Annemarie(41)

After my divorce in Maastricht I needed a radical change. I'm a nurse practitioner and knew the NHS was urgently recruiting staff. Wales attracted me — it's affordable, green and the Welsh are incredibly warm. Through an NHS recruitment agency I was offered a job at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

The Skilled Worker visa as NHS staff was arranged smoothly by the hospital. For my two children (Lisa, 12 and Max, 8) I applied for dependant visas. You pay the Immigration Health Surcharge per child — for the three of us that came to over £3,000 per year. The documents for the children were extra complex: I had to provide consent from their father, legalised and translated.

Wales has its own education system. The children attend English-language state schools, but Welsh is a compulsory subject. Lisa found that strange initially, but she now speaks basic sentences. Schools are smaller than in the Netherlands and teacher involvement is greater. School meals are free for all primary school pupils in Wales — that helps considerably.

Cardiff is surprisingly cosmopolitan for a city of 360,000 inhabitants. We live in Canton, a lively area with good schools and many young families. Rent is £950 for a three-bedroom house with garden — in Maastricht I paid more for a smaller apartment. The children play outside, cycle to school and quickly made friends.

As a single parent in the UK you're entitled to certain benefits. Universal Credit can provide supplementary income, and Child Benefit is £25.60 per week for the first child and £16.95 for each subsequent child. Tax-Free Childcare helps with after-school care costs. HMRC handles all of this — the system is bureaucratic but functional.

The hardest part was missing my social network. In Maastricht I had friends, family, babysitters. Here I started from zero. But the school community in Cardiff is warm. Within six months I had a friend group of other parents. The children are happy, I'm growing in my work, and Wales feels like a place where we can put down roots. Sometimes a leap of faith is exactly what you need.