There were practical answers to the LINC caseworker’s question.

“What’s stopping you from getting where you need to be?”

But darker problems swirled beyond Simone Parker’s struggle with hardships like the suffocating costs of unpaid tickets and their cloak of warrants.

The south Kansas City woman had recently applied for state assistance, and LINC’s Fiona Stewart was on the line, as a Missouri Work Assistance case manager, ready with a wide array of supports to help Parker in her quest for self-sustainability.

But what do you do with the distress of being the oldest of six siblings, and three of them now gone, two brothers killed by gun violence and a sister killed in a car crash?

LINC was there for Parker, ready to help, Stewart told her. And Stewart saw in Parker someone who “doesn’t quit, who keeps going even though she has been dealt some hard times.”

The certified nursing assistant certification she earned at 19 was supposed to be the start of a career she’d build on with academic degrees to come. And she had just had her first child, a baby daughter, when she made her move to restart her life four years later, going with her baby to Texas the day after Christmas, 2016.

She was going to live with her godmother and work on her bigger plans. But within the week, on New Year’s Eve, her brother was shot and killed — Kansas City’s last homicide of the year.

She had to come back, she said.

“Me and my siblings went through a lot growing up,” she said. As the oldest, she had always been the one to try to help care for the others. But she said she didn’t have a support system.

Parker would work various jobs, at low hourly wages, as a CNA. Her first daughter would live with her father, and Parker and her boyfriend had five children of their own, her boyfriend working landscaping and other jobs.

But family tragedies followed. Her sister died in a car crash in 2022 at the age of 26. Another of her brothers was killed in gunfire at 51st and Prospect Avenue in 2024 at the age of 23.

Parker was making mistakes through it all, getting traffic tickets and other car-related citations that stripped her of her driver’s license, making it harder for her to find consistent work. Food insecurity, housing insecurity, all were mounting.

“It felt like regardless how hard I worked I took two steps forward, then three steps back,” she said.

When Parker sought state aid in 2025, it came with a phone contact to Stewart and LINC.

“I’m glad I gave LINC a chance.”

Every year, LINC’s MWA program helps more than 400 parents on state aid get support they need to to achieve education or job training to help them rise above the need for assistance.

LINC can help with many things, including school costs, a new wardrobe for job interviews, gas reimbursement for work travel.

When Stewart asked that question on the phone, when Parker thought of what was stopping her from achieving her higher aspirations, the first things were those traffic case warrants, loaded with fines, court fees, lawyer costs in the thousands of dollars, standing between her and a driver’s license.

That was solvable, Stewart told her. LINC’s MWA program could help pay the reduced costs of a warrant-relief program, get her tickets resolved, get her ready to regain her license.

LINC could also help with past-due utility bills, get Parker’s family help with needed furniture, and support mental health care.

“Miss Fiona’s been a huge help,” Parker said. “It’s helped with my mental health with the distress of how to get through. It took a lot of weight off my shoulders. She’s helped me make sure we can keep the lights on.”

Stewart has watched Parker “do everything she can to make sure her children are taken care of,” Stewart said. She has persisted in seeking better work opportunities, once even walking over five miles to get to a job interview after her car broke down on the way.

“Simone’s pure determination makes her a success because she doesn’t quit,” Stewart said.

Parker feels like she has a chance again to start anew, wiser and with more support than when she made that first try to Texas now nearly 10 years ago.

She is in a better frame of mind in coping with her family’s tragedies.

“I don’t make myself the victim,” Parker said. “I treat it as lessons learned.”

And she feels new strength in her determination to see that her children will be kept as secure and safe as they can possibly be.

Now she is making plans to continue her education, preparing to enroll in a trade college, ready to pursue a degree as a dental hygienist.

And she knows, if she worries something is holding her back, there’s someone she can call.