'I'm afraid a child will die': life at the sharp end of council cuts

Withdrawal of early intervention services in Somerset reflects mounting national emergency

In July last year, Frances and her two children walked out of their family home in south Somerset. Over the previous few years, her husband had been repeatedly violent towards her, and cruel and aggressive to her eldest daughter. The arrival of a new baby seemed to only make things worse. “He would lock my daughter out in the rain; he called our baby the ‘c’ word,” she says. “I can remember her standing between us when she was three, saying ‘Don’t hit my mummy.’”

She had been advised to get out of the home and end the relationship by a family support worker sent to see her by a council-run children’s service called GetSet. “On her third visit to our house,” says Frances, “I told her what had been going on. She wasn’t surprised.” Help came quickly, not only with finding somewhere to live, but also with her finances and her daughter’s levels of anxiety.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Ceq4T1