option would be to remove bars on exempt companies owning housing ? and to require them to house all imported staff.

"It would take them out of the Bermudian rental market so rent will eventually go down."

But she stressed the greed in the rental market was a Bermudian phenomenon in which Bermudians "did it to each other."

"It is the Bermudian landlord who makes it exorbitant for lower income Bermudians."

And she said Bermudian landlords often discriminated against their countrymen by preferring to rent to foreigners.

"The discrimination against Bermudians, in particular Bermudian women with children is blatant. It's rampant.

"I have stories of Bermudian women with children who apply for an apartment and the landlord categorically says 'I don't take children'.

"What they really mean is they don't take Bermudians."

Such landlords saw expats as more reliable with their rent as they were obviously gainfully employed.

Employers are also using imported non-unionised workers to drive down wages, said Mrs. Cooper.

"You can control them extremely well, you pay them wages Bermudians cannot afford to live on. They are given housing, albeit crowded unsatisfactory housing."

She said a minimum wage would mean employers would import fewer workers as locals driven out of the economy would find it worthwhile to get involved.