We speak to lorry driver Trevor Stephens as he negotiates the M4 on a return journey to visit his children. His former partner of almost 20 years is applying for a court order preventing him from seeing her. His life, he tells us, has turned into a logistical nightmare. He has been homeless for the last 18 months after his ex-partner applied for his name to be struck off the tenancy for their council house.

So Trevor lives in his lorry. At the end of each day he parks in a lay-by or on an industrial estate outside Bury St Edmunds, where his children live with their mother. He has three of his four children for eight nights a month and the eldest lives with her boyfriend. When it's his turn, he books a family room at the nearby Travelodge "or wherever's the cheapest". Up until last month, he had been using a friend's caravan behind a pub, an arrangement apparently sanctioned by social services. However, the caravan has been requisitioned by its owner, who has just split with his wife.

The father of four has complex legal needs. Over the last 12 months he has had two six-week spells in prison for breaching bail. "My ex makes up false allegations and the police tried to stitch me up. Nobody gets to hear my side of the story," he tells us.

The man insists he is not violent. On his account, his ex is an alcoholic with long-term mental health problems. He readily admits to breaching bail; but only because, again on his account, she initiated contact by text message begging him to come over because she was scared of being beaten up by her new boyfriend and, on a second occasion, threatening suicide by driving her car into a wall.

He has the texts on his mobile phone as well as messages from his kids calling on dad for help because of concerns about their mother's condition. But he claims no one has been sufficiently interested - not the police, nor social services nor the courts - to bother to check out his side of the story.

Until recently the only legal advice Trevor Stephens had received had been from a duty lawyer when he was remanded.