Before the her family arrived in Birmingham from Nigeria, one cold Autumn morning in 2022, Abimbola’s twenty-two-month-old son was already attending nursery school in Lagos. As early as 8am, he was off with his four-year-old big sister, learning with other children. After eight hours, when his mother returned to pick him up, he would say ‘Mama’, excitement written all over his face.

Abimbola recalls that for the first few months in the UK, she was preoccupied with trying to find her feet in the new country – getting a new job, finding good accommodation, and finding school placements for the older sibling.

“I was not self-aware that migration was going to impact the children. I felt they would acclimatise just like that. That was one error on my part.”