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I awoke on my youngest child's 16th birthday with a sense of elation and cried tears of relief. For the first time in years I felt free from other people's judgement and the fear of losing my children to the care system.

I had struggled for a long time. Since contacting social services years before for help with family problems, I had fought for services we needed not the ones imposed. I was unable to feel confident in my choices or enjoy my children.

When I was married and with support from my mother and my husband's parents, I coped well. It was this need for support that made me stay silent as my husband slowly destroyed my self-belief with emotional cruelty and threats of violence. One day he lost his temper and attacked the children. That was the last straw.


When I ended my marriage I lost all support except from one friend. I began to get depressed and struggled to maintain boundaries and discipline for my children. Like many parents living in poverty with little or no support, I asked for help. Initially I was told I was coping and my children were not at risk, so no services were provided. By the time our situation became a crisis, we were offered intrusive, imposed services that created tension in the family and between the social workers and me.

A child guidance psychiatrist suggested my son live with his father and visit me at weekends. I've never forgiven myself for agreeing to this. After 18 disastrous months he came home an angry boy. Within a year, the local authority accommodated him in order to access a residential school. At the school, they bought him expensive clothes and toys, which rammed home to my other two children how deep their poverty was. It broke my heart when they too asked if they could go into care.

During these years I saw bad practice condoned or rewarded by sideways moves while good practice was also ignored and effective social workers stayed and suffered.


At my worst moment, a friend introduced me to ATD Fourth World, which helps families marginalised by their poverty. I was encouraged to return to education, praised for small successes and supported in my fight for my family. My children and I explored our situation, discovered our strengths and built on them.

Now, 13 years on, I am very involved with their work to give people in poverty a voice in policy and decision-making. I regularly meet families who are living in poverty and in touch with social services. To my horror, they are still experiencing the things my children and I did. I see families struggling alone with the effects of poverty, who need help but are either refused it or are too scared to ask for it.

If we can make politicians and the public aware of the connection between poverty and care, fight to keep families together and build a society where protecting children is everyone's responsibility, we can move away from the current adversarial child care system. This will be better for children, parents and workers.

Moraene Roberts is a member of human rights organisation ATD Fourth World.