Here - Health Promotion Agency

Your own life
• Suggest a regular evening babysit
by a trusted relation or friend.
You may well find that they’re
delighted at the opportunity of
making friends with your child.
•
Grandparents are often glad to
have a baby overnight, even if they
don’t much care for babysitting.
MAKING NEW FRIENDS
If you don’t already know people
locally, try contacting other mothers
through local groups.
• Ask your health visitor what’s
going on locally, and look through
the list of support and information
organisations on pages 147–51.
Many run local groups.
•
Gingerbread, a self-help
organisation run by and for oneparent
families (address on page
149), can put you in touch with
local groups.
ABSENT FATHERS
If you’d hoped to bring up your child
as a couple you may be feeling very
angry and hurt. One of the hardest
things for a lone mother is to keep
her hurt, angry feelings to herself
and let her child make a different
relationship with his or her father.
Unless your child’s father is violent
to you or the child, or you feel he’s
likely to abuse the child in some
way, it’s almost certainly better for
your child’s own development if he
or she is able to see his or her father
regularly, even if you remarry.
You may find that your child
behaves badly at first when he or she
gets home. Small children aren’t able
to understand and explain how they’re
feeling, and this is the only way they
have of letting you know that they’re
confused. Unless you’re convinced
that something bad is happening on
access visits, the best thing is to be
reassuring and calm. In the end your
child will learn to look forward to
visits and also to coming home.
MONEY AND HOUSING
Money may be a major headache.
Look at Your rights and benefits
(pages 134–46) to check you’re
claiming all you’re entitled to.
The National Council for One
Parent Families (address on page 149)
offers free advice packs to lone parents
and will provide independent advice
about maintenance problems to
women on benefits.
The Child Support Agency can
work out and collect child
maintenance for children living in the
UK as long as the person with care
and the non-resident parent also live
in this country. The Agency may also
be able to handle child maintenance
for some non-resident parents living
abroad, if their employer is based in
the UK. There are special rules for
parents with care who are on benefit.
For more information, contact the
Child Support Agency National
Helpline on 08457 133 133 (local call
charge), textphone 08457 138 924, or
visit the website www.csa.gov.uk.
See pages 132 and 148 for
information about help with housing
problems. If you are working, or
thinking of it, see pages 134–46 for
information about available help.
L ONELINESS
Lots of mothers feel lonely. Especially
after the birth of a first baby, many find
that they’re cut off from old friends,
but it’s difficult to make new ones.
Getting out to see people, even if you’ve
got people to see, is often an effort.
Meeting new people takes confidence,
but it’s worth it. Having other people
‘At home in Pakistan, there’s
a lot of visiting, lots of people
about, and children can go
anywhere. Here there isn’t so
much coming and going. You
can feel very isolated.’
‘When I was working, there
were lots of people to talk to
and I had all the company I
needed. Now I haven’t got
any of that, I really miss it.
And I think I’ve lost
confidence. I don’t find it so
easy to talk to people.’
‘We first met at a postnatal
group which the health visitor
organised. We were all really
shy at first, but after six weeks
of meeting we all wanted to
meet again, so we swapped
addresses and agreed to meet
on Tuesday mornings.
That was three years ago.
We have had our second
babies now and our older ones
are great friends – they go
to nursery together and stay
over at each other’s houses.
That postnatal group was
the best thing that ever
happened to me!’
LONE PARENTS -
YOUR FEELINGS
You’ll almost certainly want
(and need) to talk about
your own feelings. Try to
find another adult to talk to.
Your children don’t need to
hear the details of your
feelings about their father
and will feel confused and
unhappy about loving
someone who you clearly
do not love.
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