"I don't know where I'd be now without support line."

Tony*, who is in his 50’s, became a kinship carer for his granddaughter, Cara after she was born because her mum has serious mental health issues that meant she couldn’t care for her.

Cara is now two years old, and Tony had been struggling to make ends meet and give her everything she needed because he was not getting the benefits he was entitled to.

Tony had tried applying for child benefit four times but not been successful owing to an administrative error.

He reached out for help after social work suggested he contact Children First’s support line.

Louise, one of Children First’s support line financial wellbeing experts was able to help and advocated on Tony’s behalf to get it sorted and the payments backdated.

Tony also had debts he was paying off. He had been advised he owed HMRC tax credits so he had been paying these back through his universal credit.

Louise looked into it and on discovering Tony had gone bankrupt in 2016 they realised that this debt should have been written off. Tony had been trying to get this corrected without any success, but thanks to help from Louise, the debt has now been written off and the payments he made have been refunded.

Tony said: “If it had not been for Louise making sense of the issues I don’t know where I’d be now. She has helped me so much and I feel without Children First support line’s help I would still be fighting for what was due to my granddaughter.

“It was only when Louise got involved that things started to get better. I feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders, it’s such a relief.

“I can now focus on quality time with Cara who is such a joy, without the money worries I had before. I don’t need to worry about struggling to buy the essentials that Cara needs and paying the bills anymore.”

Thanks to Louise’s help, Tony and Cara gained income of close to £2000 making a huge difference to their quality of life.

Tony added: “I would say to anyone how much I was helped by Children First and would totally say the services you offer are invaluable.

“As I am an older parent now and I find being online daunting, their help taught me how to do things online so that I can feel more confident in the future.”

*Names have been anonymised to protect the identity of the family.