Antonina: The last eighteen months I would say have been hell. What happened is somebody asked us would we work away for a few weeks. While we was away, Samantha stayed in the house, but she didn't send on any post. And, apparently, what happened is, they sent a letter saying they were going to evict us and we didn't know.

By the time we'd come back, it had all gone through. So we just, straight away, we just lost the house.

Samantha: I was with the kids in the house and me mum was over at me grandma's and my dad was in work and I just heard the banging. They knocked at the door at first and my mum said, 'whatever you do, don't open the door to anybody.' So I didn't open the door, but they kept on knocking and knocking and all of a sudden I heard these drills. And all the kids were in the house and they were crying and they were just trying to get the lock off the door. We had to go and they told us to just get what we needed, just what was on our backs really and just go really.

Antonina: We went to Homeless Families in Manchester and we were all put in a bed and breakfast there for four, five weeks. They did find a room, but it was one room for all of us, seven of us. There was three lots of bunk beds and a broken pull-down bed. That's what it was. A shared kitchen, shared bathroom and toilets and everything and so it was a really, really, big shock.

David, because he'd just started high school, he had to get two buses at half past seven in the morning by himself. And then we had to get two buses a bit later on with Katie and Robert to take them to school.

Chris: Well, I didn't really tell most of me friends, coz like, embarrassed that I'm homeless. It was just me girlfriend and I'd say just one of me friends.

Samantha: I wanted to talk about it, but trying to talk about things like that to your friends, 'oh yeah I've had to go and stay in a hostel, and I've had to this, and I've had to that'. Obviously, me friends stuck by me and they did help me out. They offered for me to stay at their houses and all me friends gave me clothes to wear, clean clothes and everything for me to wear. They said I could go to their house and have a shower and stuff like that, which was great.

Home means where you feel comfortable and where everything's not as messed up, if you know what I mean, as this place is. It's where you've got everything you've lived with all your life and it's not all in storage. It's all squashed up here and you're all in one room and you've not got anywhere to go if you're stressed out. You've got no where to go.

Antonina: The children weren't allowed to play out, they had to be in their rooms for seven o'clock at night. There were no facilities for them to play. We used to take them out an awful lot, down to me mum's and I used to find, especially in the six weeks holiday that I went somewhere with them every day, so they weren't stuck in that room all the time.

Antonina: Everybody was tarred with the same brush. In other words, they got this picture of what a homeless person is, and nobody can be outside the mould. We're one of the luckier ones, but there's going to be people out there now that are going into homeless families. We're on the tail end of it now, we are coming through and I think we are one of the luckier families because we've had a lot of support from my mum. I just think that people should be aware of all this. Because nobody has any idea, you don't know what it's going to be like, it's scary anyway. Because I've lost me home and I don't know what's going to happen next. You're nobody, you become nothing and nobody and that's how we felt.

The Turners are still living in temporary accommodation in Manchester, waiting for permanent property to become available. Due to their situation, Samantha has recently decided to move out and stay with friends. She hopes to move back in with her family when they gain permanent accommodation.