Young American on benefits given small amount of money (10)
I believe the answer is:
adolescent
'young' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'american on benefits given small amount of money' is the wordplay.
'american' becomes 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names).
'on' says to put letters next to each other (in a down clue, letters appear on others).
'benefits' becomes 'doles' (dole can informally mean a government benefit).
'given' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'small amount of money' becomes 'cent' (I've seen this before).
'a'+'doles'+'cent'='ADOLESCENT'
(Other definitions for adolescent that I've seen before include "Person in child-adult transition" , "Youth" , "Immature" , "Developing" , "Teenager" .)