A NEW REPORT has shared stories from families living in emergency accommodation around Ireland, illustrating how the housing crisis and failures in services are traumatising young children and causing massive stress for parents.

From being allocated a room with stained sheets and faeces on the curtains to having to commute nearly two hours to a child’s school, families in Ireland dealing with homelessness are facing massive challenges and upsetting conditions.

The briefing from children’s charity Barnardos released today details the effects of homelessness and poor housing on children and their families, including many case studies from around the country.

Over the past year, the number of children living in emergency accommodation has hit record levels.

The most recent figures show that 4,958 children were living in emergency accommodation as of in June this year, an increase of over 500 children from June 2024 and almost double the figure from five years ago in June 2020 (2,653).

Poor living conditions

In one case study, a mother with two young children entered emergency accommodation suddenly after losing their social housing home. They moved into an extremely cramped one-bedroom hotel room, which was “very traumatic” for the four-year-old child who had to give up the home and bedroom he loved within a few weeks of his grandfather dying.

The hotel room they were provided by the local authority had stained sheets and faeces on the curtains. When the mother raised a complaint, she was told to go to a local store to purchase new sheets. The young boy became withdrawn in his crèche.

Another mother with two children described living in social housing that was constantly very damp and often covered in mould.

She did as much as she could to reduce the damp and mould, like getting items to absorb some of the moisture in the air. However, she couldn’t afford to buy and run a dehumidifier or to regularly repaint the property.

Her heating regularly broke down and it took weeks at a time to get it fixed. One of her children has asthma, which the mother said she believed was being made worse by their living conditions, and that her other child was becoming sick more frequently than she otherwise would be. 

A single mother with two young children living in emergency accommodation was told by a local authority that they had sourced her HAP housing she could afford – but it had no heating whatsoever, along with other problems.

The mother was told that all she had to do was to buy plug-in electric heaters.

She had concerns about the cost of running these, their effectiveness and whether it was a health risk to her children, but she was told if she did not take the property, the local authority’s position would be that it would no longer have a duty to house her and her children. 

Sent miles away from schools

Many families are allocated emergency accommodation that is located at significant distances from their children’s existing schools, leaving them to either try to manage long commutes or moving their child to a new school in what is already a time of upheaval for them.

One family whose story is included in the Barnardos report had to move from a suburb to a city centre in order to access emergency accommodation. Their oldest child was in 2nd class and the commute to their school took an hour-and-a-half from where they were placed.

The mother would have to wait around the school area most days with her younger child until the older child was finished school for the day, or else she would face a three-hour round trip to go back to her accommodation and then have to return again for pick-up.

For another mother, the commute between her child’s school and their emergency accommodation was so long – almost two hours – that she had no choice but to move her child’s school.

She tried to stay with her brother for a period of time, which was closer to the school, but the home too cramped to live in.

Changing school was difficult and upsetting for the child. He felt like the other children in his new class new why he had to move schools and he felt ashamed.

Challenging circumstances

A young mother with a very young child was moved into emergency accommodation due to problems with the child’s father. In the past, the mother dealt with mental health issues as well as some minor problems with substance use, butt he had been coping extremely well and demonstrating wonderful skills as a mother, the Barnardos briefing details.

However, she and her young daughter were moved to four different emergency accommodation settings within the space of three months, all B&Bs.

This was “extremely difficult” for the mother, the report says, as she “never knew every night she went to sleep if she would be forced to move the next day”.

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The situation escalated her mental health issues and made her think about using substances again. A referral was made to Tusla as a result.

“It was clear that this would not have happened if it wasn’t for her distressing housing problem,” the Barnardos report says.

A family with three children were living in property beside numerous couples where domestic violence and drug use were ongoing. The children were witnesses to these issues on a frequent basis and were often woken up during the night. 

A mother with two young children, one of whom has additional needs, have been living in a one-bedroom room, where the mother says there is not enough space for her son and that he has deteriorated considerably during their time there.  

Another case study involved a mother, stepfather, son and daughter who lived in homeless accommodation for 18 months in a one-bedroom property.

The daughter was 15 years old when the family was moved into the accommodation. While the relationships within the family were positive, it was a “difficult and uncomfortable” experience for the daughter to have to be in such close proximity to her brother and stepfather.

In another case study, a mother and young daughter were assigned to a room in a B&B that was primarily for single men, because the local authority was “so stretched”. They did not stay there for long but it found it a concerning experience.

A mother and father with a 9-month-old son reported struggling to store milk for the infant. They had been trying to wean their child but found it “exceptionally difficult” to do so due to no proper cooking facilities.

In another case study, two young children started to wet the bed and stopped wanting to see their friends when they were moved into emergency accommodation.

Their mother was told she was being evicted by her landlord after having lived in her rented property for four years. She tried to find alternative accommodation but was unsuccessful.

Her children had been through previous traumatic experiences, including witnessing domestic violence, and she was extremely reluctant to move into emergency accommodation as she felt it would be another traumatising event for them – but she was left with no other choice, which was when two of her three children started to wet the bed stopped wanting to see their friends.