Motherhood

  • A survey for Crisis showed that one third of homeless women identified as childless were in fact mothers[1]
  • 68% of the women in the Crisis survey said their children were temporarily being looked after by someone else, including local authorities; 31% said their children were permanently living with someone else[2]
  • Around 18,000 children are separated from their mothers by imprisonment each year. 9% are cared for by their fathers; only 5% remain in their homes[3]
  • 11% of homeless women who slept rough did not receive the assistance they required with contacting their children, compared to 5% of non-rough sleepers[4]

“The majority of women I’ve worked with feel a failure. All that they live for is to have some sort of contact with their child. If the child’s been fostered, or in care with a family member, there’s a chance. But if the child’s been adopted then there’s no chance the mother is going to have any access rights. We look at other things to make them look to the future – but they are blinded by it.” Kath Sims, Manager of St Mungo’s Westminster Outreach Team
 
 
“We are seeing women who are trying to use their bodies in all sorts of ways, like drugs and alcohol, to cut off their memories. I think getting pregnant works in that way. When they have had very poor childhoods, many women may attempt to rewrite the story and have a child in order to be a very different mother. It’s an absolutely devastating sense of failure when it doesn’t work.” Gabrielle Brown, Psychotherapist for St Mungo’s Life Works Team
 
 
“Women are deemed homemakers and a lot of them feel that once they’ve lost their family, their children or their home they are not successful. We’ve supported women through pregnancy, through successful detox and then through living with their babies and their children. But for some it’s not something they’re going to achieve, and we can’t give them a goal that’s unrealistic. Some of the children have been abused, have been left with no food or for hours on their own. The women are not going to be reconnected, their children have been adopted. So it’s often about supporting the women to learn to live with that.” Stella Wells, Manager of St Mungo’s South London Women’s Service

 

[1] Reeve, K; Casey, R; Goudie, R: Homeless Women: Still being failed yet striving to survive; Crisis, 2006

[2] Reeve, K; Casey, R; Goudie, R: Homeless Women: Still being failed yet striving to survive; Crisis, 2006

[3] Baroness Corston: A Review of Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System; Home Office, 2007

[4] Reeve, K; Casey, R; Goudie, R: Homeless Women: Still being failed yet striving to survive; Crisis, 2006

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2012 at 10:44 pm. It is filed under background. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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