Carl, You have not mentioned anything of his experience, if we had some insight we might be able to add more relevant info for you to digest.
But yes, several people have already offered you Golden Suggestions.
Here are mine, even though some are rehashed, IMO he does not have time to waste. I too was a single dad as a retail and foodservice manager for many years. I am since remarried and my son is now 16 and still with me so I understand what he is feeling.
1) Did he get terminated justly or not? If not he needs to apply for unemployment ASAP. As a manager I know the process well and if the company he was with did not do their part with action plans, performance appraisals etc.. he will likely get benefit. The process takes weeks though, be prepared.
2) Get him on BHW ASAP. There is a wealth of info here and daily someone is posting "____ Needed"
3) Content writing. While I am not a writer myself if I know the topic 1st hand I can put out a 500 word article in about 10 minutes. If not I may have to do some research so depending on his knowledge base he can make $10-$25 per hour writing. The average going rate is about $1 per 100 words. I am assuming he is a native English Speaker. (this post is 506 words and took me 12 minutes to post)
4) A new niche that has been all over this board lately is handmade web 2.0. It seems like good SEO is original SEO and now even tier 1 backlinks are going the route of less automation. If he can create a squidoo, wordpress, blogger site quickly with images and video there is work for him here.
5) Combine #3 and #4, we need writers and we need web 2.0 builders if he can do each, he can also do both and add some value. It might take him 30 minutes to create a good web 2.0 with images and video as well as a unique 500 word article but maybe that is worth $$$ to someone.
6)Manual link building, people are looking for others to post on blogs and forums to help them with their white hat links, if he can find relevant blogs with some PR and post in content comments he will have yet another niche for himself.
7) Google alerts manager- perhaps someone is looking to a person to manage a keyword for them? Every time a keyword appears in a conversation he goes and posts a link to the client site.
Those are just off the top of my head, building a site, ranking it, monetizing it takes time. That is something he does not have the luxury of right now with a 2 year old waiting for daddy to feed her.
The most important thing is to TAKE ACTION. Waiting days after already getting some good ideas is counterproductive to his situation.
He cannot post a service thread without going through the proper channels but he CAN reply to those looking for freelancers. Make sure he is aware so he does not get booted of BHW!
Good Luck!!!
