Yes, of course. We don’t usually share people’s surnames as part of their story, and we will change first names if you ask us to. If you’re concerned about your – or your children’s – privacy, we can leave out any other details which could identify you.

We usually find that a telephone or Zoom interview with the Gingerbread team takes between 30-45 minutes. Face to face interviews can take longer. After the interview, we will aim to write up your story and publish it on our website in the next month. Howevever, we’re a small team and at busy times of year, this may take a little longer.

We’d like to keep your story online for at least a year. After this time, we’ll contact you and ask if you’re happy for it to remain online, or if you’d like us to remove or update it.  We recognise that people’s situations can change, so if you feel that your story is out of date, inaccurate or just not appropriate to be shared, you can contact us at any time, and ask us to remove it from our website.

Unfortunately, as a charity with limited funds, we can’t offer any payment for your story. In some circumstances, we can share a link to your personal blog, website or single parent business, if this is appropriate and doesn’t conflict with Gingerbread’s aims and values. Links to external sites are for the convenience of our readers and are not an endorsement. Please let us know if this is something you’d like to discuss.

We know there’s no such thing as a ‘typical single parent’ so we welcome all stories – at the moment we’d particularly like to hear about the following:

• Using the CMS (Child Maintenance Service)
• Working/ studying as a single parent
• Memories of growing up in a single parent family
• Relying on Universal Credit during the cost-of-living crisis
• Being the parent of a child with additional needs
• The support you’ve received from the Gingerbread community

From time to time we may put out a request on social media for single parents who are willing to talk about a different subject.

We reserve the right to not publish anything which isn’t in keeping with Gingerbread’s aims and values, or which is offensive/ discriminatory/ inaccurate. We also reserve the right to edit for length/ clarity anything which you submit to our website, but we’ll discuss any suggested amendments with you before publishing.

We’ll share your story on the Gingerbread website and will also link to it from our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter/ X, Instagram, LinkedIn) unless you ask us not to. We may also use some or all of your story as case studies for fundraising appeals and grant applications, to help us raise more funds to support single parents in future, or in our policy and campaigning work to help policy makers understand the needs of single parents.

This is entirely up to you. We’re very grateful if you do decide to share a photo of yourself and your children, but you may want to preserve your family’s privacy and anonymity. If you choose not to share a photo, we may use a ‘stock image’ to illustrate your story.