"My mum can't cope"

Angela, 16, has to look after her mum...

I love my mum, but sometimes I feel like she's the teenager and I'm her mum.

She just doesn't deal that well with the world.

It all started when I was 10. My mum always enjoyed having a drink or two at a party, but things started to go wrong between her and my dad and the drinking got way more serious.

Every time my mum and dad argued, dad would leave the house and mum would just drink.

When she was drunk, all responsibility was left to me. I was constantly having to clear up the house and look after my baby sister who was only five.

I was just a kid myself, only 10 when things got bad, and practically caring for my whole family aged 14.

Our family was ripped apart

Finally mum and dad split, but it wasn't all over.

“The divorce was hell”

The divorce was hell. Us kids wanted to stay with mum, but dad won custody after claiming her to be an alcoholic.

We moved in with dad, and although we tried to see mum every day and stayed at weekends, it wasn't enough. Without us she was a mess. Slowly she started to slide off the planet.

My mum moved into a flat with about six people in an area where most of the people were drug takers.

I hated it round there. On the few nights I was allowed to stay over, my mum would say she was going out for 10 minutes and not return until about 10 hours later.

I was terrified she was going to get drugs.

She was never home

Most of the time she wasn't in her house at all. She was always down the pub drinking. I can't count the number of times me and my brother had to go and find her and make her go home.

One night we were out for our first family meal together with dad's new girlfriend. Although I didn't like her, we accepted her.

Mum burst into the restaurant with her best mate and two blokes young enough to be her kids! She sat down at the next table and made a complete scene, and then she just passed out into oblivion.

In the end I took her home but what I saw devastated me!

Broken bottles everywhere and it stank of booze!

I put my drunken mum to bed and cleared up the house as much as I could.

“She passed out”

By the morning it was clean and my mum woke me up from the sofa. She couldn't remember everything that had happened.

"You really scared me, mum." I told her. "You were completely out of control and you can't carry on living like this, it's horrible."

I told her I was coming to stay and she cried in my arms.

Things were settling with dad and his new girlfriend, and I knew my brothers and sisters would be ok.

I gave her an ultimatum...

When I moved in with mum I told her, "I'm only staying if you keep off the drugs."

"I'm going to try, sweetheart," she said. "I'm going to try really hard."

She still drinks a bit, but she's coming off it slowly. We're trying to get a new place to live. I'm desperate to get mum away from those druggies, because I know how easily led she is.

I'm worried that if I leave her again, she'll just go back to her old ways, and maybe get even worse.

I'm stressed a lot. I worry about my mum and I'd be gutted if anyone at school knew what I was going though. But every day mum gets a bit better.

“I feel so trapped...”

I just hate to think what could have happened to her if I wasn't around.

To be honest with you, I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave her alone again. I feel so trapped.

I love my mum, but I need to have a life too.

I'm now in school and doing my A-Levels and hoping to lead a better life than the rest of my family have managed so far.