Cathy Come Home

Cathy and Reginald are a happy couple. After their wedding, they move into a lovely, modern apartment and are expecting their first child. Then an accident lands Reg on the dole. The couple is forced to move into a crowded, run-down neighborhood, where they first live with Reg’s mother, and then find a landlady who will allow them to pay rent in installments. After the landlady’s death, the family, which now numbers four, is evicted. They move from a trailer to an abandoned building and then to a tent. Cathy finds a place in a homeless shelter, but when she loses her entitlement to a bed, she and her now three children end up on the street. Social Services picks them up ... The television play was shot largely on original locations with a handheld camera, using voice-over narration by the protagonists. Ken Loach here used the drama of an individual family to train the spotlight on the dire straits of England’s mid-century welfare structure, even provoking a debate in parliament. ‘All the events in this film happened in Britain in the last eighteen months. Four thousand children each year are separated from their parents and taken into care because their parents are homeless.’