Tag: welfare system

Lollipop

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 June 2025
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Director – Daisy-May Hudson – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

After four months in prison, a young woman must deal with the UK’s social services to regain custody of her kids – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 13th

East Londoner Molly (Posy Sterling) leaves prison following a four-month sentence to discover that her two kids Ava, 11 (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo, 5 (Luke Howitt) have been taken into care because her alcoholic mum Sylvie (TeriAnne Cousins from Silver Haze, Sasha Polak, 2023) couldn’t cope with them. This means the kids have been taken into care by social services, and in order to get them back, Molly has to have a roof over her head. Alas, while she was detained, the council have taken her home off her.

She finds herself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea – she can’t get her kids back until she has a suitable home, and she can’t get a suitable home because, until she gets her kids back, she will only be offered accommodation suitable for a single homeless woman. For the time being, she lives out of a tent.

The impulsive Molly worsens her own situation when, during a supervised visit, she abducts her kids and flees with them on the train to the wilds of the countryside.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Herself

Director – Phyllida Lloyd – 2020 – UK/Ireland – Cert. 15 – 97m

****

A woman leaves her abusive and violent husband and builds a new home for herself and her two young daughters – in UK cinemas from Friday, September 10th

Things come to a head in the marriage of Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) and Sandra (Clare Dunne, also co-screenwriter) when he violently assaults her and stamps on her hand, an incident witnessed by their younger daughter Molly (Molly McCann). Sandra has trained her kids well for such a situation and the eldest Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) knows what to do, rushing to the local shopkeeper with a lunch box inside the lid of which is the family address to give to the Garda.

Like her mother before her, Sandra works as a cleaner to retired and physically disabled local doctor Peggy O’Toole (Harriet Walter). To make ends meet, Sandra also works in a local pub as a barmaid alongside Amy (Ericka Roe) who lives in a nearby squat. After separating from Gary, she and he have joint custody of the kids while the council put her and her kids up in temporary accommodation in a hotel room.

As it’s four years on the housing list to get a home, Sandra investigates other alternatives and, surreptitiously using Peggy’s internet, discovers that she could build a house for only slightly more than a year’s rent to the council.… Read the rest

Tags abuse, abusive marriage, bar work, barmaid, box-ticking, build, build a home, build a house, builder, building, building site, Cathy Belton, children, Clare Dunne, cleaner, cleaning, Conleth Hill, custody, decent home, disabled, doctor, domestic violence, Dublin, emergency, family, family court, female empowerment, government policy, Harriet Walter, home, house, housebuilding, housing need, husbands and wives, Ian Lloyd Anderson, injury, innovation, Ireland, jobs, local authority, Molly McCann, multiple jobs, parents and children, Phyllida Lloyd, physical assault, pub, retired, Ruby Rose O’Hara, school, self-help, separation, single mum, single parent, single parent family, social welfare system, temporary accommodation, two jobs, UK, welfare system, work

Features Live Action Movies

Herself

A house of her own

Herself
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Certificate 15, 97 minutes
Released 10 September

Herself has a brutal opening in which Sandra (Clare Dunne), a mother of two girls in Dublin, is physically assaulted by her husband Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson), an incident witnessed by her youngest daughter, Molly (Molly McCann), while her eldest, Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara), races across the estate to the local shop to deliver a pre-written emergency message.

From here, it becomes a tale about a single mum’s struggle to find a decent home for her and her kids in the face of a social welfare system that can’t cope with either the level of need or any innovation through which people try to legitimately help themselves… [Read more]

Full review published in Reform.

See my alternative review of the film here.

Trailer:

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