- Warning: contains references to suicide
Discovering a child is living by themselves while their parent is in prison is not an unusual occurrence for Sarah Burrows. Sometimes it'll happen once a month. But in January last year, the founder of charity Children Heard and Seen (CHAS) was alerted to five separate cases across England and Wales.
One was a 15-year-old boy, who had been alone for months – with no gas or electricity – after his mother had been jailed. Another time, a victim support officer visited the home of a teenage girl, only to find she had been alone since her father’s arrest. A third time, a criminologist visiting a house for research purposes found just children living there. And so on.
It’s why Burrows set up the charity in 2014. It’s the 21st century, she says, “how is it possible that there are children living alone?”.
