14 years ago our father took his own life after many years of severe mental health issues. We, his seven children, were aged between 6 and 16 at the time. As well as the emotional impact of losing him, we are still trying to deal with the financial legacy. Dad remortgaged the house five times to raise money for various projects that never came to fruition. As he was resistant to seeking any psychiatric help, we didn’t realise, as we do now, that he was suffering from bi-polar disorder, depression, split personality and schizophrenia which was helped diagnose from his 26 page suicide note that blamed our mum for his decision to take his own life.

Our mother has managed to scrape together the mortgage interest every month in order to keep a roof over our heads. However, she now has a number of severe health conditions which means she is physically unable to work at the moment. Although a number of us are on the autistic spectrum and the two youngest also have Cerebral Palsy, we have all worked since we were able, to contribute to the debts. An interest only mortgage was all my mum could afford after our Dad passed.

While the total sum of £464k is due, we are trying to raise anything we can to offer the Building Society, in the hope that it will relieve some of the financial stress our mum and us have had to deal with since he died. The house is all we’ve ever known – all our memories of our father are here - and losing it would take a terrible toll on our mental and physical health.

If we could find a way out of the situation we really would. After the stress of the last decade, mum had a heart attack 3 years ago, and very recently has had surgery on her colon for Diverticular Disease, making it impossible for her to work. Many of us are employed in hospitality, meaning that Covid 19 has had a severe blow on our incomes. Combined with this, HS2 runs right next to our house reducing its value so much that even if we could sell, we would be in negative equity with nowhere to live.

It has been so difficult for us to resort to Just Giving. We are a proud and humble family who have always tried, in whatever way we can, to help others. Since 2013 we have run a support group for children with autism. Our mother has campaigned for many years for better awareness of mental health issues, written a book, ‘Unravelled’ and conducted a TEDx Talk about autism. As a family a documentary was made about us called Kingdom of Us, which is shown on Netflix. We made it in order to help others who have experienced mental ill health or lost loved ones to suicide.

In short, it goes against every fibre in our body to ask for money in this way. We know that only a miracle would help us achieve £464k. But it's gotten to the point where we don't know what else to do.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank everyone who is able to donate and while we can’t pay anyone back directly, as a family we will always strive to make a difference and continue to give back in whatever ways we can in the future.