[armchairhacker]

Also EBT, and she can possibly make some money doing Uber/Lyft/Instacart/Instawork.

You are 100% right that it's hard to get a decent job in the US without connections and/or experience, especially in this economy and especially without formal education. Ideally there is some grant which will let someone like her go through high school and college, but I really have no idea. You will have to look for places like https://www.reddit/r/povertyfinance for people who understand poverty better much than I do.