Woman's Hour - Baroness Doreen Lawrence. Author Glennon Doyle. Covid-19 and the impact on women's jobs

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Labour’s race relations adviser.What will be the long term impact of Covid-19 on women in the workforce? Plus as just over 400 prisoners and more than 500 prison staff in England and Wales have tested positive for the virus, how's the pandemic affected the way prison and probation officers carry out their work. We hear from Anita, who’s a prison officer at a male young offenders institute and Ellen who’s a probation officer in Leicester.And Jenni talks to the best selling author Glennon Doyle who poses the question" Who were you before the world told you who to be?" in her new book "Untamed"Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Baroness Doreen Lawrence Guest; Glennon Doyle Guest; Sam Smethers Guest; Anna Ritchie Allan Guest; Anita Guest; Ellen

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 21st of May. Good morning. Whether you're a woman or a man, your working life has changed dramatically in the past months. But recent research has shown women will experience disproportionate disruption in the labour market as things progress. Why? And how can women be included in plans for economic recovery? How to be untamed, the best-selling American author Glennon Doyle argues in favour of breaking out of the constraints into which conditioning forces us. And the impact of lockdown on the way we do our jobs,

how are prison and probation officers coping when they have no opportunity to work from home? It's become quite clear over recent weeks that some people are at much greater risk from COVID-19 than others. A study by the Office for National Statistics has found that people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are more than four times more likely to die as a result of the virus than their white counterparts. The government has launched an inquiry by Public Health England into the impact of the virus on BAME communities. The Labour Party has called for swift action from the government urgently to issue new guidance as more and more people return to work. And Labour has also launched its own review on the impact of coronavirus on BAME people. It will be led by Labour's new Race Relations Advisor, Baroness Doreen Lawrence.

Lady Lawrence, why has Labour decided to conduct its own inquiry when the government has launched a Public Health England review? Because we believe that the review that the government is putting out is narrow in scope, with no focus on the underlying

inequalities experienced by BME communities. Now in today's times and I'm sure you've seen it there's a report which says research carried out in Edinburgh and Liverpool suggests being black does not put you at greater risk. What did you make of that um i find the article very confusing because like one minute you sort of get a report and saying the extent of the um the virus on the black community and then um these um research is saying it's not really doesn't really affect the black community as we've been hearing over the last how many weeks. So I find it very confusing. And part of what they were saying is that it's still early stages, so things may change, you know, when they begin to look towards the end of the virus,

that things may change. But it doesn't help the people who are dying at the moment by having articles like this coming out at this moment. What sort of things are you hearing on the ground? On the ground I think people are very concerned especially with this new thing about going back to work you know it's known whether or not your employers have set up a risk assessment for people going back to work and the fact that BME community is so more, will be more affected by the virus.

So people do have concerns about that. What are your main concerns? My main concern is that there is not enough looking into the effects on the BME and the fact about the PPE and how much about the frontline staff. And part of what I'd like to see is the government to really assess the risk of BME community within the frontline and whether or not if they should look to deploy them in other areas in order to reduce the risk.

Have you got any thoughts of your own about why it might be the case that black Asian and minority ethnic groups are at greater risk? Would you say there's something biological going on or is it status the way people live? I think what CIS has highlighted even more is the socioeconomics and inequality for the BAME community. I think this just goes to show what's been happening for generations is that not enough is being paid and look into circumstances around employment, living conditions. So this is just really highlighting the inequality that happens within the BME community. And I think we just need not to go back to what it was before. Now that the virus has shown exactly the inequality and how the BAME people are dying is that the government needs to make

sure as we move forward is that they do take account of the disparity of how the black community and what they're going through within their living standard working you know so all of those things need to be looked at. Now you and your leader Sak Sakir Starmer, have sent a letter to the government calling for, you said, swift action to protect BAME people from COVID-19. What are you actually demanding from them? It's coming down to the risk assessment, where we are saying that employers need to make sure that they have risk assessed people going back to work. Because that sort of thing that needs to be, because people do want to go back to work because of how economically disadvantaged that they are at the moment. But unless employers make sure that

they do the risk assessment before they go back. I think the government has encouraged people to go back to work, but they have not insisted on the employers putting in place the risk assessments that they need to do. What response have you had from the government to your demand for swift action? Sorry, could you repeat that again? What response have you had from the government to your demand for swift action? I'm not sure if anything's come out from the government. I know that they've set up an inquiry, but the inquiry is so narrowed and so narrowed and we're expecting it to come out by the end of the month. And so we will be using and looking at what the government has said

while we're doing our review into how do we look to protect the BME community. How will your review be carried out? We're sort of looking at how do we speak to the experience of people on the ground. So you can always have to analyse that, but unless you understand how the virus is affecting people on the ground. And so part of what we want to do is be able to speak to individuals and to get their lived experience, because I think it's only from that that we can learn and how do we move forward.

Now, the virus clearly is taking up your time at the moment. But beyond that, what do you hope to achieve as the Labour Party's Race Relations Advisor? It's looking, I think for me, it was really important for me to speak to Keir as a new leader. So I think for years, our voices are not loud enough and people do not, people in politics and in government do not really listen to the voices of the BME community. So I want to be able to help and support that as we move forward. And so to listen to what it is that's affecting them most, what can we do to help and support them?

To me, that is so important. I think for years, our voices are not being heard. What was your response? I'm also tempted to call you Doreen because we've spoken to each other so many times, but I will insist on calling you Lady Lawrence. What was your response when you were asked to take this on? I'm looking forward to the work.

As I've said, it's something that has always been at the back of my mind. And I think during many elections, I just think our voices and when policies have been put together I don't think our voice has been heard within all that so and unless we as a community unless our voices are being put into policies then we just continue being on the same treadmill and you, inequality, whether within schools, in our jobs, in our personal lives, all of those things are affecting us. And I just want to be able to speak up for those whose voices are not being heard. I have to ask you, what would Stephen, your son, have made of his mother's position now?

I believe that Stephen will be very proud and he'll be giving me a thumbs up. And I think he would know that I'm not somebody like to be out in the public constantly talking about anything. I prefer to be in the background. So I think at this stage, I think he would be giving me a thumbs up and saying, well done, mum. Because you are no longer in the background so I think at this stage I think he would be giving me a thumbs up and saying well done mum because you are no longer in the background I know that's quite difficult for me um I do very few interviews I just think the work to do is more important than being on tv or doing interviews and stuff and that's why I tend to be in the background as much as I can so that the importance of listening to people and to be a voice for them in ways that I can do and it doesn't mean I have to be in the forefront I can be beyond the scene and continue to work. Lady Lawrence thank you

very much indeed for joining us this morning to talk to us. Thank you and the very best of luck with your new job. Thanks very much. Now the effect on all our working lives since COVID-19 began to bite has been profound. Some have to risk going into work, some work from home, some are furloughed, others have been laid off and paid nothing, others have simply lost their jobs. But how equal is the disruption in terms of gender? Well, research from Close the Gap has found women will experience disproportionate disruption in the labour market. The force at society says women are more likely to be key workers, suffer significantly more anxiety, struggle to make ends meet and feel under greater

pressure to go to work. Well, I'm joined by Sam Smethers, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society and Anna Ritchie-Allen, Executive Director of Close the Gap. Anna, why will there be a disproportionate effect on women? Well, our new report, which was launched this week, has identified that women will be harder hit by COVID-19 job disruption. And what that means is they're more likely to lose their job, they're more likely to have had their hours cut, and they're more likely to be furloughed. And that's partly because men and women tend to work in different jobs and sectors. And that plays out in two different ways firstly that women are concentrated in low-paid service sector jobs often working in on precarious

contracts so they're more likely to work in a sector that's been shut down so for instance hospitality and retail and that disproportionately affects black and minority ethnic women and younger women but as you mentioned earlier it also means that women are the majority of key workers and at present what we know is that as they are undervalued they're underpaid and they're underprotected so we're talking about care workers, nurses, child care workers, supermarket workers, for instance. Sam, what concerns you most about the price women have already paid before we begin to think about how recovery starts? Well, I think we're seeing both the economic impact, as Anna's just set out, which is really quite significant in terms of job losses, furloughing and loss of income.

And one charity turned to us reported a growing income gap between women and men, you know, women taking a bigger pay cut than men right now. So the gender pay gap itself is likely to widen as a result of all this. But I think the really significant thing that is impacting women particularly is the school closure effect and the nursery closures that we're seeing and the prospect of also that nursery sector being decimated itself so women are both the vast majority of employees in that sector but also heavily rely on nursery provision so one one report said 10 000 providers going to the wall losing 150 000 nursery places so you know we've got no child care infrastructure to speak of in

this country it was already bad before this and. And we're going to have to seriously invest and rebuild it if we want to have, you know, our female labour force and mothers in particular returning back to work, because the unequal impact of caring roles is still a very significant issue for women's participation in the labour market. Anna, which groups of women who may find themselves completely out of work are you most concerned about? Well, we're particularly concerned about women who are in low-paid jobs. And the women in those jobs are disproportionately black and minority ethnic women and younger women, for instance. But also because if you're on a low pay as it is and you've been furloughed or even if you've lost your job and that means you're more likely to be pushed into poverty. But I think as Sam has also set out particular groups of women that we are concerned about is women who have caring responsibilities and it's how those caring responsibilities interact with the furlough

provision because there's no right to be furloughed. This has to be agreed between the employer and the employee. Now, given what we know about employer cultures on supporting women who have caring responsibilities, the way we're seeing that play out is that many women are under immense pressure as they try to do their job from home, where that's required of their employer, but also have to pick up the bulk of the childcare and the home learning. And I think although the UK government did extend the furlough provisions to make it possible to furlough workers because they have caring responsibilities,

this has not been well promoted and there's no power within women to actually put that in place. It's down to the employer to agree it with them. Sam, equally it seems to me that you're extremely concerned about the fact that women are more likely to be key workers who feel under pressure to go to work. What are you hearing in that area where women do have children to home educate and look after and they're feeling they have to go to work because otherwise there'll be no money coming in? Well it's a real problem, it's a real issue for low-income women as Anna said it's disproportionately black and minority ethnic women. It's also disproportionately mothers

actually who are key workers too so they're putting themselves at risk in terms of exposure to the virus and so you know that's that's a concern um but they're also saying they feel under twice as much pressure as male key workers from their employer so they're getting pressure to go back to work and we've seen pregnant women on the front line too not getting the but but why why why would employers be putting more pressure on female key workers than they are on male? Well, I think it's hard to know that from the data. All we can see is that that's what women themselves are reporting. And I think, you know, women aren't clear what their rights are in this situation. You know, pregnant women on the front line aren't clear what their rights are. And the guidance has been poor. It hasn't been clear for them. And it's put

huge pressure on charities like Maternity Action to provide that guidance and support for them. So, you know, the government hasn't put women front and centre. That's really what the problem is. We've had no gender impact assessment, no equality impact assessment published. We've had no consideration of women from the beginning of this crisis. Women are absent from decision making. Just today, we've got Boris Johnson now saying, oh, perhaps I should have a reshuffle to get a few more women in. Well, frankly, that was entirely predictable at the beginning. We were all telling him that, that women were underrepresented. And they've gone ahead and

made big decisions, big spending decisions without women at the table. And as a result, we've had poor decision making. And now, you know, women are paying the price. Women in social care are paying the price, both as women who are in receipt of care, but also those care providers. And it really is not acceptable. We've got to have a gendered approach to the unlocking of this lockdown. And we've really got to start to put women front and centre because if we don't, we won't recover from this crisis. The economy won't recover. Women and girls have to be part of the solution. Anna, the Scottish government is responsible for its own economic planning. What are you hoping to see in Scotland's strategy for recovery? Well, Close the Gap is calling for an economic recovery plan which integrates gender equality and specifically addresses the inequalities that women face in the labour market. And I think now more than ever, what is becoming increasingly invisible is the systemic undervaluation of women's work in the economy. And so what we need is specific measures that will tackle that

to make sure that women are appropriately remunerated for the work that they do in these key sector roles, but also to try to shift the needle on that job segregation that we see where women are responsible for doing jobs that are seen as stereotypically female. Sam, we know the Bank of England is telling us we're heading towards the sharpest recession on record. How easy is it going to be to convince them or anybody else in power that spending to

remedy gender inequality in the labour market is a priority? Well, if we can't do it now, perhaps we'll never do it. So frankly, we've really got to use this moment as an opportunity to build a new agenda, an agenda for renewal that is you know creates a gender equal economy um and actually there is a way forward which is a win-win for women and for the government and for society you know if we invested in social care if we invested in child care we would get a dividend payback we would get a return on that investment is well evidenced from what the women's budget group has done to show that it's actually a way of growing the economy. So the care economy is a way out of this.

And, you know, we really can see the consequence of not having that social care and childcare infrastructure in place. It's really obvious now that that's a massive gap in terms of our economic performance. And I think actually government needs help. You know, they are really going to need help to get out of this hole. Even right wing think tanks are saying now we can't go back to a period of austerity. So let's all build a consensus about how we're going to get out of this, put women and girls front and centre, and then we can build and grow our way out of it. But we must spend our way out of it. You know, precarious work means people live precarious lives, they've got no money to spend, demand has fallen through the floor,

that is not, you know, cutting pay and uh taxes or cutting spending is not a way to actually grow the economy we have to do it in a sensible way they invest and actually address structural inequalities finally so large in this jacinda arden in new zealand has proposed a four-day week for recovery how realistic is that? Well, I certainly think anything's realistic at the moment, frankly. We've had an 80% furlough scheme in place. Who would have predicted that? I think a four-day week is something we should look at.

I think the issue we've got is we're a low-pay economy. So, you know, women on low pay aren't going to be able to stop at four days. Unfortunately, they're going to have to get a second job because they need to boost their household income. So our structural problem is we're a low pay economy and we need to lift the living wage and really get people a decent level of standard of living. But yes, well-being is really important, too. And that's really obvious as well from the current crisis. And I think a four day week is something we should look at, but it has to be done alongside other things. Sam Smethers, Anna, Richie, Alan, thank you both very much indeed. And we would like to hear from you on this question.

How badly have you been affected economically, financially, in terms of caring? Do send us a tweet or send us an email. We would really like to hear the kind of experiences that you have had and indeed will be having in the future. Now still to come in today's programme, how the virus has changed the way people actually carry out their work. How are prison and probation officers managing to do their jobs, which can't be done from home? And the serial, episode four of Doorstep Daughter.

Now, how often do you think you'd like to do something, feel it's absolutely right for you to do it, but then you ignore the little voice that's telling you it's time to break free? Instead, you simply continue to behave in the way you've been conditioned to behave. Well, that's the question at the heart of a book from the bestselling author Glennon Doyle. In Untamed, she asks us to think about what we could discover about ourselves if we stopped striving to meet the expectations of the world and instead dared to listen to and trust a voice that's deep inside us.

Well, when I spoke to her earlier from her home in Florida, we discussed what the book's title, Untamed, really means. You know, we're born with these wild individual selves. And then right around 10 to 12 years old is when experts say we start to just of give up who we are so that we can fit in to families, to friendships, to religions, to communities, to nations. And so, you know, we learn pretty early that we can have who we are or we can have belonging, but we often have to give up one or the other. So the idea of the title is that that process of social programming is kind of like a taming. You know, we lose our wild selves and then we have to reverse the process so we can reclaim some of who we are, were before the world told us who to be.

How did you go about untaming yourself? You know, I think I've always had this bubbling inside of me, kind of this discontent or longing, kind of this nagging thing inside of me that knew I was a little bit caged. And I would feel that in terms of religion. You know, I'd hear what the church was teaching me and feel that doesn't feel exactly right. But I felt it most dramatically when I met. I saw her. It's so cheesy, but across a room. And this voice inside me just said, there she is. And I recognized it as kind of the voice of my wild because it was the first time I ever wanted something beyond what I had been conditioned to want.

What had you been conditioned to want and had consequently done? Well, I think that I had this idea planted in me of what a perfect family looks like. I am a woman, and so the models put in front of me, very young and forever, were that I would marry a man and that I would have a few children and that I would have this perfect little family. And I think that's what happens often often is we have this idea planted in us of what the perfect woman, perfect life, perfect family, perfect marriage looks like. So we spend our whole life chasing that idea instead of kind of looking inside of ourselves and creating a life that matches who we are on the inside. When it came to making that decision about not having the conventional family anymore and marrying a woman that you'd fallen in love with,

how did you deal with that inner voice of your mother telling you this was not the right way to behave? Well, interestingly enough, out of all of the people I had to tell out of, you know, the public way I had to go through this, telling my actual mother was the hardest part. It's so interesting to me because it feels like breaking the idea that we need to live for our parents approval or that our parents know best instead of us feels like the ultimate untaming to me. So the day, my mother and I are extremely close and she loves me so well. And she also often worries and calls that love. So she was very fearful about how the world would react. And she brought a lot of her fear to me. And so one day I actually had to tell her that she could not come visit us. I had to say to her, you're still afraid and my children are

not afraid. So you can't bring that fear to them because they will see it in your eyes and help you carry it. So that I think was the moment when I had to tell my mom that she was not allowed to come to our family until she could come with nothing but celebration was the moment that a mother and a daughter became two women. And I think it was the moment that I actually grew up. And it's the moment that I figured out that really, we have this fake idea that we can either honor our parents or honor ourselves. But I think that the ultimate honoring of our parents is trusting fully the women they raised, right, which is ourselves and our own decisions. Now, one of the things you write is we do not need any more selfless women.

What do you mean by that? If you need any proof that we are living in an extremely patriarchal culture, all you have to do is look at the words we use to describe the epitome of womanhood. So what we're all trying to avoid as women is being selfish. And what we're all trying to aim for is being selfless. And I just think that's a horrible goal for a human being is to try to be without a self. It's just another way of requiring women to disappear in their lives. So what I hope for women is that they reject that idea that we are to be selfless and instead embrace the idea that maybe the goal of women is to be so detoxed from all the misogyny in the air that we are full of nothing but ourselves because I think women are good and can trust themselves.

How differently would you say men and women respond to this idea of taming or training? For example, in the book, you mentioned teenagers being offered food. Yes, yes. I had such a realization. So my son was having friends over and I peeked my head into the room and I said, is anybody hungry? And Jenny, all of the boys all at once without taking their eyes off the TV said, yes, but all of the girls responded completely differently. And I'll never forget. It was like it was in slow motion. Each girl at the same time took her eyes off the TV and then started looking at each

other's faces. They were looking at their friends' faces to find out if they in fact were hungry on the inside of them. And what I realized is, oh, little boys are trained in every moment of uncertainty to look inside themselves for their own desire. Little girls are trained inside of moments of uncertainty to look outside themselves for permission, for approval, and for consensus. And that is why we live hungry. That if a 10-year-old who has to look out ourselves to find out how she feels becomes an adult woman who has no idea what she wants or what she feels. Have you managed to understand why we're programmed differently to follow those different rules? Yes, of course. I think that every single marginalized group in every culture is trained in that way. In a culture that is based largely upon

the silencing, the diminishing, the refusal to share power with women, it is very important for women to be trained not to trust their own emotions, not to speak up, to doubt themselves at every turn and to stay quiet. That's just, you know, the way that status quo remains status quo. So I think it's very predictable that that would be the pattern for every single marginalized group. And you can see it in the fact that, you know, women are trained to be ashamed of our anger. Every time a woman gets angry, she assumes there's something wrong with her inside instead of assuming that her anger means there's something wrong in the world. You recommend in order to untame ourselves, doing work on ourselves. How easy is it to do that work when, you know, so many of us are busy, there's a house to look after, there's a job to do, there's kids to take care of.

Where do you find the time to look inside yourself and say, hmm, all my training was wrong? Yeah. I mean, listen, I actually don't see it as work because the last thing that I want is more jobs to do. And the last thing that I want is more jobs to do. And the last thing I ever want for women is to add anything to their list. Right. I don't think there's any self-improvement that needs to happen. I think all of that betterment, all of that self-improvement is just more outer busyness to keep us distracted from returning to ourselves. What I really think is that we have this voice inside of us that has always known who we are

and that will always know and that will always tell us what the next right thing is for us. And I really think that it has less to do with work and more to do with stopping all that work. Just stopping chasing other people's expectations and ideals, turning off all the voices outside of ourselves and just practicing going inward instead of outward and feeling around for that, for what we really want instead of what someone else told us to want, for what we really feel instead of what we think we should feel. Because there's this thing that happens where we're trained to not cause outer conflict so we don't rock the boat but but there's a price to that which is that we slowly die inside

for a long time you've written openly about addiction sex infidelity and depression but interestingly you've only now admitted to a dark secret from your high school what was it yes i have told everything about my life but the one thing i didn't tell until this book is that when i was in high school i rigged an election so that i could be part of the group that was nominated for prom queen and jenny when i told my wife i was going to tell that story. She just cringed. She just said, Oh, honey, you can't tell that one. And I think it is so amazing when I've spent my life writing about divorce and infidelity and depression. And, and this is the story. This one makes me look so uncool that it is not permissible to tell. And I think it says so much about, you know, we can, we can be

cool, or we can not be cool. But we can't, if we're not cool, we can't want to be cool. That's the ultimate sin. So I found it so interesting that people have such a strong reaction to that story. Are you now pleased that you've confessed it? I feel so good, Jenny. I feel like a new woman. I have no more secrets left. We're all in lockdown, you know, wherever we are. How do you reckon lockdown is affecting our thinking about who we are and how we ought to be? I feel hope. I think that one of the reasons we don't, you know, I think we're down here to become, right? That we just, we're here to become truer and more beautiful versions

of ourselves. And I don't think we become unless we really sit and face all of those things inside of ourselves that we keep ourselves too busy in the outside world to face, the things that need to be healed, the real deep desires we have, the discontent we have, the potential we have, and then in our relationships, all the cracks we have in our relationships. And I think this time, whether we chose it or not, is forcing people to look at that stuff. You know, it's like we're those snow globes. We keep ourselves shaken up so we don't have to see the truth in the center. And this time really feels to me like it's a forced settling of the snow globe. And I think a lot of people are looking right in the

eyes, things they may never have looked at. And I think that might cause some real transformation as we come out of this. I was talking to Glennon Doyle about her book Untamed. Now, some of us are lucky enough to have jobs which can be done easily from home and bringing enough money to keep up with financial responsibilities. Others simply have no choice in the matter. You cannot be a prison officer or a probation officer at home. So how do people who work in those environments manage at the moment? Well, shortly I'll speak to Ellen,

who's been a probation officer in the Midlands for 18 years. Anita is a prison officer at HMP ISIS, a Category C institution for male young offenders in South East London. Anita, how has the prison regime changed for you and the young men you guard? There's been a restricted regime that's been implemented, much the same as what it's like on the outside for us. So at the moment they've got an hour out a day. That's to have showers, fresh air, exercise.

And it also means they can come out in small groups now instead of a lot of people at a time. So they're in small groups so that we can practice obviously social distancing to keep them safe and staff safe. So that's been the main change that we've had. But how is that sort of regime, especially when it was pretty restricted, how was it working, especially in the hot weather? It has worked.

The men have been brilliant about it. They've adapted, like I say, the same as we've adapted on the outside. We know that we've got to take these measures for our own safety. We've been putting on lots of extra things. We've been having time to talk to the men to find out what we can do to help them and where they've been coming out just in those small groups actually it's given us a chance to really have those quality conversations with them and uh you know check on their welfare where well-being's we've been doing quizzes we've given them in-cell workouts um we've um they've also got in-cell secure phones, so that means that they can have security check numbers so they can maintain those family ties on the outside as well. I know some prisons have a secure video system so prisoners can stay in touch with families kind of face-to-face through a screen. I know your prison doesn't have that. What difference would that make if you had it? I think that's a brilliant idea, and actually we are looking into it at the moment,

so that's something that will be happening shortly. Now, obviously, as I said, you cannot work from home. Your job has to be done in the prison. How safe do you feel going in? Have you got the right sort of personal protective equipment um i felt extremely safe um right from the very start management um looked after us they said if we if any of us were vulnerable if we had people at home that were vulnerable we were told not to come in if we had any symptoms we were told not to come in. If we had any symptoms, we were told to isolate,

the same through the government guidelines. We've got social distancing with the restricted regime. Everything's disinfected. We've been given sanitiser. And we're very lucky that we've got, obviously, on-site healthcare in the prison. So if any time that I've felt I've needed my temperature taken or anything I could just ask health care so yeah I felt extremely safe. So Ellen as a probation officer

how has work changed for you? Well for me personally prior to Covid I was working in the courts team I was advising judges and magistrates in terms of sentencing proposals. And then as the courts business decreased, there was a review of resources. And since that time, I've now been drafted back into a field team, which is known as a community offender management team. So what does that actually involve? So what that means is that when we manage people who are coming out of prison on post-custody license or we manage people who are being managed on orders in the community and basically what we do is risk management. So we look at the offences that somebody has

committed, we look at the factors that have contributed to those and we develop a risk management plan to try to mitigate some of those factors and to address some of them. And I guess fundamentally, what we do in terms of that risk management plan hasn't really changed, but how we do it has. So prior to COVID, we would have been making contact with people on a regular basis, face-to-face contact in offices, home visits, telephone contact. But now a lot of that has been scaled back and the focus of our face-to-face contact with people is very much focused upon the people that we're most concerned about, so the riskiest offenders. So you do meet the riskiest offenders face-to-face still, do you?

We do, yeah, that's still going on. And that's either as part of office visits. And also we do drive by visits, which basically involves a probation officer going to a person's home address, asking them to present themselves at the front door at the window so that we can can identify that they are where they say they're living. And then we go back to the car and ask them to find a quiet space at home so that we can have a private conversation with them. So supervision of offenders is still ongoing, but we've had to utilise technology considerably. I mean, I'm a real Luddite when it comes to technology, but actually we've really brought in, in terms of communicating with the people that we're working with and being really clear with them what the expectations are of them, we've had to utilise technology. And also with working with

other agencies, you know, the police, social services, healthcare services, all of that's still ongoing in terms of that liaison and the monitoring of those risk factors. But very much we've had to adapt how we do it. How do you advise that those ones that you consider may be risky when they face some sort of trigger which could actually spark reoffending? How do you deal with that? We are really realistic about that. And I think in the same way, we utilise the resources that we have previously, but we've had to adapt some of them. So, for example, you know, the possibility that these risk factors might be escalating. We work with that in the way that we have done previously by basically using internal and external factors.

So talking through what the issue is with that particular individual. But also, we're not just taking for granted what that particular individual is saying. We're gathering resources. We're gathering information from other areas. So, for example, from the police, from victim services. And we're working in the same way as we did before. If it's becoming evident that there are risk factors that aren't no longer manageable in the community and someone is on a post custody licence, then we're pulling in additional resources. So, for example, when someone's released from prison, they will have a licence which will have a set number of conditions on those if there's risk factors that are at play we can pull in additional license conditions for those for example that they're not to have contact with particular individuals just one one one final

point ellen we know there's been a spike in domestic violence during lockdown if you become aware of it what can you do about it in terms of that spike well if someone like i say is on post custody license we can put additional factors in at play in terms of those license conditions if someone is on a license then we can determine where they're living so it could be that we're redirecting them to another address um we're often liaising with whoever else is working with people who are in that home address so with social services with victims teams with the police as well so there are actions that we're able to take to be able to manage that i was talking to ellen and anita lots of you responded to my conversation with Doreen Lawrence, Lady Lawrence.

Anne, in an email, said, one issue seems to be the lack of women in the Cabinet and people living in poverty or other challenging circumstances, as Lady Lawrence pointed out. The Cabinet is simply not diverse enough to understand the issues of women or other disadvantaged groups. And Mike, in an email said, Far be it for me to contradict Lady Lawrence,

but it's a shame she's not more high profile because she seems a confident, eloquent woman who makes a great role model. For a normal mum who went through the hell of her son's murder, she seems to have grown stronger and been recognised for her obvious talent in taking on social issues. Well done.

Do join me tomorrow at three minutes past ten, if you can, when I'll be talking to Professor Heather Viles. She's just been awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founders Medal for excellence in establishing the field of biogeomorphology. She'll be discussing her career from researching the contribution of acid rain to the deterioration of English cathedrals to studying black slime growing on rocks at the

Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles. We'll also be asking, could oestrogen provide some kind of protection against COVID-19? That's a question Dr Louise Newsome is asking. She's a GP and menopause specialist. She's working closely with NHS England to see whether women having periods or taking hormonal therapies like the pill and HRT are protected in some way. That's the live program tomorrow morning, three minutes past 10. Be there if you can. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I everybody. Every doula that I know. 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.