Ethan Creighton is 13 – and homeless. He has a mould-ridden bedroom in Hackney to call his own for now, but it could be taken away at any time. Just 18 months ago as he started year 7, his biggest challenge wasn’t his new school, but trying to live in a tiny, cockroach-infested emergency hostel bedroom with his mother in Finsbury Park.

He had to drink from the bathroom tap. He had to wash dishes in the shower and shared a corridor with people taking drugs. He never brought friends home.

Ethan, who is good at maths and dreams of studying at Oxbridge and becoming an engineer, acts as a part-time carer for his mother Sireena, 35, whose fibromyalgia means she cannot work.

Far too early in life her son has had to learn how to make £10 stretch in the supermarket, and helps his mother make it to the bathroom when she is too unsteady to stand. A former community worker, Sireena grew up in Haringey and never expected her life to turn out this way after she moved back to London from Ireland in 2013 after splitting from Ethan’s father.

They soon became part of the hidden homeless epidemic. After “sofa-surfing” for nearly a year at Sireena’s brother’s one-bed flat they managed to rent privately. But they were evicted as the building was being redeveloped, and Sireena was unable to find another private rental she could afford. They were a long way down the housing list, and moved into the run-down emergency hostel in Finsbury Park.

Despite it being meant as a short-term stop gap, they stayed for 18 months before being helped into the temporary flat they are living in now in east London. Today Ethan tells The Independent his experiences have been “horrific”. He says: “I have told one friend at school. He’s really the only one who knows. A lot of people say homelessness is bad, and they don’t do anything about it. I’ve seen it first hand and it’s more like the experience is horrific.

“I just want a home. Or at least a house that we know where we are going afterwards, instead of not knowing. I think it would be easier to be calmer if we could work out, ‘OK once I leave this house I will be going to this one in this location’, to know there is an end.”

In London more than 16 households in every 1,000 are in temporary accommodation, compared with fewer than two per 1,000 in the rest of England. They are not visible on the streets, but these children are homeless. They live a precarious existence in one of the richest cities in the world.

It was only through the help of Shelter, one of the collective of 23 London-wide charities being supported by our appeal, that Sireena and Ethan managed to escape the hostel and find the two-bedroom flat they are living in. Their “incredible” support worker is trying to find them a permanent home. Sireena says: “Ethan has to witness me trying to deal with this. I’ve tried to do everything I can to protect him from it. Wherever we’ve been he’s had his own little space. It’s taken us six years to get more than one room. Just knowing I’ve got Shelter and I’m not alone has helped so much.” Ethan talks excitedly about his plans. He has counselling, likes gaming, reads about politics, and is proud of the meals he cooks with his mother on her good days.

Our appeal is raising money to ensure charities including Shelter can offer more vital front-line support to women and children like Sireena and Ethan.