I have been on Universal Credit due to a break from work after mental health difficulties escalated. I have recently been feeling better and considering what I would like to do next. Lots of my work has been self employed in the past and it strikes me that this is also a great way to manage day to day changes and challenges in mood, energy and health generally. The only issue is that the system that is designed to support people with Universal Credit if they are Self Employed is so admin heavy and also leaves you not really able to budget as you wouldn't ever know what income you will have. I also had the decision changed (after nearly a year) from full capability for work to lower capability for work. This was a part of what started me thinking about returning to some self employment. However the income £400 allowance does not factor in that as soon as you earn any money even low amounts I would lose my council tax benefit which means I would have to pay £200 per month council tax. So my LCW income allowance is halved immediately. I don't understand the logic of this at all. If the narrative is about supporting people back into work, now I finally feel ready to explore this, it feels like the system actually keeps you in.

Went to the Thursday drop in session for UC support at the Citizens Advice office. A woman only spoke to me via the intercom and said she couldn't let me in without an appt. The drop in session was cancelled due to lack of staff.

This week I am feeling pressure, I’ve started counselling (at a discounted rate) as I can’t wait any longer on nhs support. This week is a year since my dad passed away, and I am struggling with the trauma I faced during it all. Juggling being a mum whilst grieving is hard, my partner isn't around atm due to worsening schizophrenia due to a tumour, that is to be removed, my faith in the nhs has completely gone. It makes me worry for the future, I get bad health anxiety now, and get the keys to my new build flat on the 23rd which happens to be my birthday. It’s hard to feel positive about change when everything’s been difficult. I worry about my future and how I haven’t worked in 5 years due to various reasons. I don’t know where I am going yet, I do feel like being involved in this campaign has made me feel more comfortable and a reminder of how capable I am even under pressure and if I could help change the future for people in similar positions. I think helping people could be something I would enjoy doing, but how do I get to that point without support? I am now in LCFWRA which makes me sad as I know I am capable, but unfortunately mentally I don’t feel well enough. The meeting with the cabinet secretary was definitely a positive experience and gave me a boost.

We have finally been able to get a clinical psychologist funded by legal aid for my child who has been out of education for 18 months and whose EHCP isn’t fit for purpose. The wheels of justice seem so very very slow - our tribunal isn’t until December. We also have a UC review - the second in just under a year. It makes me feel incredibly on edge that we will be penalised for an honest mistake we didn’t know we committed. They seem to make up the rules as they go along and keep people waiting months to rectify mistakes, without a word of an apology.

I’m facing three areas of the welfare system as my son who has additional support needs reaches the age of 16. It’s a shocking pressure, this feeling of having to prove everything, that any small thing can be picked up and used against me. That my financial situation is so open to government and systems abuse, but my reality does not change.

Three departments at once, three different places where I need to face the thing that barely sustains us in this climate of profiteering and poverty, and there are brick walls where compassion should be.

I didn’t ask for this life. My son’s childhood has been so impacted and I can see it so clearly now.

The debt, the fear, the knowledge that at any time, all support can stop. I am tired of it.

My son’s needs are higher than ever. The service involvement is higher than ever and yet here I am, having to fight to keep the small amount we get to sustain us. It is so precarious and I am tired.

Last night wasn’t easy. I didn’t sleep well at all, and sometimes it feels like I hardly sleep. My body is tired, but I’m trying to be patient with myself and take today slowly.

The days are getting brighter much earlier. It gives me such mood boost. I at times wonder, as an immigrant, how those who grew up in UK have been able to adapt to the 'winter mood swing'.

It has been a very very difficult month! I’ve had car issues which has cost me just under a grand! School needing money left right and centre for literally anything they possibly can do! On top of normal things to pay and having an operation to remove my gallbladder. I’ve broken down mentally this month, I’ve struggled to get through this. The only way to move forward is not paying some bills to get out of the minus and then getting on top of it when I can afford to.

School in particular has frustrated me. It’s mental health week soon and they have done a break the rules day and the children pay 50p to £1 for each rule they break. Per child it would be approx £7 each and I have 3 children, it’s not helping the mental health for the parents who are struggling to make that happen!

Wow the price of Easter eggs is borderline offensive, esp as they've reduced in size again too. I've got all the family's birthdays in spring, plus Eid, solstice and Easter (multicultural family lol). Told kids they can only have 1 large or 2 medium eggs this year if we still want an egg hunt too. As we like to put on an egg hunt for our friends n neighbours, our fav part of Easter. My kids don't mind getting less from me this year, or if they do they've not said anything lol, but I feel bad. I feel like a failure for not keeping up with social expectations even though I know logically that most of these expectations are rooted in capitalist consumerist propaganda. We talk as a family about being more conscious consumers and reducing waste, but it's one of those many things that is celebrated for the rich and shamed for the poor. If you cut back cos you financially have few choices then you're depriving your family of the experiences children should have, which again is objectively nonsense as the world in which those "core childhood experiences" markers were imagined up doesn't exist anymore, heck it barely existed in my own or my parents' childhood either.

It warms my heart that my kids would rather reduce their potential gifts to enable us to continue our egg hunt tradition, and while I hide most of the budgeting rework to enable birthdays and Easter from kids, just explaining this part that'd impact them.

Like how I've rework the grocery budget for a few months, got myself meal replacement shakes to enable me to skip more meals at lower cost, plan to carefully skip a couple bills near birthdays to afford baking ingredients, and rework those into post birthday bills, etc. - all the tricks us paupers use to balance providing as many important childhood experiences as we can without breaking the bank - birthdays are also reduced to 3 gifts and small family party, no guests - if they mind they've not said anything, they seem just as excited as years ago when I could take them to soft play with friends. I'm blessed to have such contended children, I wish I could do more for them. I know the trauma of poverty, I try to protect them from it as much as possible, to buffer and minimise whatever protential impacts as possible (I'm aware poverty is one of many elements that impacted my developing disabilities in adulthood, I don't want my kids to have as reduced a quality of life as I have), but I won't know how successful I am at that role til they're old enough to reflect on their childhood as I did mine. I can at least pride myself that whatever happens, my kids have never known true abdominally painful and mentally overwhelming hunger, I've successfully protected them from that level of (UK relative) poverty and we do have many luxuries (from treats, to takeaways, to days out, when we can), as I'm very good at budgeting mummy magic, even if it means saying no to a lot of requests. It angers and scares me how easily even this limited quality of life would be reduced to the poverty of my neglected childhood if I lose my disability benefits due to gov discrimination during a cost of living crisis. A crisis caused predominantly by corporate greed. It's so unjust. We just want a safe, secure, comfortable quality of life.

My wee son suffers from serious explosive anger in school and I dread given his past experiences with his primary school that he will be suspended over and over again. He just started secondary school in Sep 2025. He was labelled as the bad boy in primary school because he couldn’t control his emotions and right now he can’t control them in school. Secondary school is very fast paced and he is still very young trying to navigate his way around the school as well as keeping his BIG emotions at bay. It’s hard for him.

School trips is my topic today. This is a tough subject to talk about. A lot of the time I can’t afford to send my children on trips and then they feel different and are subjected to social exclusion all because of money. Before the pandemic some trips were half subsidised by the school which was a great help for low income parents but now they are now putting even more pressure on the parents to come up with the cash. It can be tough sometimes and the look of disappointment on your child’s face when they are forced not to go and the shame of them sitting in school watching their friends go is very hard to watch.

So a wet and miserable week weather wise and January in general is a miserable month financially. I almost wish the month of January away. I tend to barely leave the house during this month as money is so tight. My daughter also has a birthday this month which is tough and it’s always right after Christmas but before I get my money which is hard. I look forward to February.