When I first call Rita Labiche-Robinson, a 59-year-old retired project manager, she can’t chat because she is with her nine-year-old granddaughter. Rita looks after Nia two days a week – Thursdays and Fridays. Today is a Tuesday, but they live together, along with Nia’s mum, and Labiche-Robinson is too in the thick of it to talk.
The three of them have been in the same home since March last year, when Labiche-Robinson’s daughter and granddaughter moved back from Canada. “While they’re waiting to be housed, they’re staying with me,” she says. On her designated days, she gets Nia up and takes her to school – a 10-minute walk from her home in Hackney, east London. At the end of the day, she picks Nia up, prepares her dinner and reads to her before bed.
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