Eve's Story

I went into care a day before my ninth birthday. Me and my sister were able to stay together but my brother was separated from us and adopted. I spent a few years in the first foster care placement, then I ended up in a care home that I really loved, but I was only there for six months before I was sent to another foster placement. I spent the Christmas in this new place but then, I think I’d said something bad or something, and I was told to leave and never come back.

After that, I lived with my nana for a little bit, but we hadn’t seen her since we were little. Then I went to my uncle’s to live, but he used to drink and there was domestic violence in the house – he almost killed his girlfriend, and me and his daughter used to hide upstairs crying when he was hitting her. So I was sent to another foster care home and then to a hostel, which was OK, but it’s not like being in your own home.

I was maybe 14 by this point. And I’d never really had a proper home.

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My mam was an alcoholic. My dad was in and out of jail and I don’t remember good things about him. I remember him threatening us with a knife if we didn’t do what he said, and bending my fingers right back. He wasn’t around much.

Then, when I was really little, one of my sisters passed away when she just a year old. That’s when mam started to drink. From then, I can only remember certain things, but there was apparently neglect, like us not being fed. Although I always found that weird because I remember mam feeding us, I can remember eating spaghetti bolognaise because it was my sister’s favourite. But in my reports, it said the social used to give her £200 for food and she used to spend it on drink.

But there were other things too. I was sexually abused while in my mam’s care. It was two of the men my mam used to drink with. They used to wait until she was drunk and asleep – they were probably filling her with drink just to make her sleep. I tried to set the curtains alight one time because I just couldn’t deal with it all. The police came and got us and took us to my nana’s. But I kept the abuse to myself for a long time until I went into foster care. Then the police got involved but because it was a few years after it had happened, there wasn’t enough evidence. And one of the men who did it had died by this point too.

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Eventually, my mam went into rehab and that’s where she met my stepdad – who I get on great with. But she fell pregnant when I was 14 and I remember wondering why I had to stay in care when she could look after her new baby. She’s probably my biggest support right now but, looking back, I’m kind of glad I didn’t live with her when I was a teenager.

I was struggling in school and with my behaviour by this point. But I didn’t get any counselling until I was 14 – years after the abuse. I did finish school, though, and I went to college and had some cleaning jobs as well.

However, I did spend some time homeless. I was 17 when I got into a relationship and we ended up with nowhere to live. He became an alcoholic and we were on the streets for four months. He was quite aggressive, he would slap me across the face and he strangled me, but I would still get back with him.

Eventually, though, I got my own flat. But he moved in. Things between us were still really bad and I ended up self-harming. By this point, I’d fallen pregnant with my daughter.

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He changed for a while and seemed really happy, but he was still drinking. And he’d go out for days at a time, leaving us. I remember asking him if he was cheating and he pushed me on the settee while I was heavily pregnant.

I became really unwell during pregnancy so I went and got induced. It was horrible - it took ‘til 6 in the morning to start getting even slight contractions. I was already 2cm when they popped my waters and then, by 1 o'clock they said my baby’s heartbeat was dropping. So they rushed me to have an emergency section. She was just 3 lb 14 when she was born. We didn’t leave hospital until she was eight days old.

By this point her dad, my partner, was working and the relationship was quite good for a while. But then the arguments started again and he left me for someone else, but he still kept coming back. At one point, he held a knife up to us – while I was holding my daughter. I rang the police.

It was hard because we must’ve been together for about five years by this point and I found it really difficult just being alone. I really struggled with it and I think me mam or a friend rang social and said I was going to kill myself. My sister was staying with me so I had her support, but I didn’t really get any other support for my mental health.

Then I fell pregnant again with my ex who had just got out of prison. My pregnancy was alright, it was a planned c section. Afterwards I wasn’t coping very well, I was just crying all the time and my partner expected me to do all the work around the house, even though I’d just had a C-section.

I don’t really know if I had the baby blues or if it was more because of how bad the relationship was.

Things got worse after my partner’s mam died, and he was shoplifting to pay for all the drugs he started taking. At first, I thought it was just a reaction to his mam dying but I should’ve clicked on cos he was up all night, taking a lot of speed and coke.

He threatened me a lot and, one time, he gave me this look and I just knew what was going to happen. He slapped us while I held his son in my arms. Then he grabbed a shovel and put the patio door through. I called the police and he got nicked, he got a domestic order. But he still kept coming back after that. And that’s when social services got involved.

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I always hated social because of what happened to me when I was younger but I got this social worker who was actually really nice. We had a meeting at school and everyone straight away talked about child protection ‘cause of what he’d done to the window. But then we finished not long after that, ‘cause he was with someone else and by that point he wasn’t allowed to come to the house. But he would still sometimes message and ask to see his son.

Things went downhill from here. I think I maybe did have depression at this point but I didn’t realise. I stopped engaging with social and the house and the living conditions were quite bad. And my ex would be coming round to my house, just letting himself in and eating my food and stuff. He wasn’t supposed to be there. So I was running out of food and I remember my auntie seeing that I had nothing in and ringing social.

So the police came out. I didn’t want to open the door but I did, and the house was really bad and everything, the kitchen was a mess, piled high with plates. So then they said they were taking the kids under police protection – and they said I was being arrested for child neglect.

I explained everything, about the relationship and everything, and I got a caution. But there was a new social worker who I didn’t get on with, and she’d tell me that they were really close to taking my kids off me again.

I was asked to sign a section 20 but I refused – I didn’t want them taking my kids. I had a solicitor by this point and he advised me not to sign it.

So I stopped engaging. Looking back, I think, really, I was actually reaching out for help. But I was doing it in the wrong way.

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During this time, I met my new partner. We’d been talking for a few months and he only lived a few seconds away and he helped us with the kids. They really love him.

I was due in court, and I did tell social straight away that I’d got with somebody. They were asking for a supervision order, where you get to keep the kids, but they have unannounced visits, things like that.

Around this time, my daughter made an allegation that her brother had hit her. But then she changed her story and said my new partner had. Then she started cutting herself, cutting her ribs with a razor, so social were obviously concerned about that.

At this point I did sign a section 20. My children have been in care ever since.

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Things got really bad after my children went into care. From the December when I lost them, I was straight on the drink and drugs. I was doing a lot of, like, MDMA at this point. And we had a lot of problems with people putting our windows through, saying my partner owed them money and we started arguing badly.

Then, in the July, I fell pregnant again. It wasn’t planned because I knew I was gonna struggle to get my kids back so it obviously wasn’t ideal. But when I was eight weeks pregnant he left me and went back to his ex. I managed to get my own flat but it was only a one bed. And I was still taking drugs, especially around the dates of the court proceedings, because it felt like the only way to cope.

So then I had the court hearing, which was like two days. It was meant to be three, but I didn’t want to give evidence because my ex partner was there and I felt uncomfortable having to talk about our relationship in front of him. So I said I don’t want to give evidence, but I don’t agree to adoption. I wanted them to go into foster care so I could try and fight to get them back one day.

I’ve also got a slight learning need so I had an assessment done, a different kind of parenting assessment, and it was identified that I needed to do a lot of work but I never really got the support to help me get onto the courses and things. It was even proven in court that one of the social workers hadn’t sent the referrals for me to access the courses when she said she had.

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From September I was seeing my kids every fortnight for about a month, and then it went to monthly. But I got to keep my new baby and, aside from a few slip ups when I was pregnant, I’ve been clean ever since.

I was really worried about my parent assessment, but it went really well. They said my issues weren’t really around parenting, it was more around relationships. And, funnily enough, things started to change and get better when I wasn’t in a relationship – even though at first I really struggled being alone.

I see my social worker once a month now and I’m looking for my own independent accommodation. I’ve also been working with NIDAS (Newcastle Integrated Domestic Abuse Service) learning about domestic violence, behaviours to look out for and also how it impacts children. I’ve also been learning about budgeting.

The next stage, through the courts, is for me to do another parenting assessment for all three children. I know they’re concerned, because of what happened in the past, of me being able to cope with three children. But I was a different person then.

Now, I’m looking ahead to the future. I am fighting to keep my youngest and hoping to stay in letterbox contact with my two eldest who are being adopted. But looking back, I think I should have got more help with my mental health and the parenting and relationship courses much earlier. If I had, I might not have lost my children. It could have broken the cycle and my children might not have had to go through what I did when I was young.