Not been on here for a while due to my emotional and mental health relapsing. Had time off work, which resulted in only statutory sickness pay, this again impacted my health as it's a constant worry juggling money. Trying to prioritise what to pay. My son is a teenager and eats out house and home, with it been half term and only half way through I had to ration what I eat so I know he has enough. I work full time but how has it got to this? …

Jan 2026, I made a promise to remain positive and hope for a better year. Already half way through Feb and I'm feeling exhausted, supermarket trips are something I don't look forward to, prices creep up all the time, there is no relief or respite.

Feeling depressed thinking of family times away on holiday and not having any money left to save for a holiday at all.

When will things change for the better.

:(

My partner was finally given the all clear for his cancer this week.

This is amazing news but now I have to pick the pieces up financially and mentally

I have learnt the importance of self care the hard way and that no rewards are often given for supporting someone to recover

Watching News tonight - and removing young people's bus passes. I know as a single parent buses cripple me financially, it would be such a great thing to have in place free travel for single or low income families(maybe one bus pass for a family?). If I want to take my son into town and utilise the free activities I still have to pay bus fares, I also have to get a bus to do my shopping as I live quite far out. Why has this never been something considered, I can’t afford to continue my driving atm, but drain money on buses. It always has annoyed me when young people come on buses to cause trouble, I was one of them once, but we had to pay for our buses, a lot of us wouldn't of needed them as children tend to stay around the area they live.

I was slightly surprised when I recently received an email from my son's school saying that they will be putting up the price of school meals due to the increased cost of food ingredients and staffing.

Seems like the cost of living crisis is affecting all aspects of society.

Weather very bad, everyone in the family is down with flu and cough

Bad weather in Glasgow

So I haven't written in here since the beginning of December as I was determined to step away from all things research/uni related over the festive period to give myself a true break, it was much needed! Since the beginning of January I have been working on my dissertation (the research here has been highly valuable!) conducting my own interviews, which has been very interesting and also applying for jobs.........THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!!! it has been quite some time since i last applied for any job roles and wow this has changed! It now takes at least an hour per application (if you are lucky!) to go through all the questions, curate carefully thought out answers relevant to the job role and make sure you are tailoring all your answers to each job's language/ethos and values! No longer can you do blanket applications with one CV! I can totally see why unemployed people get so despondent and depressed, and that's just from completing the applications.......Don't even talk to me about feedback, being ignored and sitting around wondering if they even got your application! Since the beginning of January I have applied for 11 jobs, 2 have been unsuccessful, most I haven't even had an acknowledgment of application and 5 have now passed the closing date with not so much as a 'no thanks'. It is disheartening, worrying and stressful to be a jobseeker in 2026, competing against younger, more qualified applicants. Coupled with the stress of the impending job coach requirements when my degree ends in May I am tempted to go work in a factory with minimum wage just to get a bit of breathing space. Anyway onwards and upwards and I shall keep applying, I shall keep trying and I shall try my best to do my dissertation on social exclusion of single parents in rural Scotland!!

The Child Maintenance System Fails Disabled Children and Their Families

The Child Maintenance Service treats all children as if their needs are the same.

They aren’t.

When a child is disabled or has additional needs, the cost of raising them changes completely. Appointments. Therapies. Equipment. Sensory needs. Travel. Emotional labour. The exhaustion that comes with providing round the clock care.

Yet the system does not recognise any of this.

A parent can walk away from a disabled child and face exactly the same financial responsibility as if that child had no additional needs at all.

No accountability for increased care.

No recognition of lost income.

No adjustment for the parent who stays and becomes the full time carer.

Often that remaining parent is forced to give up work or drastically reduce hours because appointments, school issues, crises, and care needs don’t fit neatly around employment. There is no sick leave from being a parent carer. No annual leave. No protected rest.

Just survival.

Meanwhile, the parent who leaves can continue their life largely unchanged. Their payment stays the same whether the child needs occasional support or twenty four hour care.

That isn’t fairness.

That is abandonment being quietly normalised by policy.

Disabled children cost more to raise. That isn’t controversial, it’s reality. And pretending otherwise simply shifts the financial and emotional burden onto the parent who stayed.

Usually the mother.

But there’s another cost the system never counts.

The emotional load.

Because the parent who stays doesn’t just provide care. They become the buffer between their child and the harm of being abandoned.

They explain absences.

They soften disappointments.

They absorb anger and grief.

They hold their child while pretending they aren’t breaking themselves.

They carry questions no child should have to ask.

Why don’t they want me?

Did I do something wrong?

They are expected to reassure their child while quietly grieving the life they didn’t choose. Expected to stay regulated while feeling trapped under the weight of everything resting on their shoulders.

Because walking away isn’t an option.

So they carry it.

The appointments.

The finances.

The advocacy.

The sleepless nights.

The emotional aftermath of rejection.

They carry their child’s pain alongside their own.

And all of this happens within a culture of parent blame.

Where every aspect of the present parent is questioned.

If a child struggles, the remaining parent is scrutinised.

If a child is dysregulated, it’s parenting.

If support breaks down, it’s engagement.

If outcomes aren’t perfect, it’s resilience.

The parent who stayed is analysed, assessed, and judged. Their capacity, their tone, their boundaries, their coping.

While the parent who walked away fades quietly into the background.

This is invisible labour. It’s unpaid. It’s relentless. And it is crushing.

The system treats child maintenance as numbers on a spreadsheet. But for parent carers, this is lived reality. It’s survival. It’s doing everything possible to stop a child being harmed by a choice they had no control over.

A fair system would recognise increased costs.

A fair system would account for lost earning capacity.

A fair system would acknowledge emotional labour.

A fair system would protect disabled children from poverty created by parental abandonment.

Right now, it does none of that.

And families are drowning

We are calling on the government to increase Universal Credit. However, with food prices rising month after month at a rapid pace, by the time any increase is implemented, many households will be no better off and this exhausting cycle continues. Filling my head with dread and despair

There needs to be a multi-angle approach to how Universal Credit operates. Simply asking the government to uprate payments periodically is not enough if the cost of essential items — particularly food — continues to rise faster than support levels. Without a mechanism that responds to real-time cost pressures, people will remain trapped in a cycle of constantly falling behind.

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how this should be designed, but it is critical that the government addresses this issue now Otherwise, we will continue to chase our tails — making adjustments that look meaningful on paper but fail to improve people’s ability to afford the basics in real life.

2026 has started and January is already nearly over. I promised myself to remain positive and optimistic. Not sure how long this feeling will last.

I'm slightly relieved that the month of January is slowly drawing to a close. This is mainly because of how financially challenging it often is for me at this time of year.

This is because not only do I find the Christmas holidays really expensive, but also because, straight after the holidays, I also have to find money to buy new school uniform for my son's new term at school, as well as for all the bill payments that are also due in at this particular time of year, which usually means that by the end if the month (and just before my benefits are paid) my finances are relatively low.