In this fantastic piece GG talks about the way form filing can be traumatic and triggering, especially for single parents. But she also stresses the impact of support from organisations when it comes to the process of filing in forms and shows you how she thinks about it all in a way that helps her feel more positive.

Audio Transcription

Hello. I’d like to talk about forms and particularly the part where you have to rely on the form if you have any children in your home. Quite often, the wording of the question implies if there’s no children in the home, then you don’t have children. Often the terminology is dependent children.

Recently, over the last few months, I’ve been doing a lot of form filling – more than usual. I seem to spend many years filling in forms. I’ve recently been doing my PIP assessment, which was a horrendous amount of forms and I was successful. So that’s really good news. And that’s because I had support from Groundswell.

Previously, I tried to do it and I…the whole experience was very traumatic, and I didn’t even complete the application because the assessment was so horrible…I..ermm…find this particular question on forms about dependent children really upsetting and that’s what I wanted to talk about today because I have four children who are now 8, 13, 16 and 18.

And in 2014, there was a final hearing and my children were removed and it was decided that two of my children would live with my parents and two would live with their father. The two that live with my parents I see regularly, have a wonderful close relationship with and it’s really great. And the two that live with the father, the father has blocked contact for seven years. And it’s very painful and it’s very difficult and it’s very complicated.

I reported him and then was for abuse towards me and was not believed because of my mental health, my past instability. Why would you believe a woman who’s been homeless? Why would you believe a woman who’s mentally ill? Why would you believe a woman who’s around a lot of violence? Why would anyone believe someone like me?

Those images in the media carry through into the courts that carry through into the police who is believable, who is upstanding, who is the good, you know, we say all the stuff about the Tories as they stand up in their suits and their smiling families, and they are the ones that we must believe. And yet we all know they lie and they lie and they lie.

And yeah, so I wanted to share this because I think people with lived experience of homelessness and mental health very often have experience with either family courts or social services or lost contact with children and no matter what you will always be their parent, you always be their mother or their father.

And when people ask you if you have children, you do what’s right for you? But may I say it with my chest, I have four children? And the added caveat I’d like to end on is my children were born at home peacefully and they were all water births. So I say my four children swam out to me. They swam into the world. Happy Christmas.

Hand drawn picture by Poppy Burnley.