Woman's Hour - 10/09/2026

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

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You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, ad-free, with an Amazon music subscription. Hello, I'm Kylie Pentelow and welcome to Woman's Hour. to say the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for rights reasons. Hello and welcome to the programme. Thank you for your company this morning. Coming up today, the woman who nearly missed delivering the keynote speech of her career because she's disabled and says she wasn't allowed to take her support workers out of the country. Also, the debut novel that explores the issue of postpartum psychosis. In Queen Mab, a mother thinks her baby has been

taken and replaced by a changeling. The author will be coming into the studio to tell me about it. Plus, do you remember the iconic film Thelma and Louise? It came out 35 years ago, would you believe? Well, it's a road movie about two friends who flee across America after becoming accidental fugitives. I'll be speaking to the woman who wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for it. Well, now, Kali Kuri has adapted it into a musical, which has just opened

in London. So plenty coming up and we always love to hear from you so do get in touch with your thoughts on any of the stories that we're featuring today. As always, you can text the programme. That number is 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour and you can email us through our website

or send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note. That number is 037100-400-444. Also on most smart speakers, you can say Alexa, ask BBC sounds to send a call. comment. So first today, the number of high-earning parents turning down pay rises in order to keep free childcare is on the rise. Research from the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics now estimates that by 2030, 12,000 parents will tactically keep their income below £100,000

in order to avoid the tax trap which would drastically impact their working and family lives. or parents of children at nursery or preschool are able to claim between 15 and 30 hours of free child care for 38 weeks of the year. But most of that free childcare is withdrawn when one parent's earnings surpass £100,000. Well, joining me in the studio this morning is Claire Barrett, Consumer Editor at the Financial Times. Good morning to you, Claire. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming in to talk about this. So tell us more about this unintended consequence then.

What's the threshold and why you? is this specific group of high-earning parents willing to sacrifice their salaries to avoid it? OK, so the £100,000 cut off has become a cliff edge because more and more parents are earning over it. Inflation's been pushing up our pay since the Conservative Party actually introduced this cap in 2017. If that had risen with inflation, it would now be £140,000. So if you think about what's happened to life getting more expensive since then, particularly in London and the South East, it's not just the cost of childcare. that's shot up. It's also the cost of renting, the cost of having a mortgage. So you might think,

ooh, a parent earning over £100,000, they're rich. Well, actually, after they've paid for the childcare, because it's not completely free, it's a subsidy. Most parents will still be paying a couple of thousands of pounds a month for a full-time nursery place for a child in London, certainly. And they're having to spend so much more of their salaries. Plus, when you get to the 100K part of the tax system, you're being really punitively. taxed as well. So if you lose all or nearly all of your childcare entitlement, you're so much worse off. The IFS Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated a parent who earns one pound over the 100K cap, they'd actually need to earn then 149,000 pounds if they had two children in nursery

to make up for the childcare subsidy they've lost just to remain the same as a parent who was earning a hundred thousand pounds. So it's this huge distortion that's opened up and the more parents who are earning more as inflation pushes up their pay and hit it, the more of a problem this is going to become for parents but also for employers. I know. There will be a lot of our listeners thinking though that £100,000 is a lot of money, you know, to put it in context. It's not a lot of money compared to what it was in 2017. Of course, yeah, but still the median annual salary for full-time employees in the UK is approximately £39,000. So we are We are talking about those higher earners, aren't we?

But tell us about this, why this was introduced and when it was. It was the Conservative government, wasn't it, in 2017? So 2017. So, I mean, this system, when it came in, it worked. Labor has since made childcare, you know, they've put more money into subsidising it, which is a great thing. But the system itself hasn't changed. It's terribly designed.

It's never been updated to reflect what's happening with inflation. And it is causing distortions. in the labour market as this server has picked up. So the way that parents can keep their adjusted net income below £100,000, they could pay a lot of money into their pension, and then their salary comes down on paper. They could refuse a promotion. Lots of FT readers say that they're doing that because it's just easier,

or they could go part-time. Now, lots of men and women, although it is mostly women, are telling me that the part-time route is what they're doing. So they were able, with flexible working to do five days a week, but because they're going to lose so much money, it just doesn't make economic sense to do a five-day week, so they're doing a four-day week or a three-day week just to keep their salary,

especially if they're the highest earner, below that threshold. Why does this matter in terms of women's career and potential in the workplace? Because of your lifetime earnings potential. Now, anyone who has a child, even if you go on maternity leave, you are going to see an impact to your lifetime earnings potential, especially if you work part-time, one day less, 20% less pay, that's 20% less going into your pension as well. So we've got the gender pensions gap, we've got the gender pay gap.

And also how it's holding back women's careers if they want to work full time. But because of this quirk in the system that hasn't been looked at since 2017, women are reducing their hours and reducing their ambition. If somebody says, I'm going to make you head of department and you say, oh, hang on a minute, that's going to make me £20,000 a year worse off. So I'm afraid I can't do that. that is a huge waste of our economic potential. So the government really needs to look at this.

We need higher earners to pay tax. Lots of them aren't paying any tax if they're putting more money into their pension. So this system, in reality, is serving no one. Plus, if you're a parent of a young child in nursery, the last thing you want to be doing is being on the HMRC website, doing all of these net pay calculations and working out how on earth you can hang on to this amount of subsidy you're getting for the childcare while still having to pay thousands for the privilege of having it.

Just briefly, if you can, you mention the government there. What do you think they should do? Is there anything that would be a simple change to make this, I guess, fairer? Maybe that's the wrong word. If you tax something, you get less of it. Look at the birth rate. Do you want to make this system easier for parents to navigate? You could just get rid of the cap entirely.

Instead of having this cliff edge where one goes through 100K and you lose the whole lot, could it be tapered off? Tapers are a bit complicated. But just look at the benefits and the amount of... tax that could be paid, the amount of promotions that could be taken up if you made the system simpler. Making tax simple is something that the government needs to be doing a lot more of, and that could make the economy grow, which is what they want, and more parents having children. Claire, really interesting to talk to you. Thank you so much for clarifying that. That's Claire

Barrett there, who is the consumer editor at the Financial Times. If you want to have your say on this, please do get in touch 84844, or you can WhatsApp us 037100. 4444. Next to the debut novel that explores the issue of postpartum psychosis through a mystical world of strange creatures where the reader often doesn't know what's real and what's not. In Queen Mab, new mother Madeline thinks her baby has been swapped and replaced by a changeling. Well, I'm joined now by author Emily McBride. Welcome to you, Emily, to Woman's Hour. So we'll be talking about, um, about, why you chose motherhood and mental illness as themes for your debut novel. But first, if you're happy to, can you read us a section from the book? Of course. Madeline looked around the cafe. Through the steam rising from her teacup,

she watched the faces of the mothers around her. Mothers and more mothers, overlapping, overlaid, tired faces, death pale faces, puffy faces, bodies that drooped and bent, bodies distorted with everything. excess weight or shrunken as though they had lost more than they'd gained. Expressions of tedium or bland impatience, wavering smiles, terribly tender kisses planted on baby's flossy hair. They turned their heads simultaneously to look at her,

and their mouths opened altogether, twisted, deformed, their starved lips gaping wide in warning. Their eyes receded, they were only mouths, chanting as one. She had fallen, she was one of them, caught in an age-old enchantment, an age-old trap. Emily, thank you. So that's a section from your debut novel, Queen Mab. I should say congratulations.

Thank you. Why did you choose to write about motherhood? It was a reaction, I suppose, to a bit of a difficult adjustment to motherhood on my part. Not as difficult as my protagonists. But I had a baby and just felt a bit neutral about the whole thing. I think it would probably be called failure to bond. immediately. But one of the things I found interesting was that I'd been reading fairy tales in the year or so leading up to having a baby. And I discovered Changeling stories, which is the idea that

a fairy will kidnap a human baby and substitute one of their own. And what struck me as a new mother was that this in some way seemed to speak to the experience of disassociation or alienation with a new baby. I wasn't sure if it was an actual attempt from the past to sort of encompass this idea, but in any case, you know, it was just an idea that I kind of wanted to keep picking at and picking at, and it eventually developed into a wider story. It's interesting the concept of fairies, because I think most people will think of like, you know, that kind of cute image of fairies living in a tree and in a garden and being very friendly, but that doesn't come across at all in the book.

No. And fairies have an older, darker, folkloric association. And it's interesting that fairies predominantly became small and cute and flower-like, this idea we have of them in the Victorian era, those lovely sort of detailed fairy pictures that many of us have seen, which is also a time when motherhood became really idealized and sort of flattened into an experience that had to be joyous and had to be easy. And so I also found resonance there that the fairies and the mothers were both sort of seen as something, but they actually had a darker undertone that is a real thing. thing for many people. I should explain that the book begins with Madeline. She's a second year PhD student who is studying Victorian and modernist literature. She unexpectedly becomes pregnant and it's soon after the birth of her daughter that Madeline suspects that her baby is a changeling switched by fairies. You mentioned that that kind of glossy image of motherhood, but that definitely doesn't come across in the book. And it is a very realistic for many women

view of what it's like to be a mother. How do you think the expectations of motherhood has changed? Perhaps we have fewer children and so there's more pressure to do it right when we do have them. But I think there's always been that difficulty, that level of difficulty with. it as many as one in four women have some form of postnatal depression. And, you know, and I don't think the literature or the media landscape, at least until quite recently, has really dealt with, you know, a number on that magnitude. And we'll be talking to an expert on a postpartum psychosis in a moment. I don't want to, of course, give away the whole book, but Madeline does clearly suffer with postpartum psychosis

and has disturbing hallucinations, fairies and other mythical creatures. Kind of in the undergrowth, isn't it, haunting her life? Why did you choose the nature to be the kind of backdrop of this very difficult subject? I think nature is natural, obviously, when talking about childbirth and motherhood because it's a moment when you kind of become an animal again,

something that we kind of forget that we are often in our modern world. And yes, as you say, Madeline suffers potentially postpartum psychosis. That's the medical explanation. And then the book sort of also plays with the idea of the magical explanation, which is the fairies. And you can kind of come down on one side of the other or a mixture of both.

And sometimes I said in the introduction that as a reader, you're not quite sure, are you, what's real and what you're seeing from within Madeline's mind. Right, yeah. And of course, Madeline is somebody sleeping very little, you know, experiencing all the usual things of early motherhood. And that can kind of create a sort of surrealism in the world. And so surrealism and magic also seemed relevant from that perspective

to sort of depicting the experience as it is and as it isn't. I wanted to ask you about Madeline's husband, Tom, who is portrayed as a source of support for Madeline. it's of course not just mothers who are impacted by the situation. Yes, I tried to show Tom having his own struggles. Of course, he only has the sort of standard quite short paternity leave. And he has to go back to work immediately. And because they're a little economically unstable,

you know, he must do that and he feels quite concerned about it. And I think we are in a moment where fathers are, at least many fathers, are trying to participate in their children's lives as much as possible, be really good and involved fathers. And so they also suffer the effects of sort of alienation or the difficulties of making like conciliation between life and work and all the things that go into raising a family. Okay, Emily, for now, thank you.

I want to pick up on one theme that we talked about there of postpartum psychosis. It's of course been in the news recently following a high-profile murder case in the US, which ended in mistrial. Lindsay Clancy did not deny killing her three young children in 2023, but pleaded not guilty with her lawyers arguing that she'd been suffering from postpartum psychosis, and so should not be held criminally responsible. The prosecution said she made a calculated intentional decision to kill. We won't go into the detail of that case here today,

but to tell us more about the condition itself is Dr. Jessica Heron, who is Chief Executive from Action on Postpartum Psychosis, which is the National Charity for Women and Families affected by Postpartum Psychosis. Jessica, welcome to you. Hi, thanks for having me. I'd like to ask you initially how it manifests, how we can see postpartum psychosis in new mothers.

So it's a very severe and frightening, but temporary and treatable form of. of postnatal mental illness. So mania and or psychosis can onset very rapidly straight after having a baby in the hours, days or weeks after having a baby. It can come on extremely rapidly or slightly more gradually. So when we talk about mania, often we mean elation, irritability, not needing to sleep, not being able to sleep, feeling very restless.

and that can sit alongside psychotic symptoms, which can include hallucinations, so seeing, hearing, feeling things that aren't really there, and delusions, which is having firmly held beliefs that can't possibly be true. So the kind of things that women might believe are that they've got special powers, or they might forget they've had a baby at all, or they might see themselves on TV doing something, or signs and things around their environment might have special meaning or they might feel that the world is coming to an end or they're living in an alternate universe.

So the kind of delusions can be very severe, rapidly changing but firmly believed. These can kind of sit alongside symptoms like very severe confusion, anxiety, fear, paranoia. sleep disturbance. And women can also have depressive psychosis as well as that kind of more manic psychosis. But the important thing is it's a very dramatic change from a person's normal character. It's not common. It affects around one to two in every thousand births. which is about 1,200 cases in the UK every year, which makes it one of the most common life-threatening complications of childbirth. We still know very little about what causes it,

despite it affecting so many women. So we know that unlike post-noster depression, very few psychosocial factors predict its onset, So it occurs at similar rates across all cultures, all social classes, all education levels, relationship status. So because of this, we believe it's a very biological illness. So we know that for 50% of women, it happens out of the blue in the absence of any previous mental illness. We know that women with bipolar disorder are at greater risk. And despite cases of postpartum psychosis being reported since ancient Greek times, the causes are not well understood.

So the theories are that the dramatic drop in pregnancy hormones might trigger psychosis in some women or that increases in hormones that induce birth or lack. I might somehow be getting across the blood-brain brain barrier to have psychogenic effects. I want to ask you, Jessica, because obviously, you know, we've heard with this condition that women can have a terrible fear of harming their child. Do we know how rare it is for women to actually do that? Isn't the concern usually more for the mother's safety? Yeah, so while we know that there's 1,200 cases in the UK every year, In terms of infanticides, we think that in the UK there are a few per decade. So the risks are very real. It's such a severe, dramatic illness.

But care services in the UK are set up very well over the past decade or so. Midwives, health visitors are much better trained to identify it. every area has perinatal mental health services and there are 23, three mother and baby units across the country. So we know that infanticide is a risk due to the severity of the illness, but we know that cases are very, very rare. Most women fully recover from this illness. Okay. Just briefly, if you can, it's important if anyone is listening who has concerns, about themselves or anyone else. What's your advice? So it's a medical emergency.

You need to seek help very quickly. Often, moms themselves don't know that they're unwell. So it's the responsibility of family members, health professionals, to identify the symptoms. If postpartum psychosis is suspected, women should be assessed within four hours and ideally admitted the same day to a mother and baby unit. I want people to know that women recover from this illness with good care, with access to psychology and really importantly, peer support, women recover it and become the mums they wanted to be. And I guess it's really important for people to know that postnatal psychosis, postpartum psychosis, is not an extreme form of distress or post-naked depression.

It differs in symptoms, onset, risk factors, the treatments needed and outcomes from post-nature depression. So it is important not to confuse the tune. Jessica, thank you very much. Emily, I just want to come back to you. Obviously, you know, the issues that you've raised in your book will undoubtedly provoke a lot of conversation and discussion and thought. Is that important to you?

I think conversation and discussion. and thought are always good and always important. And tell me about if there's anything you're working on next. I'm working on a comedic novel about a mad doll collector. Okay, sounds interesting. Thank you very much indeed. We should just say if you have been affected by anything you've heard in this item, of course, please do get in touch with your GP for further advice. But thank you very much to Emily McBride and also to Dr. Jessica Heron,

who is the chief of... executive of action on postpartum psychosis, which is the national charity for women and families affected by postpartum psychosis. And Emily's book, Queen Mab, is out now. Now a reminder to listen to us on your smart speaker even. Just say play BBC Radio for if you want to catch up with anything you might have missed. You can say Alexa asks BBC sounds to rewind to the time you want if you want to go back and listen to something. And a few of you are messaging in on the subject of that limit of £100,000 for childcare to be subsidised. You can continue to do so.

I'll read some of those out a little later in the programme. We can text Women's Hour on 84844 and on social media. It's at BBC Women's Hour. You can also contact us on WhatsApp [phone]. Do get in touch. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com.

Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favorite shows, like evil genius, good, bad billionaire, and you're dead to me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple. podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. But next, the woman who nearly missed delivering the keynote speech of her career, just because she is disabled. Lucy Robinson is president of the European Spinal Cord Injury Federation. She's had a spinal cord injury for 20 years and needs support workers 24-7 to help with personal care and all aspects of her life. Well, those support workers, also known as PA, a part of a care package paid for by something called NHS continuing care funding.

We'll explain what that is in a few moments. But after two decades building her career in the UK and internationally, going on holiday supported by her regular PAs, Lucy was suddenly told that she couldn't take them abroad. Lucy originally spoke to the Guardian newspaper, which uncovered this issue. And she's here with me now in the studio, as is her lawyer, and Marie Irwin and our reporter Carolyn Akker. welcome to you all. First to Lucy. Lucy, can you tell me what life was like for more than a decade after you

started having support workers to assist you? So I'm 38 and when I was 18 I had a sailing accident and I spent nine months at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and when I was discharged from there I went home with 24 hour care and that has looked at after me for the last 20 years, but also really enable me to live and to sort of build a career. And I was very conscious at the start of that journey that I received so much support from other people and institutions that I also really wanted to give back. And so I have made the most of my time. I think one of the first things I did was I worked with a spinal unit in Bangladesh and we built a peer support carer training out there. to improve life expectancy and quality of life there

and have so far trained about 500 people. I have worked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital myself, supporting in the patient education department, supporting patients to really be experts in looking after themselves or being able to direct their care so that they are verbally independent and able to live in the way they want to.

and then from all the things I've learned, I've been talking at conferences around the world, you know, career and Malaysia and lots of different places and, you know, really, I think, contributed to, you know, improvements in spinal cord injury, you know, across the world. And then also, you know, made the most of going on holiday with friends and family and, you know, having some wonderful experiences. The ICB really supported me about two years ago

to go to America to see the total solar eclipse, which was a great highlight. And yeah, things have been really good. And it's worth mentioning that when you were taking your support workers to these work events or indeed a holiday, it wasn't costing the NHS anymore, was it because you were paying for their travel and transport and their hotels? So the expenses of my PAs were either covered by myself,

if I was travelling for my own personal holidays and so on. And if I was speaking at conferences or work trips, then that would be paid for by the conference organisers or by my workplace. Okay. So that was until December of 2025. What happened then? I don't, I'm not sure. So I had been in the October,

I had been to the International Spinal Corder Society. conference in Sweden and I didn't have any issues traveling there and then I came back and I had organised to go on holiday with both a personal assistant and my friend to South Africa and we had booked the flight and we had organised hotels and we were all ready to go and then a day and a half before working day and a half before the flight was due to depart. My care agency phoned me up and said the ICB has said that we can't allow your PAs to go with you. And so I had this really difficult conundrum of, you know, what do I do now?

Do I still go to South Africa? I'd spent a huge amount of money already. And so my friend actually stepped in and said, you know, I can help out. which was fantastic, but also they are entitled to holiday and their holidays and shouldn't be looking after me. But I was also really conscious that I had two upcoming conferences, including this keynote for the European Spinal Psychology Association. Which I imagine is a big deal for you to do.

Absolutely. It was a career highlighter. It was my first keynote. It was a big European conference. and I was really excited to do that. And so actually South Africa was, yes, we'll make that happen. But actually, I absolutely need to get to Germany to deliver that keynote because to not do that would be some sort of personal failure, I felt. Before we find out what then happened, Lucy, I'm going to bring in our reporter Carolyn Atkinson,

who can put some of this in context for, us. So Carolyn, Lucy receives her care support via something called NHS continuing care funding. So what's that? Well, there are two types of care that people can receive if they're eligible. So firstly, social care it's called. That is means tested. It's not free like NHS care. And it's the responsibility of the local authority. So those who qualify for this social care will get help with things like the basics of getting up, of showering, of making meals. Now the second type which Lucy gets is called NHS continuing care or CHC. It's often described as the NHS's best kept secret because it's very hard to get. A person needs to have significant and complex health needs. But those that do qualify in England will get all their care paid for by the NHS or more precisely their local integrated care board ICB.

There is no means testing. But what then happens is they're offered what's called a personal health budget and so a bespoke package of care is put together. And the key aim for this is that someone must have genuine choice and genuine control over their own lives and what they want. But it seems some people, like Lucy, don't feel that's happening. Yeah, well, Lucy has clearly explained for how many years she did feel she had the choice and the control over her career and her social life,

but then suddenly she felt she was being sort of effectively banned from doing her job properly or travelling like she used to with her PAs. I've actually been speaking to a leading expert in NHS CONT. who says they think that the NHS continuing care system is under such huge financial strain at the moment and there are fewer staff to make really complex decisions sometimes that they think that risk is actually being taken out of the mix. And this is really interesting because at the same time, they told me, there is absolutely nothing written down in any national framework for NHS continuing care or policy, which explicitly ban someone from taking their PA abroad for work or for holidays.

So Lucy, so there you were. You were banned from taking your PA away with you on this work trip to Germany. As you said, missing potentially a career highlight. What did you do? How did you solve that problem? So after, before I went to South Africa, I asked the care company to inform the ICB that this conference was coming up. and over the, which was five months away. And so over the following months,

I sent email after email. I had a case manager on the case. I was getting the care agency to contact the ICB as well. And we just weren't getting an answer. They just weren't responding. And then about three weeks prior to the conference, I had a complete meltdown. And I had another role in,

corporate fundraising and I had a meltdown at work and they told me just to sort of, you know, have some time off work. Hugely stressful. Massively stressful. And that's when I got sort of law involved, some lawyers to support me to work out. Actually, you know, is this going to be how it is going forward or can I fight it? And I felt really that my world was shrinking. You know, I want to. to aspire to a big life and to, you know, give back and economically and socially contribute. And that wasn't happening. And so about two weeks prior to the conference, I get this letter saying that the NHS funding would cease at the border.

And I was, and so my mum stepped in and she helped me go to Germany. but she has no training. She's in her later 60s. It was quite difficult for us both, but we're quite determined women and we made it happen. Yeah.

And you mentioned you got legal advice there. Let's bring in Anne-Marie Irwin, a partner at the law firm, Rook Owen, Sweeney, who acted for Lucy. So welcome, Anne-Marie. Can you explain why you took on Lucy's case? Yeah, well, as we've heard, it was clearly an extremely important issue for Lucy.

On the face of it, it certainly seemed very unjust. And we were also concerned that it could have wider implications if this ICB or other ICBs were making, starting to make more decisions like this. We actually funded the case via our social justice fund, which is a fund that we use that can meet the cost of legal advice in cases like this where there may be wider benefit over and above the benefit to this individual client. So what do you think are the specific injustices then that Lucy and other cases you've come across are facing? So we made a number of arguments in Lucy's case. Firstly, that it was discriminatory because it was effectively preventing her from leaving the UK. And that was purely because she had continuing healthcare needs, whereas you and I would be able to go.

Lucy needs that support to be able to travel. We also argued that it was an unlawful interference with her right to a private, and family life. That's under the Human Rights Act. You've heard how integral travelling is to Lucy, so that was part of our argument there. And then more generally, we argued that having assessed Lucy is eligible for continuing healthcare. The ICB then, in our view, has an absolute duty to meet her needs, and that's the same whether she's at home in her local area or if she's travelling abroad temporarily. So are the ICB able to do what they did with Lucy's care package. It's fair to say that the issue hasn't come before the courts yet, but in my view,

for the reasons I've just set out, it's not right for ICBs to have a, certainly to have a blanket policy of this nature. And certainly in Lucy's case, it was my view that this was unlawful and the ICB weren't able to do it. Is Lucy's case her experience a one-off? So since acting for Lucy, we have actually acted for another client. That was an 11-year-old boy, and it was his mother who came to us because they wanted to go on a family holiday to France, as they normally would. And they'd had a similar decision from the same ICB, actually, saying that they couldn't take their carers abroad.

And fortunately, we were able to act for them and write similarly to the letter we wrote on behalf of Lucy. And they also conceded in that case, and so he was able to go on holiday with his family, unfortunately. But of course we don't know what decisions are being made elsewhere that haven't come to our attention yet. So Lucy, I wonder if you can explain to our listeners what kind of impact this has had on you going through this? Because clearly, you know, you are very determined to do the job that you are doing in the way that you need to do it. So what impact has it had generally on your life? I think over the last nine months, I think I've really started to experience massive

burnout because I think it was just this constant advocacy and then advocacy fatigue of trying to explain as eloquently as possible, you know, my life has value intrinsically, but also in, you know, in terms of what I'm doing, you know, I believe what I do has value. And so you know, by doing that again and again and again and again, I started to question actually, does my life have value, is what I'm doing have value? And my self-worth began to sort of erode. And, you know, this sort of social marginalisation

and this idea of actually what does the future look like for myself, but also other people with disabilities in the UK. Like, is the future that people with disabilities aren't allowed to go on holiday? That to me just seems utterly bonkers. And I don't want to live a life like that. I want to live and I want to, you know, be able to support other people and to do things that are important. And this is a fixed situation, as I understand it for you at the moment,

but isn't potentially for others? Yes. So I think one of the, when I got the letter back from my lawyers saying that, you know, that I'd won my case and that I was allowed to travel, it wasn't a big celebration. It felt actually a little bit like I'd won my case for me

and everything was okay for me. But I also know that I am really well supported that I've built a career and that I can eloquently talk about what needs to be done and fight. But that's not necessarily the case for everybody. And so I'd won it for me but not for everybody, which is actually against what my career is about.

And so actually it didn't feel like a win. Hence why you want to speak out about it then? Absolutely, because I want people to know that they can fight this and that people with disabilities can live big aspiring lives and achieve things and have careers. And just because I have a high level of care needs doesn't mean that I can't do those things. Carolyn, if I can come back to you, what have the ICBs and the government had to say about this situation? Yes, well, as the Guardian newspaper reported, there are lots of claims of postcode lottery going on with different rules in different areas.

areas. This was born out by one woman I was speaking to who's recently moved from one area to another, which is quite interesting. Now, her original trust had ruled that they required her to, I quote, inform them about a number of things, including if she left the country for more than four weeks. But another person I spoke to told me they were actually banned from doing jobs away from home even though they were still in the UK. So some people feel with this lack of guidance on this, they simply keep their heads down at the moment. They're just carrying on, taking their PAs abroad for work trips and for holidays without expressly telling anyone. Now, when we contacted Lucy's ICB, which is NHS Thames Valley Integrated Care Board,

it says it doesn't comment on individual cases, but it does say that NHS continuing healthcare is a residency-based service available for eligible people living in the UK. It says, however, where a patient is being funded by the service and requests to travel abroad on a temporary basis, the ICB may consider if it's appropriate, to continue commissioning care to meet their assessed health needs while they're outside the country.

And finally, we did ask the Department for Health and Social Care for its position. It says personal health budgets work best, where people have real flexibility over how they use those budgets, and we expect integrated care boards to examine each proposal on a case-by-case basis in line with national policy and legislation. Clearly, this is an issue that doesn't seem to be resolved for everyone Lucy, so I'm sure it's something that we will return to.

Thank you very much to Carolyn, to Lucy Robinson and to Anne-Marie Irwin. Now, I want to bring some of your messages that you've been getting in touch with us. This is because the number of high-earning parents turning down pay rises in order to keep free childcare is on the rise. That limit for a parent has to be £100,000 to get that. full funding. This one here says, feeling a bit queasy listening to the financial tribulations of households with a single earner earning over £100,000. If I made anything near that, I definitely know how to make it work. When you're struggling to pay your bills and live paycheck to paycheck, hearing about people having to pay more into a pension I can't even afford, has made the hair

on my neck prickle. Another one here, it's worth specifying that only one parent needs to earn over $100,000 to stop qualifying for childcare hours in our household. Mum works two days a week earning very little, but the whole household is penalised. This one here said, I had three children in nursery at the same time in London. Nobody thinks about that scenario. We had twins after our first.

We earned a little over £100,000 each, but that didn't seem like loads living in London. Our nursery bill at its worst was £5,800 a month. It was unbelievably stressful living hand-to-mouth to simply keep our careers going, felt impossible at times. Thank you so much for your comments. I'll try to read a few more out at the end of the program. 84844 is the number if you want to get in touch.

Now, the iconic 90s film Thelma and Louise has been turned into a musical. It premiered this month at the Young Vic in London. Kali Kuri wrote the original 1991 screenplay. It was her first and it won an Oscar. The plot is about two women on a weekend trip who become accidental fugitives after Thelma is attacked and Louise shoots her woodwork. be rapist and the pair go on the run. It subverted the traditional male road trip story into a feminist manifesto that inspired many women at the time and ever since. The film itself received

six Oscar nominations in total, including Best Director for Ridley Scott and Best Actress for both Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis, who played, of course, the two Lee characters. Callie, welcome to Women's Hour. It's lovely to have you here with me in the studio. Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Why did you want to reimagine Thelma and Louise then as a musical? Well, I didn't, really. I was talked into it. Over a period of time, a gentleman named Scott Delman came to me,

and he said he thought it would make a wonderful musical, and I just thought, I'm not sure about that. And I spent many years, decades, actually, turning down the idea of changing, changing it into a prequel, sequel, series, you know, all the things. And I was always grateful that people wanted to continue the story. But I wasn't really interested in reimagining it until I spoke with my husband, who's T-Bone Burnett, a music producer. And I said, well, if we were going to do it, who do you think would be a good composer? And he said, and he said, he said, he would be a good composer. he said, oh, there's only one person, Nico case. And as soon as he said that, I felt like,

oh my God, now I can see how this could work. And so, you know, I agreed to go forward thinking, you know, well, we'll just have to see how it goes. So it sounds like you kind of got excited about the prospect. Well, I am a huge fan of her music and just her as a human being in general, so it made it a little more understandable to me that it could be something besides a typical musical. I went to see it last night, and I have to say, when I was thinking about it being a musical, I was thinking, how do you transfer a road trip into a stage show? It doesn't really naturally lend itself to that, but it works. Are you happy with how it's translated? I am. You know, we've worked very hard to make it, um, I'm, I'm. I'm, you know, we've worked

very hard to make it understandable that it is a road movie. And, you know, our director, Tripp Coleman, has come up with all the ways that you can interpret this story onto the stage with the help of the, I must say, the unbelievable help of one of our creative producers, Mandy Greenfield, who really helped me figure out how to write the book, because that is also something I hadn't done before. So, you know, it was, it was amazing to have the two of them who were both, you know, old hands at theater and musicals. And so I just decided, why not, you know, let's take this leap and we'll see if it works. And I feel like we're, we've come a very long way. So Thelma and Louise was your first screenplay. Can you tell me why you wrote it and

and how it came about? You know, it's one of those strange things. I was not a writer. I always secretly wished that I was, but I didn't pursue it. I had been a theater major in college, and afterwards I worked various jobs, some in theater, some just making a living. I had decided several times that I didn't really want to act. I'm not a person who really enjoys being in the public eye.

And so I just realized, gosh, I don't even like people looking at me for long periods of time. And I better figure out something else to do. And I was working in production, making music videos and things like that. And then I suddenly got this idea. And I thought I would just see if I could write it. And my only goal was to finish it because I had dabbled in writing short stories and things like that. that and I felt like I did have a way of expressing myself in writing, but I also thought it was something that I had never studied. I just didn't know. So I just decided to go ahead and do it.

So once you'd written it then, was it easy to get it made? Well, I would say that in the course of the way things go in Hollywood, it was one of the easier paths. My dear friend Amanda Temple, who was someone that I produced with for her husband, Julian Temple, the director, we had worked together on several music videos. And I gave it to her to see if she would produce it for me to direct at the time. Also something I had never done. But I didn't want to go, you just can't do it because you don't know. I didn't know how to write a screenplay, and now here I have one. and I had been around enough production to think, you know, I will figure out how to direct a movie.

You know, I trust my intellect enough to know that if I stare at something long enough, I'm going to be able to figure it out. So I knew how to make an image on film because that's what I did all day, every day, watching people do that. And I figured out how to do narrative storytelling by going, it's the opposite of what we're doing here on music videos. So she was the person who got it to Mimi Polk, who was at that time producing with Ridley Scott. She gave the screenplay to Ridley. They wanted to produce it. And at that point, things started to move very quickly. Yeah, and the rest is history, as they say.

You obviously wanted to include strong, iconic women as your lead characters. And of course we know Gina Davis and Susan Sarandon were the actors who took those parts. Was it important that midlife women were key to the story? You know, it wasn't so much a matter of age as it was gravity. You know, I wanted two women that I knew would understand the multiple layers that they were going to have to play. And so I wanted two extremely accomplished actresses

and I wasn't really thinking about, I mean, they weren't in their 20s, obviously. Excuse me. But, yes, I love seeing women of all ages in stories that are focused for them. And, you know, I wasn't seeing that at the time. You know, when I wrote it in 1991, I was desperate to go to the movies

and see characters that I wasn't, repulsed by and so I just thought you know this is a this is a story I want to see so many women I mean so many of our listeners will be flabbergasted here that it was 35

years ago I myself would join in that I can't believe it but it it has had a huge impact on you know when I was talking to friends and colleagues about interviewing you so you know it's had a big impact for many women who watch Thalma and Louise, do women still come up to you and talk to you about it?

Yes, they do. I'm happy to say and unhappy to say that it's still relevant. That is not my wish. I wish that it were a relic of a time that passed long ago. What do you mean by that? I mean, the statistics of all types of abuse of women, sexual, domestic, every type of of violence is still being visited upon women in astonishing numbers. That's an incredibly disappointing thing to have to say. I think our awareness has become more acute, but the numbers don't seem to be declining in a way that is as significant as one would hope. I think, you know, you look all around the world and it is still a very serious problem that women

face everywhere in the world. And that's very sad and very disappointing that we as a society have not figured out how to stop, I mean, just men and women. I think the amount of violence towards each other is unacceptable. And yet women are often the first victims and blamed for it in a lot of ways. So, you know, that part is very distressing as well. From the iconic characters in it, though, do you think that that kind of female empowerment is a positive message that women still take away from it? I do, on the one hand, on the other hand, if you really break it down, it is not a triumphant story.

It is a mythical story. But the point of the story is that there isn't room for them in the world. as they are, once they have shaken off the shackles of expectation and, you know, and I mean, obviously they're criminals. So there's not a way for them to remain in the world without being, you know, put in a box. But they are kind of realizing they were in a box to begin with. So, you know, it's empowering because you see them become themselves completely. themselves. But I think that is what a lot of women really attached to, you know. Obviously, it has an end that is very subjective. And, you know, I think that's one of the reasons we're still

talking about it 35 years later. And of course, we won't talk about that in detail in case there are people out there who haven't seen it or indeed want to go and see the musical and haven't seen it before. Just finally, you won an Oscar, didn't you, for Best Original Screenplay? I mean, astonishing. What was that like? It was the most improbable thing that maybe ever happened certainly to me. I was convinced that although I had won other awards by that time, that they certainly weren't going to give it to a first-timer who had never written anything before. I mean, I was up against just some, not against, but I was nominated with. some incredible writers.

And I just thought, you know, I'm a newbie. They're going to give it to somebody else. So it was entirely emotionally prepared to not win. And so much so that I didn't really craft a speech, which was kind of a big mistake in hindsight. I had to just make it up as I went along. I forgot to thank Mimi Polk, the producer. I mean, there were several errors in that acceptance speech,

and yet I'm kind of glad that it was off the cuff just to... And it's led to where we are today to this musical, which I should say is on at the Young Vic in London until the 24th of October. And that is all from Women's Hour today. Join me tomorrow at 10 o'clock. Thank you for listening. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

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