Trigger warning: This page contains references to child loss, suicide and mental health crisis. Please read with care.

My name is Sadirah, and I am raising funds to help my mum access full legal representation at the Employment Tribunal. I have never done anything like this before, and I will do my best to be clear. But before I tell you why I am here, I want to tell you a little about my mother first.

My mum was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. She did not have an easy start. From a very young age she was acquainted with hardship and poverty in ways that no child should ever be. She never got to enjoy the innocence of childhood, the playing, the freedom, the lightness of just being young. Life demanded too much of her, too soon. She had to stop her education in her adolescence, before she ever had the chance to discover what she was truly capable of.

As a young woman, she had two children, my brother Abu and my sister Margaret. She was not given long on this earth with Abu, her firstborn, he passed away in Sierra Leone, from an illness whose name she never even got to learn. Carrying that grief, she made the brave decision to migrate to the United Kingdom, doing everything she could to eventually bring Margaret over so she could have a better chance at life. But during that time, Margaret got sick, she passed away from malaria, something that in another life, in other circumstances, might have been treatable. My mum received that news over the phone and it broke her. She never got to say goodbye in person, and she was not able to be there to lay her to rest.

I do not think my mum has ever truly forgiven herself for that, even though there was nothing she could have done. It is a grief she has carried quietly for years, and probably always will.

Somehow, in the way that people sometimes find a way through even the most unimaginable pain, she kept going. Being a woman of colour arriving in a new country was not the smoothest of transitions, as you might imagine. But she figured it out step by step, and though it was not easy, she was fortunate to meet some kind people along the way who made navigating her new home that bit more bearable.

And then, some years later, she had me!

I had a roof over my head most of the time, and a mum who never gave up. I got to be a child, ride a bike, go to school, eventually get a degree, learn to drive, even try swimming (still cannot quite crack that one). Things she never got the chance to experience herself. She gave me the life she had always hoped her children could have, and I am forever grateful.

I am now 29. For the last decade of my mum's life, she has been working as a care assistant, and she was wonderful at it. She loved her job, she loved her residents. she had a personal relationship with each and every person she cared for. She bathed them, looked after them, sat with them, listened to their stories, cooked them meals that made them feel like they were at home. Even the most challenging of residents seemed to soften in her presence. That is just who she is. She has always known how to show up and care for people who need someone, because she knows what it feels like to have no one show up for you.

The bittersweet thing about change is that it uses the same ingredients whether it is positive or negative. It does not happen in a day, It happens slowly, quietly, over time... It's noticing your mum come home a little more tired than the day before, It's noticing a smile that used to come through easily, taking longer and longer to arrive. It is noticing habits and appearance change. It is a light behind someone's eyes you grew up knowing, gradually dimming.

What was happening to my mum in the last decade of her employment was a slow and relentless erosion of her dignity. It was not the job itself that was hurting her. She loved the work. She loved those residents. It was the environment she was in, the people she was surrounded by, her colleagues and her manager.

She would turn up to work and colleagues she had raised concerns about would deliberately refuse to open the door for her. In staff meetings, she sat and listened to colleagues say out loud that people who cannot read should not be paid the same as everyone else. Her phone was broken at work and when she raised it, her manager's response was, why do you need such a nice phone at work anyway. When she was upset and in tears, she was told by her manager, 'you can cry if you want, you are lucky it is me you are dealing with and not the higher ups.' She was called a psycho by her manager. She was bombarded with phone calls from her manager screaming at her, demanding to know where she was and why she had left work early, because a colleague had told him she had left before doing her handovers...

When in reality, she had simply gone to the toilet to get changed out of her night shift clothes.

She has learning difficulties that mean reading and writing do not come easily to her, and rather than accommodate her, her employer used it against her. She was handed documents and pressured to sign them on the spot, by a manager who knew she could not properly understand what was in front of her. When she raised concerns, she was talked over. When she made complaints, they went nowhere. When there were conflicts with colleagues, rather than investigate properly, the easiest solution was always to punish my mum, reduce her hours, issue her with verbal warnings based on nothing more than gossip, and move on. Every time she tried to speak, no one would listen, or they would listen and do nothing, so that their own position in the workplace was not affected.

My mum tried her best to mask it. Because in life, at the end of the day, bills need to be paid and food needs to be on the table. She did not want me to worry. She did not want to be a burden. She also stayed because her learning difficulties and years of being made to feel small had chipped away at her confidence in ways I did not fully understand at the time. She thought it might be easier to put her head down, keep to herself and just do the job she was employed to do, and maybe things would be better.

1st October 2025, the morning after she had worked a night shift, she came home and I could tell before she even spoke that something had happened. In a broken voice she said to me, they are removing my shifts again. They are saying I have done something to my colleagues and it is just not true. I am tired. I have had enough of this.

And then she went to the kitchen, and she cried a cry I have never heard in my life, and expressed that she did not want to be here anymore. I called an ambulance to help take care of my mum in that moment. My mum's heart was broken. Again.

She went on sick leave, due to workplace stress. After taking some time off to recover, she followed due process and informed her workplace she was ready and fit to return to work. What happened between October and late December 2025 would be its own novel. The long and the short of it is this.

Whatever written policies they had, whatever government guidelines and ACAS codes of conduct they were obligated to follow, they did not follow them. They made their own rules. Rather than show any empathy towards a woman who had suffered a mental health crisis they had a hand in causing, they treated her return as a problem to be managed. They questioned whether she was fit, demanded her medical records and effectively refused to let her come back. She was left without clarity, without support and without any of the basic protections she was entitled to.

I took it upon myself to submit a formal claim to the Employment Tribunal. The case has been reviewed for merits and we have received positive feedback. But funding full legal representation for a case like this, finding a no win no fee arrangement for the type of claim it is, is incredibly difficult. I am taking on more responsibility within my family than I ever expected to at this stage of my life, and I simply cannot fund this alone.

The employer has denied everything, and they are represented by a legal firm with the resources to fight this claim as hard and as long as they choose. My mum is in her mid-fifties, she is on Universal Credit and she is still healing. Without proper legal representation, she walks into one of the most complex legal processes imaginable alone. That is not a fair fight. And after everything she has been through, she deserves a fair fight.

Full legal representation, covering every stage of the tribunal process, costs between £14,000 and £23,000. Every penny raised will go directly towards that. This includes having a solicitor manage all correspondence with the tribunal, preparing and filing legal submissions, gathering and reviewing evidence, preparing witness statements, representation at the preliminary hearing and ultimately at the final hearing itself.

I have been beside my mum through every step of this. I have sat with her through the moments where she did not think she could keep going. I have held her hand, translated the legal language and fought to make sure her voice is heard. My mum has spent her whole life surviving things that were never fair, and for once, I just want her to experience what it feels like to have someone truly fight for her, stand in her corner and come to her defence. To have the people who had a duty of care towards her be held accountable for their actions. She deserves that.

If you can give anything at all, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You are not just contributing to legal fees. You are telling a woman who has spent her whole life being overlooked, that she is seen. That she matters. That her story is worth fighting for.

Thank you so much for reading her story.

With love,

Sadirah