Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Northampton
Warming her hands on a cup of coffee, Mandy looks up sadly and says: “I lost my baby on Saturday.” It is 6.15am, and she and partner Sean are roaming the streets in search of respite from the biting cold.
The couple have survived freezing temperatures since becoming homeless just before Christmas. But their unborn baby, tragically, did not. Mandy, 47, said: “The nurse said it was the cold that killed her. I was going through lots of changes in temperature, from freezing cold, to warm, to freezing cold again. The baby couldn’t cope.”
Mandy was already pregnant when her husband kicked her out. Sean, 32, the unborn seven-weekold’s father, was evicted from his lodgings.
The couple, worried for the baby’s welfare, went to the council asking for help arranging temporary accommodation. But Sean said: “We waited for five hours in the council offices, only for someone to come back and tell us they could only help us if we provided a pregnancy test, and went to an appointment with a midwife. We went to the hospital, but the only appointment they had was a month later. Now it’s too late.”
They believe that if housing staff had acted more swiftly to get Mandy out of the cold she would not have miscarried.
Mandy said: “It’s horrible on the streets. It’s often so unbearably cold we feel like we might not survive the night.”
Local charities have criticised Toryrun Northampton council for frequently delaying help. Robin Burgess, of Northampton Hope, said the authority had reached “ridiculous levels of exclusion”.
Stan Robertson, 51, was once homeless and now delivers hot breakfasts to the likes of Mandy and Sean every day. He said: “The guys I help have been excluded from council services. If it wasn’t for people like me, they’d have no-one.”
The council did not respond to the Daily Mirror’s requests for comment.
HOME TRUTH 12,300 could be the true homelessness figure with 12,000 more in tents, cars, sheds & buses, says charity Crisis