Woman's Hour - BAME Eating Disorders, Leaving Care, Cyberstalking

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

According to NHS Digital more people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities are being admitted to hospital because of eating disorders. Experts say problems should have been picked up much earlier, rather than getting to the point of going to hospital. We speak to a mother whose daughter has just started treatment and Professor Sandeep Ranote, who's a psychiatrist and expert on eating disorders.Most young people leave home gradually over a number of years, but for teenagers who've grown up in care it can be very different. They've often started to live independently by the age of 18 or even before that, and they' are vulnerable to homelessness, unemployment, criminality, poor mental-health, and having children early on. We hear from Ashlee and Emma who've been in care and are now supported by the charity Break. We also hear from Mark Riddell MBE, who's National Implementation Advisor for Care Leavers. What do young care leavers need to help them move into adulthood and what things work for them? Stalking via the internet has escalated during lockdown. We hear from Katy Bourne, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, who's been a victim of stalking herself. She talks about what it's been like for her and how perpetrators have found new ways to get to their victims online. We also hear from Suky Bhaker who heads the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. The charity runs the National Stalking Helpline.Does making bread help you switch off, especially when life is hard? Pauline Beaumont thinks so. She's a passionate baker, as well as a mother of six and a counsellor. She joins us to describe the calmness that baking brings to her and what it can teach us when life goes wrong.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. You're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast with me, Paulette Edwards, on Wednesday the 28th of October. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour. Yes, I am Paulette Edwards. And if my voice sounds familiar, it's because I'm from BBC Radio Sheffield and a couple of years ago we had a good old chat about the menopause and more recently we talked about baby feeding. Today, what support do our young people need when leaving formal care? I'll be speaking to two young people who have recently taken the massive step

to live independently in the big wide world. And Katie Bourne is a police and crime commissioner. She says lockdown has led to a stalker's paradise online. I'll be talking to Katie and to Suki Baker from the Susie Lamplew Trust. Also, are you baking bread as I speak? Well, Pauline Beaumont has written a book about bread making. She says bread making is not just to fill your belly,

it can feed your soul. And I'll be asking her what on earth she means by that a little bit later on. We're going to start with this. According to statistics put together by NHS Digital, more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are being admitted to hospital for eating disorders

in England. In black and minority ethnic groups, hospital admissions went from 1,115 a few years ago to 1,702 more recently. This morning I spoke to a mother, she's a GP, her daughter has just started treatment for an eating disorder. The family is Indian and came to England from South Africa many years ago. My daughter's age 15 and currently undertaking her GCSEs. During lockdown, she became more isolative, more irritable, which we thought was part and parcel of her being a 15

year old. However, from being a really well-rounded, healthy young lady, She started avoiding mealtimes and we noticed a pattern emerging and she became more and more anxious. She eventually broke down one day and said she's really struggling with her eating and her weight. She's been throwing away food, preoccupied with thinking about how much she's eaten, how little she should eat. And she couldn't cope with it any longer. We were so grateful that she did come forward with what she was experiencing. And we spoke to our GP and we have referred her to the eating disorder clinic. And we are waiting an appointment at as it stands so thankfully your daughter didn't need to get to the stage of having to go into hospital but

data does say that hospital admissions are rising in black and minority ethnic communities why do you think that is my feeling is that there is a lot of embarrassment, shame, guilt around anything to do with mental illness. And particularly when it comes to our children, we don't want to feel as failures as parents and we do not want our community to see us as failures. So there's a lot of secrecy around mental illness and eating disorders among young people would rank quite highly amongst the hierarchy of secrecy and perhaps that's why the symptoms go out of control and young people end up in hospital more ill than we would like. And you did say that there is some embarrassment with some families when it comes to dealing with mental health issues, dealing with eating disorders.

Why do you think that you in particular, your family in particular, has not come under that umbrella? Within our family, we have struggled of course to see our daughter go through such anguish just to face a single Weetabix in the morning so yes we have struggled from a personal point of view but I think the fact that she spoke to us openly and we immediately created an environment at home whereby I said, no, we need to speak about this within the family, with her younger brother, with her dad, with her close friends, with our close family. That made it a bit easier for us. And I think in terms of communities, and I'm from an African Caribbean community, there can be some, you know, people can look outside the family, at your family and make judgment.

So we know about that. For you fact that we're an immigrant family. So we do not have as much of our family here in our country. Our communication with our family is via, you know, internet and so forth. So we don't have, we're not faced with that every day. Amongst our ethnic minority communities, similar to yours, food is a big part of our culture. We take pride in feeding our family. We take pride in feeding our friends.

So I would find it quite hard to face a social situation where I know my daughter is struggling, but we would persevere with that. COVID, of course, has resulted in us not meeting our close friends and family socially. So we've not had to face that difficulty as yet. And of course, as you said, feeding a sign of good parenting, is that commented on?

Is that something that is a part of what people would say from outside of the family? Possibly. Like I said, with COVID, we've not had that social interaction. Certainly, inwardly, we know as parents, as someone from an ethnic minority our main role is feeding we place a lot of emphasis on eating good home-cooked meals and I felt the distress of not being able to feed my child adequately you know at the moment she's happy to eat a pot noodle which I would

never have dreamed that would be her meal a year ago. So as a mother then, what would you say to other parents in this situation? Always be there for your daughter. Listen, listen, watch, look out for signs of things not going well for her. And be patient, seek help, talk. Talk, talk, talk, talk to your family, talk to others around you. Do not shroud in secrecy. Professor Sandy Renaud is a psychiatrist and expert in eating disorders

and is going to talk to us this morning. Good morning, Professor Renaud. Good morning, Paulette. Thank you so much for having me. A pleasure. So why do you think then that more people from black and minority ethnic groups are being admitted to hospitals with eating disorders?

Brilliant question, brilliant topic. Glad you're covering it. One of the things I just want to start by saying is what an amazing mother, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that story because actually she's put it all there so beautifully and eloquently and it's that power of story that is our key to breaking the stigma increasing understanding and making sure that everyone gets access to treatment because it is there and we can help so why do I think it's complicated

there isn't one reason You've said you're from a black African family. I'm South Asian, Indian, Punjabi. There isn't one reason. There's such diversity within the BAME population as well, culturally, socioculturally. This data you're referring to is across the last three years. I would say it goes back about five years that we've been seeing an increase. Important to note that there's been an increase in all ages and in all communities, white, Caucasian as well, on the backdrop of an increase in all mental health presentations. So I think that's really important as a starting point to understand this data.

But it is steeper in the BAME community, and that I think is really important for us to analyse more. We need further research in this area. Actually, the UK is one of the leading countries in mental health research and eating disorder research. But we need to invest and we must not stop investing in that research. When we talk about eating disorders as well, there are many of them. So that's important. What would be important to look at in this data is what kinds of eating disorders as well there are many of them so that's important what would be

important to look at in this data is what kinds of eating disorders we talk about anorexia bulimia and binge eating disorder mainly and we see the height steepest rise in the black african community but is it the same as in the indian is it the same as in the white communities? Could we actually be seeing a mixture of illnesses, making therefore the presentations more severe, requiring hospital admission, presenting later? So that could be one of the reasons. I think the mother that spoke, spoke very eloquently about one of the other really important areas, and that's cultural. I come from an Indian Punjabi family. Everything about our culture is focused on food, family, festivals, festivities, eating, drinking, getting together. It is absolutely vital that families and parents are seen to feed their

children, to feed each other and to not would be almost an insult or a disrespect or as you said very rightly bad parenting potentially so there's a lot of blame mental health in general we still struggle with the stigma in BAME communities and actually the belief that they're real illnesses research tells us these are real illnesses neurobiological illnesses we know genetic factors are important we don't have all the answers could there be cultural race or gender factors one thing the research to date tells us is eating disorders affects all cultures all races all both genders although more females and all socio-economic groups can i just talk to you i think it's a sorry can i talk to

you about early intervention? Because that's pretty crucial, isn't it, when it comes to eating disorders. Why is it getting to the point then where black people with eating disorders are more likely to be admitted to hospitals? Is it because it's not being picked up sooner, and is that because of practitioners or families? Both, I would say. But also what I would say is we're also seeing an increase

in those that are being treated in the community. So I think there's a mixture. Again, I would say stigma within families, not understanding that it's actually an illness and so they need to go seek treatment, but also a mixture of that with shame blame not wanting to be seen to have a mental illness or an eating disorder mixed with in our healthcare community in its widest sense so not specialists necessarily but primary care schools

universities all of those first contact points we we do need better training, more focus on training in all mental health areas, but especially eating disorders. So some of the work that our national eating disorder charity, BEAT, do has been to focus on that, the early warning signs, working with schools, working with social care, working with primary care to actually train people better in early warning signs and detection. We're also trying now to do that much sooner than when doctors and nurses qualify at university in their training programmes. But it's also that coupled with we are seeing more presentations can also be a sign, a positive sign, that we're actually now people from the BAME community are accessing services, are getting treatment, albeit at a later stage than we would want.

Can we talk to you a little bit about, if you don't mind Sandeep, we're just asking you about your particular experience of treating black people with eating disorders. And like you said, we know there are a variety of eating disorders and a variety of types of black people. What has your experience been? So when I first started out, I'm getting old now, kind of 20 years ago, but particularly 15 years ago, services were patchy at best and really

variable. And some areas in our country didn't have any specialist services. We've come a long way from, so, you know, it was difficult to actually reach out or get to see many people until they were very unwell. Over the last five or six years we've had additional investment for young people's services and across the whole of the UK services for young people are vastly improved and we are now going to be seeing that happen very importantly across all ages and in our adults but specifically in the BAME community. Ten years ago, I wasn't seeing in my clinics people from BAME backgrounds. That doesn't mean it didn't exist and it wasn't there, but we weren't seeing them at the specialist service end.

And that was really worrying. Over the last five years, we are seeing them. I see that as more as more positive uh than previously but when we do see them i think like the case study uh today um it is difficult for them they find it really challenging it's hard for them to accept to understand it sometimes as an illness it's hard for them to share with others in their community so that peer support that's so vital isn't necessarily there for them so it's about getting it's about more research and more raising of awareness i only feel that we've scratched the surface there but we're gonna have to leave it professor renault

thank you so much for joining us and um we have got a statement from nhs england so record numbers they say of children and young people are being treated for eating disorders. Waiting times are improving significantly. More children and young people are getting care within four weeks compared to the same period last year. I'm Paulette Edwards with you on Woman's Hour this morning. We are talking about a variety of things, including, I don't know if this is the same for you, but quite a few of my friends have recently supported the young people in their lives as they're left home. It's costing them time and money and sometimes it's a slow and careful process. So young people leaving foster care or residential care don't always have the scaffolding in place to support them. Joining us

now are Emma, who left care when she was 17. She's now 22. And Ashley, who left the care system at 17, and he's now 18. So Ashley and Emma, good morning. Hello. Thank you for joining us. Emma, can I start with you? Can you remember what it was like when you first left care? It was quite terrifying, I guess, like just being kind of shoved in the big wide world by myself.

But, yeah, I guess I sort of had work and other things to kind of focus on. So, yeah, I didn't really kind of feel the full effects of it for the first year, I think. I kind of just blocked it out because I didn't want to think about it. Let's talk about the terrifying. That's a pretty big word to use about leaving home, which, you know, I was scared when I left home. When you say terrifying, what were the things you were worried about? I think being by myself, kind of, because we went from a house, you know, it was a very busy home.

There was always, you know, one of the young people was always doing something and something was always happening and there was always a lot of adults around, I guess. And then kind of going from, yeah, seeing about six adults in a day to seeing no one, I think that was kind of the terrifying part. Like you just didn't have, yeah, all the kind of your support network just fell apart. Like my support network just fell apart.

Yeah. Ashley, for you then, were you actually looking forward to leaving i was looking forward to it but i think once i had actually left it did start to feel quite lonely because you don't actually realize how different it's going to be but yeah to begin with i was really looking forward to getting my own place, getting my own independence. And what was set up for you then, Ashley? What was already there for you? So they had planned for me to move in to a place which was close to my family. And I had support from the SCSC within break to give me support for when I did leave. Right, can I just go back to you, Emma,

because you said that you enjoyed living independently at first. You used the word terrified. You kind of got yourself used to it. But then things changed that went quite bad for you, but the charity break knocked on your door. How did they offer you support, Emma? They kind of just reminded me that, yeah, they just you support um they kind of just remind i guess they just reminded me that yeah they just relayed what they said to me as a teenager and as a young person is

but that we're always there we're always there for you and you are a kind of part of the family and i think yeah kind of knowing knowing that kind of yeah they actually will turn up at our door if they need to, to make sure that we're okay. I'm going to introduce Mark Riddell to the conversation now. He is an International Implementation Advisor for Care Leavers. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Paulette. So how do you help then? My job is the National Implementation Advisor

for Care Leavers in the Department for Education. So my job is to go out to local authorities, talk to them about the new pieces of legislation that were introduced a couple of years ago around extending their corporate parenting duties, around ensuring they've got a local offer in place, which is essentially about rights and entitlements, so that young people know exactly what they're going to

get from their local authority as they begin to transition from either foster care, residential care, in towards more independent living. And crucial to that bit is listening to the two young people that you've got on the show today, to to them about their stories and for them to tell us the things that we get right in local authorities so I'll talk to local authorities about making sure that young people are financially ready to move on they've got a good independence package they've got the levels of support and that continues to follow them all the way to 25 so essentially that's my role from a local authority point of view. And the second part of my role is to talk to government about policies, about having a better offer so that it makes the job in local authorities

a little bit easier to support young people who are becoming care leavers. And Mark, you've got your own experience of living in care, haven't you? I have, yes. I mean, I grew up in the northeast of Scotland and, you know, it was a difficult experience. I mean, I grew up in quite a nice family to begin with and, you know, I watched, you know, levels of domestic violence in my family between my mum and my dad.

My dad was a chronic alcoholic and eventually my mum died of levels of abuse that had gone on for years and years and years. And we ended up living with my dad and became very neglected and ended up in care just after my 10th birthday and stayed there till I was 16. So leaving care at 16, going back to 1984,

which seems a long time ago, but being in care, it's our history, we never really forget what it's like to grow up in care and leave care. And I left care with some of the stories that I still hear today, which is a bit disheartening, but we have made significant strides. Not saying that it's the best. I think we've still got a lot of work to do, but I think we're in a a lot of work to do but I think

we're in a better place than when I was and I think to hear one of your young people talking about it was terrifying and when I left care it was absolutely terrifying because you're moving from a children's home into a one-bedroom flat and in those days there was no legislation there was no support workers so having someone like, you know, a personal advisor who can support you is the absolute crucial bit. Because when I left care, we didn't have that relationship. And, you know, when I talk to young people throughout the country, they talk about this is about having a good, safe, honest relationship with someone. Not always a social worker or your personal advisor, but it could be someone from Break. It could be a mentor. It could be, you know a social worker or your personal advisor, but it could be someone from Brick, it could be a mentor,

it could be a charity or something. So that menu would have certainly helped me out when I was 16 and 17. I'm hoping that that's the support that young people get today. And Mark, we're looking at the basics here, aren't we really? Better housing, healthcare, employment opportunities. Is it a challenge to talk to the government about the real changes that need to happen for young people like Emma and Ashley? I mean, it can be a challenge. And again, we've seen significant challenges during the pandemic.

And, you know, when I talk to ministers, certainly our minister, Vicky Ford, when I talk to her and I talk about some of the issues that have been around, you know, certainly before COVID and we're trying to get, you know, far better policies in place so that local authorities have rain fenced housing for care leavers, which is safe, appropriate and affordable. We try to get local authorities to think about, because local authorities, Paulette, remember, are one of the biggest employers in the country if we combine 151 local authorities so we can try and get local authorities to employ young people in the family business like you would do with your own kids if you had your own family business at home and ring fencing that so that we pay them a decent wage or we offer them an

apprenticeship or we support them to get the best results from GCSE so they can get to the colleges and to get to universities. So I think we're getting there with it. And it's certainly in a better place than where I was when I left care. But it is a challenge and we will see some more challenges coming our way during this pandemic. Can I just go back to Ashley for a moment? Because Ashley, I got a little bit of a sense of what it was like for you. Who offered you support then? Because you said that one of the things, I read that one of the things that you struggled with was building relationships. How are you now with that? I think for anyone that has previously been in the care system struggle to form relationships with people,

and it's mainly because they've been let down like so many times that they build up a defence mechanism but there were like a load of people like I said before in the SCSE team trying and being very persistent who eventually got me to kind of open up a bit and to kind of talk about what was going on after I'd left. And do you mind telling us what SCST is, Ashley? Staying close, staying connected. And that helped? Yeah, it's basically like a leaving care thing within break.

Right. Can I just go back to you, Mark? You were talking about Children's Minister Vicky Ford, and this week the government announced new guidance for councils. So this new guidance, from what Vicky Ford has said, will directly support care leavers to live independently and prevent them being homeless, building on the excellent work many councils are already doing for young people in care. She says that everyone has a responsibility, government businesses, universities and local authorities alike to support care leavers at this crucial time in their life. Do you think that that's going to be enough to make a difference to young people like Emma and Ashley? Yeah, and I think it's building on what we've got in place already. And, you know, we're seeing some really innovative work within the sector, certainly in the Greater Manchester area

where, you know, the guidance that's come out this week will support the GM view that actually what you have to do is try to work, you know, across the whole system. So, for example, in the housing sector in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which is led in relation to the Care Leavers Trust, is that they've brought 26 housing associations or housing providers together to make sure

that when young people do come to leave care, they get to pick a tenancy in one of the 10 local authorities. If they make a mistake and they don't feel ready, you know, maybe after a month or six weeks and they feel as though they're not ready for that level of independence, they can be stepped down to maybe a taster flat or a training flat.

So we're not making these young people homeless because they've made a mistake in social housing. So I think the spirit of the guidance is really not so much just about that model, but the spirit of the guidance is to say, actually, we've got to do a lot of that early intervention a lot of that preparation work to get young people ready and it's okay to make a mistake you know we have to do what we do with our kids if they made a mistake living in my house that we give them another opportunity to do something differently but we still support them so the guidance is building

on what we've got already in place and I I think the biggest challenge, Paul, like you'll know, is the amount of housing stock that we've got. And, you know, we just have to work with our private providers, voluntary and charity and social housing to get the best deal that we can. Mark, thank you very much for joining us. Mark Riddell, National Advisor for Young People Leaving Care. And Emma and Ashley, we wish you all the best. And thank you very much for joining us on Woman's Hour. So coming up then you know that awful loaf that you made in

lockdown that didn't rise you were too ashamed to put it on social media after seeing all your friends lovely loaves well you may have gained something precious from that awful experience Pauline Beaumont is going to tell us about her new book, Bread Therapy, The Mindful Art of Baking Bread. So lockdown has led to numerous anxieties and challenges, some of them obvious, some of them not so obvious. Cyberstalking, that's increased over the last months with stalkers using more sophisticated technology to intimidate. Katie Bourne is the police and crime Commissioner for Sussex and she's experienced cyberstalking herself and Susie Baker, Suki Baker rather, is from the Susie Lamplugh Trust. Good morning to both of you, thanks for joining us. Good morning. So Katie I'm going to start off

with you, you experienced cyberstalking yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about how that developed? Well it hasn't ended actually so it's been ongoing for the last eight years and there's a group of four individuals who've um who started in the cyber world and then it crossed into the physical world and three of them now have um have custodial sentences against them and i'm up in court with another one next week. So it's still ongoing, unfortunately. And how's that feeling for you then? Not good, if I'm honest. I came into public life, as many politicians do,

because we want to make a difference. And I got singled out because I'm in the public eye. But as my youngest son said to me a few years ago, he said, this might not have been how you intended to make a difference, but you've got a platform now. And whilst you didn't expect to get stalked, you can actually make life better for others who don't have that voice. So he said, go out and use the platform you've got, which is why I speak out so strongly against stalking and how we need to take it seriously. And Katie, why would you say then that lockdown has led to what you've described as a stalker's paradise? The interesting thing with lockdown was many people were furloughed. So we all had lots

of time on our hands. And many stalkers who perhaps went into lockdown as novices in the tech world certainly came out as experts. Most people use technology to the level that they need. And what we found over lockdown was in the initial few weeks, reports of cyber stalking dropped off. Reports of stalking overall dropped off, I think because many victims thought, great, you know, I've got a bit of respite here in time. But then interestingly, I was looking at the figures in May, our numbers of reports started to really increase exponentially. And what we found with our local advocacy service in Sussex was that 75% of all their clients said they'd seen a significant increase in cyber activity during lockdown. The other thing that's really worrying is that it's given the perpetrators the opportunity to learn and become expert. And we're seeing them now stalk using technology in ways we've not seen

before. I can give you an example. So we know that it's very common for a stalker for example if they've got children to try and harass and stalk their partner through the children's devices so you know they'll come onto their their um onto their sort of shared networks what we've now seen is that they've they've got even cleverer than this and they're using their gaming platforms to play games with the kids but to find out you know how know, how's mummy, where's mummy, and then sending mummy virtual gifts through those gaming platforms. So we know stalkers will leave unwanted gifts in the physical world, flowers, chocolates, that kind of stuff. Now they're sending virtual gifts and they're reaching through technology to really make the victim's life absolutely miserable. We had one lady, one woman, who the perpetrator has gone online, got hold of all her family photographs,

thousands and thousands of online photographs, taken them all, literally stolen them from her. And some of those are of a child that she had who's now deceased. So the only photographs she has of her dead child have all been stolen from her. It's all very unnerving. The impact that that has on the victim is terrible. Very upsetting. I want to bring Suki in at this point. You worked, Suki, for the Susie Lamplew helpline. Has the nature of the calls that you've received during lockdown,

have they changed? They have. The National Stalking Helpline's seen an increased number of callers from this time last year. And we've actually seen an increase in the number of victims who are reporting digital or cyber stalking. And it's quite a worrying trend that we're seeing. And we're not certain why. And I think Katie's picked out potentially some of those reasons. But what we know is that perpetrators tend to go where victims go. And that might be when they're in their workplace, when they're out and about socialising. Of course, with the pandemic, we're all increasingly doing those things online. So it makes sense that we're seeing some more of these stalking behaviours

occurring online. I think for us, it's also potentially about accessibility and ease in which some of these stalking behaviours can easily be carried out online, predominantly on things like social media. I think what we certainly know that the pandemic has done is really intensified the sense of trauma and isolation that our victims are experiencing. Suzuki, on the National Stalking Helpline then, what do people need when they call you?

Well, often when victims call us, they're not actually quite sure what they're experiencing. And they often themselves minimise that. And sometimes when we listen to what they're saying, it's often just reinforcing the belief and offering them advice around their rights, offering them robust risk assessment and safeguarding and ensuring that they're getting a robust response through the criminal justice system. And stalking protection orders, they came into force in January. What are they then? And have they made a difference? So stalking protection orders are essentially like injunctions. And what's great about these orders is that they not only prohibit perpetrators from doing certain things like coming in a certain distance from a victim, but there's also potential positive obligations.

So that could be compelling a perpetrator to attend a programme. I think the challenge we're seeing at the moment is that they're quite inconsistently being applied across different force areas. And it's not just that these force areas don't understand what stalking protection orders are. Often what we're seeing is a lot of them don't understand what stalking is and therefore won't know what tools are available to combat it. And the multi-agency stalking intervention project then, that was set up recently as well. Could that be a game changer? Because it seems to be quite difficult to prosecute someone for this particular crime. What we know is that the re-offending rates are incredibly high. Some research shows that it's up to 55%.

And we know that stalkers will continue to offend, sometimes from prison or on immediate release. It's not to say that the criminal justice system doesn't have a place, but we know that if we're going to meaningfully shut those behaviours down and close that fixation and obsession down, that's what we need to address because stalking is about that fixation and obsession. So a couple of years ago, we launched a pilot, which is MACEIP, the multi-agency stalking intervention programme. And what it really does is it focuses on managing that perpetrator's fixation and obsession more holistically. And that might be through criminal justice tactics or through specific therapeutic interventions with our health colleagues. And Katie, can I just go back to you? Because a lot of what we're hearing now is making me anxious just talking about it.

How do you balance all this out? How do I personally balance it in my in my work life um i have a brilliant team of people who work with me and i'm very grateful to them so they act as a sort of barrier to this so a lot of the time if we if we have any emails texts or any sort of contact from the perpetrators that come into my office they're able to act as that barrier but for people in everyday life that don't have the luxury of that barrier it really is quite worrying and distressing you know we know what happens when stalking goes wrong um people get killed and there have been too many cases of um who've ended up dead because the perpetrator did not stop. And Suki's absolutely right. The whole thing with stalking is it's this fixated, obsessive behaviour that they have.

You know, I was just looking, you're talking about the stalking protection orders. We've got 23 since January in Sussex alone. We've had 23 that have been granted and we've got another 10 in the pipeline. And yet we've had breaches recorded since February. 20 of those breaches have been breached. And we've just, only this month, just had another two arrests for people. So, you know, even the injunction,

even that protection order will not stop that stalker. So my advice to the public is ask for help. Don't sit there and suffer in silence. Get out there and ask for help. Katie, thank you very much. Katie Bourne, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex and Suki Baker from the Susie Lamplugh Trust. If you need support to protect against any kind of stalking,

you can go to the Woman's Hour website for the helpline numbers. Right then, what about this? I want you to put your hand up if there's been any bread baking in your kitchen during the last few months. Was yeast involved or did you go down the lazy route of banana bread? Well, Pauline Beaumont is determined to get us not just baking, but recognising what it does for the soul. Her new book is called Bread Therapy, The Mindful Art of Baking Bread, and she's desperate to get us all flowered up. Good morning, Pauline. Hello, Paulette.

Can you really describe baking as therapy? Absolutely. to do so was no surprise to me because the shelves were empty of flour, not because people were short of bread, but because there was a psychological need that when we're surrounded by threat and anxiety, as we all are at the moment, people were naturally gravitating towards activities that were soothing and that were grounding. So things that help us to reduce anxiety, things that give us a sense of safety and a sense of belonging. So people turn to bread to fill that psychological need. And it's something I recognised in myself when I started baking bread a long time ago.

So does banana bread count then? Please say it does, because I can only make banana bread. I'm not very good with yeast, Pauline. Absolutely it does, because it's creative, because it's using your hands, it's giving you a chance to do something practical that allows you to practice mindfulness. So there's lots of ways in which baking, but I think baking bread in particular can be really highly therapeutic.

And I noticed there was a lot of sourdough on social media during lockdown. What about a tiger loaf or a cottage loaf? Are they out of fashion now? You know, I think all bread, it's the making of it that's important. And we all have different tastes. The different breads are absolutely fine. But there's something about putting your hands into a bowl of dough, being able to smell the baking bread, hear the oven buzzing away there, gives us something to focus on and it gives us an opportunity to be creative to practice good self-care to go on learning and actually to learn some really important life lessons and things go wrong when

we're baking bread you know I've been baking bread for a long time and still I'll get the odd loaf that's raw in the middle or burnt on top and actually it's when things go wrong that we have a chance to learn to practice accepting imperfection and accepting imperfection in our lows is a good stepping stone to be able to accept imperfection in ourselves and that's very important for our mental health it's a it helps us develop self-compassion so the reality is we all make mistakes we're all flawed but we can't go back and change the things that we've done in the past so we need to find a way to accept ourselves as we are and value ourselves so that's one of the really

important life lessons I think making bread can can give us. Pauline I've got I've got your book here and it is lovely and one of the things that I've noticed and it is a self-help book because I thought it'll just be a few recipes and Pauline will make a mention about a few good things that comes out of making bread. But there's a whole section on understanding our deeper motivations and asking what we needed when we were growing up that we didn't get. That's pretty deep, isn't it, for a baking book? the conversation you had earlier with Emma and Ashley made me think how those of us who were lucky enough to have a secure family and to have a secure base when we're growing up and well-attuned parenting are able to develop a sense of home and belonging and security inside us which we take with us but it's never too late to be able to develop that. And we can develop that through

friendships, through good intimate relationships, through creativity, through work, and through grounding activities. So something like baking bread that gives us that sense of safety and home and belonging can be a really important part of developing that inner sense of security. So it's not the only thing, but it's something that can make a really positive contribution. And one of the things I love is that, you know, during lockdown, we had the time to, you know, wait for our yeast to do what it needed to do and do all that kneading. As things change, hopefully back to normal, we'll have less time to make bread. So how do we bring what you bring through making bread

into our lives then? Well, you know, I've made it part of my routine now and I bake bread twice, three times a week. Every day I'm doing something to do with making bread. And I think that if we can create these little pools of tranquility in our lives, we need to slow down, even especially when we're, you know, going back to work and things like that, that it's really, really important. And it allows us to cope with all of the hectic other things going on. So creating the time, making the time, and it doesn't take that long. You know, sourdough bread, we talk about it taking two or three days, but the actual time we're involved in making is really quite small.

It's a little bit, a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Mostly, it's very, very cleverly doing its own thing. And as a counsellor, have you ever prescribed bread making? Well, funnily enough, I'm planning some Zoom bread making workshops at the university where I work at the moment. But quite often, I'm encouraging people to pay attention to their self-care. If we make good nourishing food and we give it to ourselves, then implicitly we're giving ourselves the message that we're worth looking after. And that's very, very important. So the sorts of things that I'm talking to the students I work with about now that can help because at the moment, you know, a lot of people are feeling very sad,

they're feeling very lonely and feeling very worried. And it's very important to remind people that those are normal reactions in this situation. Well, Pauline, thank you very much for joining us. Pauline Beaumont kindly helping us to improve our lives through bread making. That was Pauline Beaumont talking about her new book, Bread Therapy, The Mindful Art of Baking Bread. And some emails from us talking about bread therapy this morning, Jill got in touch. She said she used to make bread over 40 years ago, but never successfully. Lockdown and retirement last December gave her loads more time.

She says she watched YouTube videos, finally understands the science of bread making. She says, and wow, I can now make fantastic bread. Look at you, Jill. I think I need some of your advice. Lisa says bread is my therapy. I've been scoring a loaf whilst listening to this segment. Baking loaves makes me so very happy and calm. I love gifting them to my friends and family and eating them myself too. Very, very nice.

And a few emails about whether or not you've tuned into the right station. Yes, you have. It's Paulette Edwards presenting Woman's Hour for a few days. The last time you heard my voice was when we were talking about the menopause and baby feeding. Definitely Radio 4. Definitely Paulette Edwards. Ending on a more serious but important note, we talked about eating disorders and black and minority ethnic groups today as well. There were some emails on this subject. So we had an email from Debbie. She says, I'm the founder of a not-for-profit eating disorder organisation. Having had the illness for 20 years and battled for the right care, I receive a lot of calls and inquiries from those in the black and minority ethnic community

who are keen to be heard and understood and who have felt they won't be taken seriously by a GP or statutory eating disorder service because the emphasis is still on it being an illness affecting a certain gender, ethnicity, age group and personality type. This is an anonymous email. My daughter has an eating disorder. She's had it for seven years now, since she was 16. She's mixed heritage, Asian and British. I believe that treatment is often poorly focused.

In my daughter's case, she was introduced to calorie counting. No one in my household has ever counted a calorie in their life and we're all a healthy weight. This has set her up to fail and has become her method of control. I doubt she will ever be cured of this now ingrained habit. And Rachel says we desperately need more research in all aspects of eating disorders in addition to improvement in treatment. The CBT model wasn't helpful for my daughter, but addressing the underlying trauma through therapies, including Park's inner child therapy,

have enabled her to recover without the need for further hospital admission. Thank you very much for your emails. Thank you for being part of the conversation we had today. So tomorrow, author Victoria Hyslop is going to be joining me to talk about her new novel, One August Night. It's a sequel to her award-winning work, The Island. And we're also going to be finding out why she's waited 15 whole years to revisit the world in Crete and the characters that she created. Join me tomorrow at 10. Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast

for Radio 4 called Tricky. This is how it works. Four people from across the UK meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks, talk about issues they really care about. Sex work is quite complicated for a lot of people and it's okay to be against it but not to shame someone because of their profession. Across the series we'll hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh. Another thing that really gets to me is when people say, I know what we need to do, I know what black people... shut up! You don't, like that's the thing, that's not how it works.

Nobody knows If you knew You would have done it Discover more conversations Like this By searching Tricky on BBC Sounds I'm Sarah Treleaven

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It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.