“Well you ’elp out your family don’t ya? That’s just what you do.” Tasha is what her east-end friends would call a ‘grafter’. From inauspicious beginnings, she has hauled herself up the career ladder with unwavering determination. Her childhood memories are of her parents working long hours in the busy pub that they ran together. They were one of those families with friends in abundance and very little money in their pockets as they were always letting people off the few pence that they were short of a pint. One thing that was instilled firmly in Tasha’s mind when she was growing up, though, was that “you never get anything in life unless you work hard”. So work hard she did: at school, at college, to land herself “a proper job” at the council, and to work her way up into a middle-tier management position there. Earning a decent salary of £40,000 a year, which made it possible to bring up her own three children in relative comfort – a far cry from the financial hardship of her own childhood – she surpassed even her own expectations.

Yet, when the time came for Danny, the eldest of her three children, to consider his post-compulsory education options, Tasha’s long-held belief in striving for self-betterment ended up being the catalyst for her financial undoing. It had always been her expectation that her children would go on to higher education, so when Danny decided that he wanted to study economics at university, Tasha supported him every step of the way. He was eligible for a maintenance grant, and took out a student loan, but these only went part way to covering the costs of living away from home, so he found himself a part-time bar job to supplement his income. When it became clear that this was a distraction from his studies, Tasha stepped in to top up the grant from her own pocket.

Using her overdraft facility and a credit card to pay for his weekly online shopping and a portion of his rent, she saw her outgoings increase substantially during his first year of university. Nonetheless, things felt just about under control.