Faith N

The cost of living crisis will affect me so much at Christmas I'm having to rely on food banks again with this situation in Northern Ireland in particular. The gas is just through the roof. Unfortunately, my son, because he's on the spectrum, has actually been suspended from school. Now, it has been unlawful and I am trying to sort that out but the way that they went about it wasn't the right way. They had to consider socioeconomic and financial situation of the child as well as the mental health of the child and unfortunately none of these were considered. I've had to spend over £70 in gas in the two weeks that he's been off and there's still another week to go. It's really concerning me because I had no idea that this was happening. I did not budget for this to happen and now I am in a position where I was a little bit terrified there for Christmas, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel because I do have a lot of good people around me. The local food bank has agreed to help with food and then I have a friend who rallied around and tried to make Christmas a little bit more manageable. Although it did really depress me, everything that's happened. And I don't put the heat on normally during the day and I had to put it on and I don't even have my Christmas tree up. But now that I got word today that there are some people out there to help, then I feel a little bit better. But, I do feel like a failure as a parent because the cost of living crisis is crushing families. They just feel like they can't provide for their children. In actual reality, it's the government that's doing this to people, it's not the parent. We're just trying to get by and live and we can't. We're just existing, we're not living and that's that.