One afternoon in December 2004, Samantha* left her house in northern England and walked to the nearby river. She tried not to think about her five young children, alone at home. She wanted to plunge into the water; she didn’t know how to swim.

Samantha’s 11-year-old daughter, alarmed by her mother’s absence, dialled 999, and the police found her on the riverbank. She was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where she spent four days curled up in a ball, crying. She was already known to social services: Samantha had a violent ex-boyfriend and had been abused as a child before being taken into care at the age of 12. It was difficult to know how to be a good mother when she had never been mothered herself.

New Statesman