Help Us Stay Afloat While I Fight for Our Home

Aim

Help keep a roof over our heads and cover basic living costs while I can't work as I challenge the Home Office decision threatening our home

Help Us Stay Afloat While I Fight for Our Home

I never imagined I would find myself asking people to help cover our basic living costs.

I am Skye, a single mother and sole carer to my six-year-old son, Neo. For the past eighteen months, I have been unable to work while trying to resolve an increasingly complex immigration situation and doing everything I could to remain compliant with the rules.

I have now exhausted my savings and accumulated more than £24,000 in personal debt simply to keep us housed and support us through this process. I have exhausted the people I can turn to for further loans, and conventional borrowing is not available to me while I am unable to work.

So, while a separate CrowdJustice campaign raises the legal costs of challenging the Home Office, I am asking for help here to keep a roof over our heads and cover our essential living expenses while that challenge continues.

How we got here

I returned to the UK legally on a Skilled Worker visa three and a half years ago. England had been part of my life long before that. I spent much of my childhood here and went to school here as a teenager.

Neo has lived here since he was two.

London is our home. His school, friends, familiar routines and community are here. The family friends I have known since my younger years in England have become our real family, particularly important because I have no immediate family of my own elsewhere in the world.

Professionally, I am a creative director, experience designer and artist. I returned to the UK with an established career and have spent the years since rebuilding my professional community here.

I also spent two years developing Spark&Bond, an educational startup creating playful learning experiences for primary school children and their families, which we successfully piloted in a London school.

I want nothing more than to return to work, support Neo and myself, rebuild our finances and continue the work I had begun here.

But I currently cannot.

What happened

My immigration history is complicated, and the full legal case is set out on our CrowdJustice page. 

In short, after a series of Home Office caseworking errors, inadequate notifications and official digital records that continued to tell me I could remain in the UK while a decision was pending, the Home Office later decided that Neo and I had in fact lost our lawful status months earlier.

I had no idea that anything was wrong with our status. It was not until the Home Office contacted me in April 2026 that I first learned it considered our lawful status to have ended the previous December. Until then, the information I had received and could see on my official immigration record indicated that we could remain in the UK while a decision was pending.

My Global Talent visa application was subsequently refused on that basis, despite my having been formally endorsed by Arts Council England and despite the detailed evidence I provided setting out the Home Office errors, the official information I had relied on, and how those errors had led to the position we were now in.

I am now represented by specialist immigration and public law lawyers who are challenging that decision and preparing Judicial Review proceedings.

While the immediate fight is to protect our home, the case also raises a much wider question about whether people should be able to rely on official government information, and whether public bodies are held accountable when their errors have life-changing consequences.

Beyond preserving our home, a fundamental parenting decision drives this challenge. Accepting a decision we believe resulted from serious Home Office errors without fighting it would compromise the values of honesty and integrity I am trying to raise my son with, and risk eroding his trust in fairness before he has even had the chance to build it. By challenging what happened, I can show Neo that when an institution makes a serious mistake, we do not simply accept the consequences. We stand up for ourselves and seek to put it right.

The legal process could take up to two years. Throughout that time, I remain unable to return to work.

Eighteen months without being able to earn

When I stopped working in February 2025, I believed I needed to bridge a temporary period while resolving my immigration position.

I planned carefully. I used my savings. When those were exhausted, I borrowed money.

Each stage took longer than expected.

I kept believing that if I could just make it through the next few months, I would be able to return to work and support us again.

Instead, those months became more than a year.

The savings and loans that were meant to bridge a temporary period have had to sustain us for far longer than I ever anticipated. I have also had to find additional money to secure the specialist legal representation needed to challenge the refusal.

The only money currently coming in comes from making our home available to guests. I had already been renting our guest room before I stopped working, but as our financial situation became more difficult, Neo gave up his bedroom so that I could make that room available too, and he now sleeps in my room with me.

During school holidays, when possible, we also stay locally with friends so that I can make the whole flat available and bring in additional income.

I have stretched this source of income as far as I reasonably can, but it varies considerably from month to month and still does not cover our essential living costs.

Even after doing all of this, I am still facing a shortfall each month.

What this Crowdfunder will pay for

I am hoping to raise £15,000 to bridge our essential shortfall over the next five to six months. Because the income from letting our rooms varies considerably from month to month, this goal is designed to give us crucial stability through this next phase of the legal challenge.

This Crowdfunder is completely separate from our legal fundraising.

Money raised here will help cover our essential day-to-day costs while I remain unable to work, including:

• Our rent
• Food and household essentials
• Gas, electricity, water and other basic bills
• Transport
• Neo's everyday and school-related needs
• Other unavoidable living expenses

None of the money raised here is intended to fund the legal case. Legal costs are being raised separately through CrowdJustice, where contributions go directly towards our legal team, barrister and court costs.

The legal process may continue for much longer than six months. I am not trying to raise the cost of supporting us through the full possible two years now. This target is intended to give Neo and me a meaningful period of stability while the next stages of the case unfold.

Why I am asking now

Asking for this kind of help is extraordinarily difficult for me.

I am used to working. I am used to finding solutions. Even through the past year and a half, I kept trying to find ways to stretch what I had, generate whatever money I could from our home, and borrow what I needed rather than asking others to support us.

But there comes a point when determination cannot pay the rent.

At 46, raising Neo alone and already carrying the financial consequences of this process, I know I will have an enormous amount to rebuild once I am allowed to work again. I am prepared to do that.

What I need now is enough stability to reach that point.

Every contribution to this Crowdfunder gives us a little more time, helps keep our home secure while the legal process continues, and allows me to focus on reaching the point where I can work and support us myself again.

If you are able to help, thank you.

If you cannot contribute but can share this campaign, that would also mean a great deal to us.

And if you would prefer to contribute directly to the legal challenge itself, you can support our separate CrowdJustice campaign, Challenging Systemic Home Office Errors to Protect Our Home. 

Thank you for helping Neo and me stay afloat while I fight to protect the life we have built.

Skye & Neo

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 30th September 2026 at 5:07pm