“That’s the first time I’ve felt relaxed in a very long time.”
Tania's Story
For single parent Tania, taking her two children back to the beaches where she played as a child was a way for the family to temporarily put to one side a major trauma and the stress of the past few years.
As she explains: “Their dad had health issues so I was his carer as well as working. He’d had an accident and broke the vertebrae in his back. It affected his health and he got excessively obese because he couldn’t exercise and he had problems with his legs.” She continues,
He was struggling with the kids, because they both have learning difficulties and it can be hard at times to deal with them. So I was having to sort them out and do everything else like make sure the house was clean and tidy, and work as well. I worked nights in a care home so didn’t get much sleep.
Summer, aged six, was diagnosed with autism last year and her older brother Kaylem lives with ADHD and Tourette syndrome.
In September 2021, they both witnessed their dad die following a heart attack. Summer was sat on his knee at the time.
I’d just come home from a night shift having done four nights straight,” Tania recalls. “It was early morning; the kids were sitting with him trying to wake him up.
Tania and her husband had been together for more than 20 years.
Although the children’s schools were very supportive in the wake of their father’s death, both Summer and Kaylem were understandably haunted by their experience. Tania says,
My son’s 14 but he’s struggling to cope with the loss of his dad, and every time Summer sees an ambulance, she thinks that someone’s passed away because she saw ambulances outside the house when he died.
Since her husband’s death, Tania has had to be particularly careful with money and is feeling the pinch with the current cost of living crisis so a summer break this year would have been out of the question. But the family was referred to Family Holiday Charity and chose a caravan holiday on the Isle of Sheppey, not far from where Tania grew up.
It’s good for the kids because it’s got the beach and the arcades which they enjoyed. I told them before we went that ‘we’re going to go away for a few days just to clear our heads a bit.’ They had a little bit of spending money that they’d saved up. They were really excited beforehand, counting down the days.
As well as swimming in the sea and joining in with the karaoke, the kids also got to meet some of Tania’s old school friends when they took a day trip to Sheerness. Even when it started raining one day, the trio was determined not to be beaten by the weather.
We still wanted to make a day of it so it was nice to go for a walk and see the countryside.
Tania mentioned,
That’s the first time I’ve felt relaxed in a very long time, I didn’t want to leave to be honest. Watching the kids walk down the beach and go to the arcades, just seeing their faces made me happy.
As for the future, Tania is committed to giving her children the love and stability that they need.
I’m going to keep on doing what I do now, just make sure that they’re safe and well. We’re going to start saving so that we can go away again as a family.