There is a quote below from one of the women I’ve been interviewing at Boundary House, a hostel for homeless families in Welwyn Garden City.

I’m publishing the quote here, because it’s the sort of comment that I’ve heard a lot in the past few years from women who are homeless and/or who are really struggling to make ends meet. They worry that their children will be removed if a council knows that they are struggling financially, or if they break down because they are under pressure and living in poor circumstances. I’ve written about this before: as I say, women have made this sort of comment to me over the years. People clearly believe that the threat of losing children is there. It is a thought and concern that they factor in:

“Like me and my children, we never had a house which is not overcrowded. Never. It has basically been like this a lot, but there was no support from council… Then, if I’ve gone crazy or something, then they would have taken my children away. That’s what I am saying. They draw you into this kind of situation, into this madness and then they say “Oh, you’re not a suitable mother. We’re going to take your children.”

I think about this a lot. I wonder how many people have this thought and concern in their heads. I wonder how many people decide never to challenge a council about their poor living conditions, or to never apply for, say, a discretionary housing payment to help make up their rent, because they don’t want to draw a council’s attention to their problems. For every woman I meet who has decided to protest about her living conditions, there must be plenty who have decided not to. Fear keeps people pretty quiet.

Posting here will less frequent for the next few months while I work on a case studies project. There will be more from this article in that project. You can still get in touch here.