A shattering phone call

I was just mentally formulating a jolly post about the end of another school year when I received a shattering phone call.

A local nanny, who has looked after one of my daughter's friends for most of the last 5years and has also acted as a live-in housekeeper to the family, rang me from her mobile sobbing with fear. She had not been getting on quite so well with the parents of the family recently and a huge row had suddenly broken out that evening, starting with accusations about the laundry and ending up with the apparently fairly drunk parents screaming at her to leave and the husband slapping her on the face. She had fled from the house and was on the way to stay with a friend.

As a result of this horrible situation she faces the loss of her home, income and probably right to remain in the UK (she is from Latin America). People like her enable middle class parents to work and earn a large joint income, yet I wonder if her employers have been even paying her the minimum wage or paying tax and national insurance on her salary. They do not appear to have observed any of the niceties that they would have been bound by in their professional lives, eg. appraisals and notice periods.

After some hasty research I have suggested that she contact a small charity called Kalaayan that seems to specialise in helping abused domestic workers and I hope they will be able to advise her. However I imagine that this is just the sort of small charity that the Big Society programme will pass by since its clients exist at the margins and their rise and fall has no impact on official statistics about unemployment and welfare spending. She is the victim and I will help as much as I can but I am feeling sick and tearful myself about the whole situation and angry about the way in which people with many advantages appear have treated someone so powerless. I don't relish the thought of seeing them over and over again as our daughters grow up with this always in my mind.