Heating or eating

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.