A county council care assistant, who indulged in a benefits scam after her husband left her with thousands of pounds of debts, escaped a jail sentence today.

Mother-of-two Rebecca Shepherd, who has looked after mentally handicapped people for North Yorkshire County Council for almost a decade, pleaded guilty to four offences of making false statements to obtain benefit and asked for 61 others to be considered when she appeared before Harrogate magistrates.

Shepherd, 33, who was said to have netted nearly £5,000 from more than a year of cheating, sighed with relief and burst into tears when court chairman Gordon Charlton told her she would not go to prison. Instead he put her on probation for a year and ordered her to pay costs of £100.

Stuart Berry, prosecuting for the Department of Work and Pensions, said Shepherd, of Wayside Terrace, Huby, near Harrogate, had been paid incapacity benefit of £718.87 and income support of £4,256.30 she was not entitled to between April 2000 and July 2001 by not telling benefit officers she was working for the county council and earning anything from £20 to £206 a week.

In mitigation Geoffrey Rogers said Shepherd's offending had its origins in 1999 when she was going through a difficult time emotionally and financially.

She had separated from her husband, the father of her children aged seven and 10, in November that year and it had soon become clear he had run up considerable debts.

"The amount only began to come to light - and £5,000 would be a conservative estimate - after he had left and even until quite recently she was still having people knocking at her door asking for money or demanding to know where her husband is."

Mr Rogers said when the pressure culminated in Shepherd being reated for depression she decided she could no longer hold down her job. Then when she learned she would not get any benefit for 12 weeks she panicked.

With no income other than child benefit and no way to make ends meet for herself and her children Shepherd reluctantly returned to work part-time for the 12 weeks. But when her benefits began she chose not to tell the Department she had returned to work.

Shepherd, who was still working for the county council, continued to gets letters, phone calls and visits from bailiffs and carried on claiming benefit.