Heating or eating
Jules Hillier
Monday, February 6, 2023
Pause works with women who have had, or are at risk of having, more than one child removed from their care.
While the cost-of-living crisis is affecting everyone across the UK, at Pause, we have particular insight into the specific challenges faced by the women we work with. Our report about the cost-of-living crisis found that in addition to having to deal with the same increased costs that everyone is having to navigate, women who have had children removed from their care are also facing challenges in another aspect of their lives: maintaining relationships with their children.
We know that, when done safely, good-quality contact arrangements between children and their birth families can be vital to children’s wellbeing and are also hugely important to birth parents. So, it’s a real worry to hear that women are facing difficult choices such as going without heating or food themselves, to cover travel expenses or other costs that facilitate contact arrangements with their children.
Whilst, of course, local authorities have a duty to support contact when the child is in local authority care, women and Pause Practices are telling us that they are struggling with the costs of maintaining relationships with their children who are in a range of placements. These struggles include travel and venue costs, as well as other things related to contact with their children, such as buying food for them and keeping the heating on, so they are warm if they visit. Every day on Twitter, we see Pause Practitioners sharing the creative ways they are working with women to help them get around these challenges and prepare for their contact arrangements.
It is right now, when women need services like Pause and others more than ever, that we are facing the closure of two of our practices and the significant reduction of a third in the coming months. These local authorities know that stopping work with vulnerable women will cost more in the long run; they have the evidence to show that. But they are having to make short-term choices about the cash available now, rather than long-term decisions that prioritise the wellbeing of women and children.
In the week the government launched its response to the Care Review and commitment to improving services in the future, this short-term thinking that’s being forced on local authorities is even more frustrating. We are deeply worried about the future for women in those three areas and other areas where services like ours are under threat. We are in a cost-of-living crisis and must find ways to support people through this difficult time, but we must also look to the future and make sure that these women, and their children, are not forgotten.
Read the full Heating or Eating briefing here. If you have any questions about the briefing, please email campaigns@pause.org.uk
Jules Hillier is chief executive of Pause
