Jailed mother speaks of battle to reform life

A MOTHER who was twice jailed for failing to get her children to attend school has spoken of her battle to turn her life around.

Lisa Walker was nationally vilified and held up as an example of a bad mother after she was jailed last year for the second time for allowing a child to skip school.

The Leeds mother of three revealed yesterday how drugs and depression led her to the brink of suicide and that she had lain alone in bed for days, unable to properly care for herself and shunning all offers of help.

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She has now kicked the drugs habit and has credited her recovery to the patience of family support worker Jayne Harris, a member of council family intervention project Signpost.

She said her time in jail, in which she was placed on a wing with lifers, had been hard to take but being labelled a bad mother was "devastating".

"People were calling me scum but they didn't know me. I felt like giving up a lot of the time but kept going for the sake of my children," she said.

Her problems began when she split with her partner of 19 years which, she believes, triggered depression which destroyed her confidence and motivation.

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Her sister Catherine Charalambous, a property developer who lives in Cyprus, flew back to the UK when she heard about the jail sentence.

Mrs Charalambous said: "Lisa and her three sisters are from a good background, but she just had a bad hand.

"Her appearance changed and she stopped doing her hair and make-up. They were the classic signs of a breakdown. She was aggressive and shut the whole family off and stopped answering the door.

"She went further into a black hole with the depression. She would not get out of bed or get dressed. I was pleading with her to get up, but she would not let anybody in."

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Mrs Charalambous, 45, visited her sister in jail and was shocked that she did not recognise her.

"I did not recognise her. We all felt helpless when she was in the high security prison. To see her labelled as scum was horrible. She was a shadow of her former self, with no confidence and no self esteem."

She recalled that her sister was, in her 20s, "the proudest housewife in the world".

"She was always baking for the kids, she was ever the maternal mother."

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When she was at rock bottom, Miss Walker was shoplifting, taking amphetamines and neglecting herself and her children.

The turnaround in her fortunes was helped by Signpost, a family intervention scheme run by Leeds Council.

Case worker Jayne Harris persevered with the family after several setbacks and even managed to get Miss Walker to see her GP, where she finally admitted her depression and was prescribed medication.

As well as improving her own life, Signpost has worked with the children, including her 12-year-old daughter who is no longer on the council's child protection register and is attending school.

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Miss Walker, from Bramley, is no longer using drugs and is actively looking for work and considering becoming a volunteer to help young mothers cope in times of crises.

"Everything is down to Signpost," she said.

"I can text her (Jayne Harris) in the middle of the night, knowing that she will come back to me the next day. Other organisations took three or four days before they got back to me. I am now back in the world of the living."

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