Woman's Hour - Children and racism, BAME NHS staff, Ocean Autopsy

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

The US has been convulsed by nationwide protests over the death of an African-American man in police custody. George Floyd, 46, died after being arrested outside a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But what are black parents here saying to their youngsters about some of the images coming from America and about the protests about racism in the UK? We hear from parents Teiko Dornor, Ama Ocansey and Iesha Small.We hear from Carol Cooper, a diversity lead within the NHS, about race issues in the nursing profession and the way that race is being responded to as a risk factor as the NHS tackles Covid-19. How are our attitudes towards dating changing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic? Has it changed how people feel about meeting prospective partners in real life – now couples can meet for physically distanced dating? We hear from listeners Katie, Rachael and Gina and from Oloni a sex and relationship content creator and Zoe Strimpel the author of Seeking Love in Modern Britain.The physicist and oceanographer Dr Helen Czerski tells us about her documentary Ocean Autopsy on BBC Four.We hear how disabled women, who are shielding at home because they are considered ‘extrememely clinical vulnerable’ to Covid-19, are finding this experience. Katie Pennick talks to Fi Anderson, Sarabajaya Kumar and Amy Kavanagh.And ‘The Other One’ is new comedy about a girl called Catherine Walcott. And another girl called Catherine Walcott. Half-sisters who had no idea the other existed until their father died. We hear from the creator Holly Walsh and one of the stars taking on the role of Catherine - Ellie White.Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Rabeka Nurmahomed

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. Good afternoon. In today's programme, Ahead of World Ocean Day on Monday and a documentary on BBC Four, we ask what's been learned from an ocean autopsy in the North Sea? Dr Helen Shersky explains the impact of our pollution of the sea. As racism rises on the political agenda, how best do families discuss it with their own black children? We don't live in an ideal world and I don't want to raise an adult who's naive or isn't aware of the fact that the colour of his skin may make his life very different to that of his white counterparts. For some, lockdown appears to be easing, but not for disabled women who are shielded because of their vulnerability to COVID-19.

How are they coping with not going out at all? Dating during these strange times, how careful do you have to be? If I've been speaking to someone for ages and I know what they've been up to and who they've been seeing so I know they've not broken the lockdown rules then I might be interested in meeting up with them because I know that I'll be safe whereas no random boy is going to be involved in my life for a very long time. And the other one, a new comedy series about a girl called Catherine Walcott and another called Catherine Walcott. They're half sisters who only find out about each other after the death of their father. Now this week's news has been led by the voices of the Black Lives Matter campaign,

following the violent death of an African-American man, George Floyd, under the knee of a white policeman on the 25th of May. At the same time, questions about the lives of black and ethnic minority doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers in the NHS have continued to be raised. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is to hold a statutory inquiry into racial inequalities highlighted by the pandemic. Black and Asian people have been disproportionately affected by the virus, both in terms of infection rate and mortality. Last week, the Royal College of Nursing published a survey showing that nurses from the BAME community felt they had less protection than their white counterparts

as shortages of PPE persisted. The RCN called the contrast between white and BAME nurses stark and deeply worrying. It was a concern that had been expressed more than a month ago by Carol Cooper, who leads on diversity within the NHS and was awarded Nursing's Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award in 2019. How surprising were the results of the RCN survey to her? They weren't surprising at all, to be honest with you, Jenny. There is almost a kind of a living in the matrix experience where people know what the situation is and know that there is a universal, less favourable experience for BME people and staff. And so kind of knowing what you know and then getting the evidence, it's not a surprise.

It's useful confirmation because then it triggers something in the system which needs to acknowledge that. But it's about how we move from acknowledgement then to doing something about it. Now, you said in the interview you gave to Nursing Times that staff really feel there is a bias, which obviously existed before. But what you said is it's now influencing their being appointed to COVID-19 wards disproportionately. What's the evidence for that being the case? Evidence is always a difficult one. One of the things about racism is that, you know, nobody walks around with a racism meter and is able to sort of pull it out and say it's happening.

What I do know is that this is what staff were telling me across the country. And I am in a unique position to be able to raise issues where sometimes staff in disenfranchised positions and less influential positions are not able to speak. And so that is what I do. And so the positioning of staff in terms of the workforce, being at the lower ends of the workforce would naturally position them at the front line. And if somebody is telling me that they are being appointed to COVID wards disproportionately at one end of the country and they're telling me at the other end of the country then you get kind of a balance a sense of actually this is not an isolated incident lots of people are saying this in lots of different places now awareness of inequality in the profession isn't new as i just said but the nhs has had the workforce race equality That's been in existence for five years. What difference has

that made? It's like asking what difference does a thermometer make? The Workforce Race Equality Standard is a diagnostic tool which gives organisations the ability to identify how they're performing in terms of areas which we know racism is likely to manifest in terms of the workforce demographics, in terms of the incidence of disciplinaries, in terms of discrimination and visible leadership in the NHS. What organisations have failed to do is to adequately respond to the evidence that they have been amassing over a five-year period. So in essence, organisations in the NHS have a five-year dossier of evidence of how, of discrimination, that we are obligated by law to do something about it. And that something is deemed positive action. And that's a very difficult area for a number of people, because if you say positive action, it immediately throws up all sorts of polarised emotions and positions. And what happens is people then are almost stalled,

paralysed into inaction because nobody wants to do it. But if there's evidence that BAME nurses are being disproportionately put onto dangerous wards, why is somebody not immediately saying, hang on, we're putting these people at risk we have to balance it out equally i think the awareness of it when i raised it i think one of the responses across the nhs was for people to start speaking to certainly from the arms length bodies and regional positions starting to speak to staff and the c CNO BME Strategic Advisory Group did a lot of virtual engagement across the country speaking to staff.

In response to that evidence, what happened was a risk assessment was advised across the country and a framework for that risk assessment was communicated and so organisations across the country are now putting in place risk assessments which include the increased risk for BME staff and working through what they need to do in response to identifying that increased risk. How are they working those risk assessments? Because it must be really difficult to do a risk assessment based on ethnicity when the Public Health England report this week offered no explanation for why there is a disproportionate impact. How do you identify specific risks that need to be assessed? Well, this is the difficulty,

and so we're almost feeling in the dark. It was interesting to me, and I didn't jump in initially, because I wanted to see what people were going to put in there in terms of identifying the risk. Is it race and ethnicity that is the risk? Does my race and ethnicity in and of itself make me more at risk of contracting and dying from the virus and I think how people have worked it is that they have made it a demographic risk assessment so they've put in the comorbidities they've assessed whether people and it was interesting because people are putting things in around sort of houses of multiple generation and it's like you know are you talking multiple generation

or are you saying multiple occupation? Because straight away, if you're talking multiple generation, we know that there are ethnic groups who are more likely to live in a multi-generation environment, but that the risk is multiple occupation. So people have sort of located the risk in those things and then perhaps added an increased score for your ethnicity. And that's across the piece. So the risk will be BME.

And maybe you'll get a couple of more points that would then throw you into an area that that needs more protection. But we know that ethnicities are not equally impacted by this. And I think it's a huge challenge, this area. Race is a huge challenge for the UK. And the response is usually to ignore it. is institutionally racist because it denies the uniqueness of individual perspective, experience, access and opportunity. And so we really need to put a lens on that responds to individuality. Carol, are you saying that within the NHS there has been a habit of assuming that somehow black lives matter less do you know if um one of the things from my background is that we are socialized not just to hear what people say but we watch what they do and if there isn't a correlation between what's been said and what's done, we become highly suspicious. And so all of the conversations about race and in all of my life, I have never been involved in so many conversations about race. Those conversations have not led to equal action.

And so, yes, the reality is black lives matter less. And that means whether you're an employee, that means whether you're a member of the community. But this is the UK experience. Black lives matter less. I was talking to Carol Cooper. Dating online had become quite the thing before the pandemic struck. So many young people now in long-term relationships seem to have met that way. But what's happening now you can only meet if you abide by remaining physically distanced from each other. Well, Katie is 21 and a student in Nottingham. Rachel is a single mother who lives in Rochester. And Gina, who's 25, lives with her family in Slough.

During the lockdown, I wouldn't say I've really had any virtual dates. I've been speaking to a lot more people, mostly boys from my past that have got back in touch, one of which was my very first boyfriend from when I was 16, which is really strange, but it's really nice like just catching up and it's nothing I think will go anywhere but yeah it's been very interesting speaking to people that I used to be involved with and I think after all of this I personally don't think I'd be you know meeting up or doing anything with someone I didn't know if I've been speaking to

someone for ages and I know what they've been up to and who they've been seeing so I know they've not broken the lockdown rules or anything then I might be interested in meeting up with them because I know that I'll be safe whereas no random boy is going to be involved in my life for a very long time. I used to date via internet dating as I am still doing now and if we did message quite a lot and clicked and there was a spark there we would meet up for a date in a public place. It has changed dramatically during this lockdown. I am still talking to men but they are always willing to meet up and at the moment with the current pandemic I'm not willing to meet up with anyone there is concern that they won't keep the two meter distance and I have my son to think about he's three years old and there are

people out there who are asymptomatic it It's changed the way I date dramatically. At the moment, I don't feel like I'm going to meet anyone during this pandemic, which is okay because I do have to think about other people. But I'm hoping that in the future, there is someone out there for me and we can go back to dating in public places and getting near each other and hopefully things will turn around. Dating during lockdown has been so different, weird almost I'd say. Mostly like walks, talking on like FaceTime. It's nice that like we've got all this time to get to know each other, but at the same time, it's kind of weird. Weird times. It's made me somewhat feel like I'm in a rush. Not that anybody's putting any sort of pressure on me, not my parents or friends or anything like that.

It's just made me feel like I'm in a rush now. Like right after lockdown is lifted, I want to go out. I want to meet somebody. I want to click with them. I want them to be my boyfriend lifted I want to go out I want to meet somebody I want to click with them I want them to be my boyfriend I want us to get married that's the way I'm thinking now that's the that's what lockdown has put into my head and I don't know why I feel like I'm in such a rush at all but that's just how I feel because these times bring out the loneliness they make you realize that oh wow you really are supposed to have a companion in these times bring out the loneliness. They make you realise that, oh, wow, you really are supposed to have a companion in these times or you really are supposed to have a companion in life. Gina, Rachel and Katie.

On Tuesday, Jane spoke to Zoe Strimple, the author of Seeking Love in Modern Britain, Gender, Dating and the Rise of the Single. And to Alani, whose podcast is called Laid Bare. How has dating changed during the lockdown? With dating, it looks like a lot of people are using video calling dating apps, for example. There's a lot of people taking their time to be intimate. And there's just also a lot of people who are realizing that they want a deeper connection with that person so they're taking their time before they I don't know try to meet up or anything so there's definitely been a shift

when it comes to the dating world and it's not all bad um I think that is something that a lot of people didn't usually do um which was just taking their time. A lot of people were enjoying their flings. Not that that's bad, but there's been less flings. And I guess people being worried or, you know, just thinking twice about whether or not they want to be in the same space as someone. Sure. Well, I mean, let's be honest about it. Anxiety at this level, and we've all been anxious, it is not an aphrodisiac, is it? It can't be. Not at all, at all. It makes you very paranoid at the same time.

So it's just about thinking of different ways you can still navigate dating and making sure that your health comes first. Zoe, we had a heartbreaking email from a woman in her early 20s, I think a couple of weeks ago, who basically was just saying that the good times are over. She's back at home with her parents and she feels this could be her summer and she's missing out because she daren't get out there.

Are you hearing a lot of stuff like that? I'm actually hearing a couple of different narratives, mostly surprisingly positive. So I think I've heard a lot of women who feel that this has actually been a really welcome reprieve on a number of levels, a reprieve from the expectation to jump into bed, which is not anyone's fault, but it's just that's the culture. So it's been the sort of opportunities that holding back have provided and then it's just been a reprieve from dating for

some people um the way that the dynamics of sort of tinder and bumble and all the apps work is that it can just feel completely uh overwhelming like you know you are just throwing so much at the wall and seeing what sticks and, for the first sort of two months, say, of lockdown, I think a lot of people just thought, this is just not patently not the time. So I'm going to just say take a step back from it all. And a lot of and I know a lot of people who just breathed a huge sigh of relief at that. There have actually been some upsides. I think there is a sort of despairing feeling for sure, if think too hard about it because of the time frames and the uncertainty involved and if you think about how we feel about putting ourselves at risk with

with STIs this is very similar and it's a really sort of psychologically swampy area really it's a really toxic area to feel that you're taking risks with your health for the sake of well what exactly so I think people are really having to figure out what that what is and deciding if it's worth it. Just on a practical level, are the apps and the websites, are they all littered with very sensible health advice at the moment? I have to confess, I haven't been spending all that much time on the apps, but I think the way they present all of their little messages and things

is basically like another profile. So you're swiping, swiping, swiping, and then suddenly the thing you're swiping is a sort of message saying, you know, we at Tinder want you to enjoy talking to each other, but stay safe. But by the time you sort of see it, you've already swiped it.

So that is, in a way, because the whole system is rigged up to be incredibly blasé and quick and callous and swipe everything, those safety messages get lost as well. Right. I mean, it's a brutal world. Alani, the dynamics of a date online, do they work, honestly? They do. And that's another thing about dating apps. A lot of them have tapped into a market of, you know, dating from home the that's what everyone's saying it's called

virtual dating at the moment so those are the words that we're using now and it is you can you know pop down to your local corner shop get yourself a bottle of water look forwards to the evening just like you would in the real world and you plan a day a night that you can with the person of interest and there's just so many ways you can enjoy yourself as well. So it can still definitely work. And I guess it helps you filter whether or not you would actually want to meet up with this person. Can I say, I find it hard enough to leave the Woman's Hour Zoom meeting and to get the etiquette right. How do you call time on a video date, Ilani? So it's all about just making

sure that there is a connection um and making sure like you know if this person is someone you wouldn't mind having a conversation what if you just want to get shot of them within five minutes is there is there an etiquette there not really i don't think there is so you'd have to basically more or less just treat it like you would when talking to your friends but you know even as someone who's currently using dating apps I found myself talking to people and saying to myself do you know what I really like to join to this person I'll make time for them tonight and we can have a virtual date and see how it goes from there. Alani and Zoe Strimple were talking to Jane. Someone who didn't want their name used sent us an email which went I listened to the debate this morning about dating

and Covid with interest. I thought it was significant that your interviewees were all young and therefore had most of their dating lives ahead of them. I'm approaching my 68th birthday and was widowed two and a half years ago after being married for more than 40 years. I was just starting to tentatively begin thinking about the possibility of a future relationship when COVID struck. It's now difficult to imagine a society where that will be possible for a very long time. The prospect of never being someone's special person again

is quite disheartening. Meanwhile, as time moves on, my options get less, so spare a thought for we older women putting a toe in the dating pond. Monday has been designated World Oceans Day. Two thirds of our planet is covered in water, split into five distinct oceans and most of us are well aware

of the damage human beings are doing to them. There are vast areas where plastic floats on the surface. Coral reefs have suffered for some years and the creatures that live in the sea continue to be harmed. Well, on Monday, BBC4 will broadcast a documentary called Ocean Autopsy. It will be presented by the oceanographer Dr Helen Schieske and the zoologist Dr George McGavin. And their autopsy has concentrated its efforts close to home,

in the North Sea. Why? The North Sea is a very good place to pick because it's been affected by humans for a long time. It is a shallow shelf sea, which means that it's not part of the deep ocean, you know, out the huge Atlantic and Pacific. It is connected to the Atlantic through the channel

and through the North Sea. But humans, you know, it's got all these countries surrounding it. And through all of that time, humans have been migrating across it, farming next to it, putting things in it. So fishing in it, you know, all of those things. So if you want to go and look for one place

where human influence has been strongest for the longest period, the North Sea is a pretty good, you know, petri dish to have a look at. So, Helen, how harmful are these micro and nano plastics? People think about plastic in the ocean. You think about these pictures of beaches with big bits of plastic washed up. But honestly, the big bits are not really the problem. They look ugly. Obviously, they're not a good thing. The problem is that sunlight breaks plastic down and you get these tiny, tiny pieces. And there's a few things that, you know, reasons they're difficult. The first thing is they're basically the same size as lots of the life in the ocean. So first of all, things eat them, thinking that

they're food, because most things that float around in the ocean of that size are food. But the plastics also accumulate chemicals, you know, other pollutants in the water column and act as vehicles for them, carrying them around and concentrating them. We're still trying to work out, first of all, where these microplastics are and how many of them there are, because we do know that we can add up the amount of plastics we've put in the ocean and we can add up the amount that we've found. And the amount that we haven't found is 99%. So there's a lot of lost plastic in there. What hope is there that they could be got rid of? There was mention of some fungi that might be able to eat plastic without it being harmed.

We have things like oil. Oil is a natural substance. And so some creatures have got enzymes that could, you know, could eat that. So we know bacteria can a little bit, but fungi, that's a relatively new thing. So the chief scientist of the ship, Helgeman from the you know the Dutch oceanographic institution his work is looking at whether these fungi can break it down and it's and he does find them on tiny pieces of plastic what it is is life in the ocean being adaptable and finding a potential food source and either evolving or using the enzymes it's already got to eat it. So there may be fungi. That was one of the outcomes from this expedition,

that he's one of the first scientists going to look for this kind of stuff. And he could see fungi on tiny pieces of plastic, and they do seem to be living on it. They do seem to be incorporating it into their bodies. Because these tiny plastics are the same size as everything in the ocean, you can't filter them out. You have to stop putting them in. But it does seem potentially as though the fungi might be giving us a little bit of a

helping hand. But really, you know, the problem is ours. The ocean can't solve it all for us. A lot of your work concentrates on bubbles. What do bubbles teach us about the ocean? I can tell from your voice, it's very important that you know that bubbles are a very serious field of study. So yes I study breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface and bubbles at other places in the ocean and they do lots of things but the biggest thing really is they help the ocean breathe and that means that there's a lot of different gases in the atmosphere, there's a lot of different gases dissolved in the oceans and bubbles are little vehicles that help gases go from one to the other so i go out to sea on big research expeditions and trying to understand the number of bubbles and where they are and how

they're formed and how they act as vehicles how they help bring carbon dioxide down into the ocean during big storms for example or when they burst so when you help you know if you hold a fizzy drink up under your nose you'll feel it spitting tiny particles up your nose the white patches of foam on the ocean surface do exactly the same thing they spit particles upwards and they can carry things into the atmosphere and they that can affect clouds and so bubbles do sound like a fun topic and they absolutely are however they are filling you know they're in lots of places in the surface ocean and they are doing things they don't just sit there they're helping move things around they're changing the way the ocean looks the way it sounds and they're moving gases and particles around so that so it is and it's an important climate change study as well because if

we want to understand how the engine of our ocean works then it's really important to dig down into what they're actually doing and why i was talking to to Dr. Helen Shersky. Still to come in today's programme, how disabled women who are shielded because they're considered extremely clinically vulnerable to COVID-19 are coping with never being allowed out of the house. And the other one, a new comedy about half-sisters who only meet after their father's death. As I said earlier, the death of George Floyd has led to protests worldwide about racism in the police. The charge against the Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, has been elevated to second-degree murder. Three other police officers who were originally sacked now face counts of aiding and abetting murder. What are black parents in this country saying to their youngsters

about some of the images coming from America? Jane spoke to Aisha Small, a former teacher from Hertfordshire, Amma Okansi, a lawyer, and Teiko Dornell, who works as a social worker in London. She has three children. The two eldest are seven and eight. How does she want to tackle the topic of race and racism with them? I'm really on the team where I'm just like their children, let them be children. You know, they don't have to know about the venom of racism at the age of seven and eight let them go to school enjoy their time at school and then if the issue comes up when they're older

we'll deal with it whereas their dad is more like you know this is the reality of the world people are getting killed we've got a son we've got a daughter they are black people and there are people out there that will not like them just because their color the sooner they know they're better for everybody i know that you and your your husband differ slightly in the sense that you grew up in london in stanmore in london um you had a happy happy adolescence and childhood no incidents at all of racism no i didn't and I was talking to some of my old school friends because we all just grew up went to school primary school was amazing it was literally like one big happy rainbow family and so I put a poster on Facebook and Instagram

and basically a lot of my friends from other schools and other areas were like, you know, I had incidents where white children wouldn't play with me. They would call me names. Their parents didn't want them to play with me. I was bullied. And I just felt like, wow, did this really happen in the UK? Because I went to school, came home, had my dinner, went back to school, went on my school trips. So my experience of racism growing up was kind of like it didn't really affect me and also my parents. Now I'm just like, wow, do I really need to have this conversation? And I think, unfortunately, the answer is yes, because we can't ignore it.

Amma, your situation is slightly different. You have one child who's a son, he's 11 and again there's disagreement between you and your partner but I think it's the opposite way around to take her, is that correct? Yes it is. My husband grew up in Ghana and came to the UK to continue studying medicine and I grew up here in the UK. I actually came to the UK when I was seven years old. So I've had a very English upbringing and my husband has had a very Ghanaian upbringing. And his view of the world is that there's lots of isms. And having grown up in Ghana,

there was lots of tribalism where there was preferences for people to give grant favours and to prefer people of the same tribe. So his view is that you don't necessarily have to focus on that. Whereas I grew up here and I did have incidences growing up where racism did come up and I had to discuss that with my parents. I have to admit it wasn't severe, it wasn't continuous, but things did happen. And I did question why people were treating me differently. In terms of what's happening now, and particularly when you think about how much children are exposed to via social media, there is no way that you can stop your very young son

seeing these horrendous images. I mean, is there is there any way you could stop that happening? There isn't. And to be honest, I prefer not to. I very much think that things need to be explained to him and he needs to understand the impact of racism in the world and how it could impact his life and his upbringing. So as much as it's violent, as disturbing as it is, we talk about it and he asks me questions and I explain it because I want him to be prepared. We don't live in an ideal world and I don't want to raise an adult who's naive or isn't aware of the fact that the colour of his skin may make his life very different to that of his white counterparts. I just want to mention this email from a listener who says,

you got the biggest eye roll from me when I heard Jane announce the key topic for Tuesday's edition of the show. My first thought was which carob cookie munching nettle tea drinking imbecile was responsible for that. I'm disappointed, yet not surprised, that editorially it was decided it would be a good idea to tackle the challenges of raising black children as if black parents are referring to a special handbook that only they have exclusive access to. Which is why I bring in Aisha Small, and she's in Hertfordshire.

Aisha, actually, I think there's quite a bit of that email that you'd go along with, isn't there? I think that it's traumatising for black people to always have to hear themselves referred to in terms of death and murder and mistreatment. And that is generally what happens when we're talking about the media, even though we all have much fuller lives and we're not defined by that. And in some respects it's kind of annoying is that uh we've each been asked to talk about this and we all have views on lots of other topics but we're only going to be here to talk about basically trauma which is in essence what

black people are always asked to talk about on mainstream media pretty much well i mean let us put those points to our other contributors teikoiko, what do you think of that? Well, unfortunately, I think it is true. I mean, we do have stories to share. But for me, as a parent, I'm honestly just looking to listen to other opinions at this moment because I found myself traumatised as an adult and also as a parent having to do something which I don't necessarily want to do or tackle. I think black people and representation in the media is, I don't know, I would say poor and selective.

As she said so rightly, we are kind of called on to talk about trauma and to talk about things concerning crime or negative issues but I think it's also important to hear from other black parents and their experience so that we can share and learn and grow and also to inform your other listeners who may not know any black people or may not be friends with any black people just to hear our experiences and our stories because i think this is affecting everybody i know there have been other cases of violence and racism and you know people do talk about racism black people experience racism and you know sometimes people roll their eyes or say you know what it's just pulling out the race card but for a lot of people they are treated differently on a daily basis.

They feel the change of atmosphere in the room. It's something that we all need to address. So I'm glad that certain platforms are actually opening up and having people talk about their stories, their experiences. And moving forward, after George Floyd, the spotlight has kind of moved again and then we're talking about something else in the news I would hope and pray that we still have the opportunity to hear our views to talk about our stories as part of a society not just a part of society which is only required when there's a crime or there's an incident. Right. And again, Amma, what do you think of Aisha's central point

and the point made by our emailer that it's the same old, same old. Black women, black people are wheeled out only at times like this and it's not right. I disagree with that because I think that black people are wheeled out to talk about the various different things in society i think this is pertinent at this time because of what's happened to george floyd and the fact that there has been no progress and i think that as adults we owe it to our children to explain to them and to prepare them from the world and yes, it's disappointing that this is being discussed.

We've also got to remember that we've got Brexit. There are issues about people saying things that they wouldn't have felt that they could say before that. We've got the rise of populism. We've got Trumpism. We've got COVID and its disproportionate impact on Black people. There's lots of things that are happening in the world that are impacting our race. And it needs to be discussed, but it needs to be balanced.

So I don't spend all my time discussing all this stuff with my son and nothing else. I discuss the achievements, arts, the literature, the good things, politics, the successes, how wonderful life is. So I don't think it has to be a one-all discussion and focus on negativity. I think it needs to be balanced. Aisha, what would you like to say about that? I want to share with my children for as long as possible, so they're six, six and nine. But also in doing that, you have to balance,

well, we've decided that we have to try and balance, how do you let them think that the world's a great place because they need to do that to feel safe and secure but not so much so that they are at risk so my son's nine um you know he'll be 10 this year and next year he'll be going to school on his own and we decided that we really do need to have a much bigger talk with him when he starts to be in places that when he's not there with us so you know but at the same time racism doesn't wait until people are old enough our girls experience racism when they were four years old in reception so you know as much as i'd like to shield them from it it does still happen um and then we have had to explain to

them why it was they were being called names because it was just confusing to them they didn't know why so yeah i don't know i think there's kind of like an escalation so it's kind of you know some people won't like you because of the colour of your skin. And then it's like some people might treat you differently because of the sun in your skin. And then, you know, for our son, as he's walking around, it might be, which is the heartbreaking thing, you may be in more danger because of the colour of your skin. And from organisations and institutions that actually are supposed to protect you. That's the heartbreaking thing.

Aisha Small, Amma Okansi and Teiko Dornor. Now, most of us are beginning, I think, to breathe a slight sigh of relief as some of the restrictions of lockdown are eased. You can travel a bit further to see people, invite a couple of friends to your garden and even go out to shop for something other than food or medicine.

But for one large group of people, there is no such liberty on the horizon. They're people with medical conditions that make them extremely clinically vulnerable to COVID-19. How are disabled women finding the experience and what support are they getting? Well, Katie Penick is a journalist and activist on the part of the disabled and uses a wheelchair herself. She's spoken to three other women in similar circumstances to hers. My name is Fee Anderson. I'm communications manager for a non-profit supporting parents with disabilities like myself called Enable to Parent. I'm also in the extremely high risk group and I'm shielding at home in Greater Manchester with my husband and two primary aged children. Hello my name is Sharbha Jaya, I'm a

public policy academic at UCL. I teach about the non-profit sector and leadership. I'm also shielding in the clinically high risk group and I am at home in North London with my husband and my son who are also shielding. Hi I'm Dr Amy Kavanagh I'm a visually impaired activist and campaigner I am not shielding but I am facing many challenges in accessing the world now that we're in the new normal. Let's talk first about the immediate changes and impact that this has had. Fi, how has shielding affected the way that you organise and receive the care and support that you need? Everything kind of went upside down the day lockdown came into effect. Suddenly I had all these extra responsibilities to do with my personal assistance. I of course had my two children at home all of a sudden and trying to juggle my care needs was challenging in the

beginning until we got into a routine. I'm on a scheme called Direct Payments where I self-manage my own care with a budget given to me by Social Care. And we didn't get any kind of instructions until about two weeks ago on what to do with our personal assistants, which are, you know, the carers, which should have really been grouped in with the whole support that they were

given to care homes and and things like that carers out in the community kind of got forgotten about and this issue on on ppe how does that work who provides the ppe for people on direct payments we are told to source them ourselves um you're not given any instruction on what kind of brands of masks and things you're supposed to provide your personal assistance with, whether they need to be the same grade as NHS workers working with COVID patients directly, or whether they can, you know, be okay with like a plain old surgical mask. We were just told your PAs must have PPE and you need to sort it and pay for it yourself which was very very stressful because obviously I care a lot about the people coming in and out of my home and it's my responsibility at the end of the day being on direct payments to

make sure they're safe as well as ourselves. So the direct payments documentation that came out about two weeks ago says that anybody who's on a ventilator, which I am at night, their PAs need to be fully gowned up. And I'm talking about aprons, face shield, the whole shebang. And if you can can imagine I've got young children and you know it's not been possible yet for PAs to come in wearing all this but can you imagine how intimidating that is for my little girls and of course I want to keep my PAs safe but I don't know where to get this stuff from and I haven't got the extra funds to buy it. I mean, apparently people on direct payments were supposed to be given contingency money to pay for PPE.

But I haven't been given any and neither has several people I know who are on the same scheme. We're just kind of sourcing it ourselves little by little on Amazon and eBay. Well, we did reach out to the Department for Health and Social Care to comment on this issue. We're just kind of sourcing it ourselves little by little on Amazon and eBay. Well, we did reach out to the Department for Health and Social Care to comment on this issue. And a spokesperson told us, to safely provide care and support. If direct payment holders cannot source PPE as they would normally do, the relevant local authorities or clinical commissioning groups should support them in accessing it using national supply lines. Srabaja, you are also in the extremely high risk category, but you live with your husband and 21-old son. So what precautions do you have to take within your own household? So my son came back from university when they sent all the students home.

So we had to self-isolate from each other. And when I see them still, we do keep two metres apart, particularly if they have to pop out at all and I'm really confined to the front room really. So you all sleep in different rooms? Yes yes and also I have my meals brought to me I don't go in the kitchen. My husband and I share a bathroom and luckily my son has his own. So every time we use our bathroom, it's cleaned before the next person needs to use it. And how has shielding affected the care that you receive? I do receive a package as well from the local authority and had a carer.

But when the whole thing kicked off, she was also concerned and I was also concerned. We had a chat about the situation really. And I, with much reluctance, let her go because she goes into multiple houses she travels on public transport she didn't have PPE she couldn't get testing and I just felt that it was making us far too vulnerable for her to come and and look after me when we've got three people in the house who are all potentially high risk of hospitalisation if we can track Covid. She herself felt it was very difficult as well and we had quite an emotional parting actually where we're both sort of tearful. Amy, not all disabled women necessarily fall into this this high risk category and aren't shielding. You're one of them. You're not shielding.

But nevertheless, how have things changed for you at home? So I'm not shielding. I don't have any underlying health conditions, but I am visually impaired. And I think that there is a large group of disabled people who haven't got these letters, may have health conditions or disabilities that are having a real impact on the way that they are living now. For myself, I've basically lost my independence. I now can't go outside without my sighted partner

who lives with me. He's having to do a lot more caring responsibilities around the house and also out and about because I cannot practice social distancing. I can't see two metres away. My vision isn't good enough for that. I don't have depth perception. So in the first, you know, early weeks, I did go out by by myself but I found it really challenging people were still walking into me my cane was making contact with people which meant that they weren't two meters away because my cane is only 125 centimeters long and I tried to go to the shop and found it really challenging so I'm'm feeling quite isolated. It's affecting my mental health quite a lot. I live with anxiety anyway. And this situation makes a lot of that more challenging at the moment. that didn't get that letter, do you think there has been enough support for those disabled women, including blind and visually impaired women, who aren't vulnerable enough to be on this list, but are nevertheless really struggling to do the weekly shop?

Absolutely. You know, blind and visually impaired people were not recognised early on as people facing particular barriers during this crisis. I have friends that waited five weeks to get on online shopping lists when they physically could not access the shops. I think there are a lot of people who will have had some really radical changes to the way that they can be independent and their ability to navigate the world in the way that they are used to doing. So yeah, I think there is a really big forgotten group of people who have a whole host of different barriers and challenges. You know, there's 13.9 million disabled people in the UK. And it's anything from a mobility impairment,

meaning a new cycleway is blocking a dropped curb, a new inaccessible shop because you're visually impaired, or somebody who's neurodiverse that is just finding the wealth of information really overwhelming and challenging. Amy Kavanagh, Sarabha Jaya Kumar and Fi Anderson. A new comedy series began last night on BBC One, which is largely an all-female affair. It's called The Other One, and the basis of the story is the revelation, after the sudden death of a father, that he not only had a wife and

daughter called Catherine Walcott, but had conducted a 30-year affair with Marilyn, with whom he had another daughter, also called Catherine Walcott, and born within days of her half-sister. Here's Kathy, played by Ellie White, meeting her sister Kat, played by Lauren Saoirse, and her mother Marilyn, played by Siobhan Finnehan, for the first time. Oh, that is uncanny. You two are the spit of each other. Oh. Cat got his lovely arse, you got his lovely eyes. Oh, God, I loved his arse and his eyes. Oh, thanks ever so much for coming over, Cathy, love. Do you want an energy drink? Oh, I'm good, thanks. I'm trying to wean myself off caffeine.

How are you coping with this passing, darling? Oh, really well, yeah. I've watched, like, every TED Talk there is on bereavement and I'm really rattling through those seven stages of grief. I'm already on stage five. I skipped denial. So I'll probably go back to work quite soon. What's your job? Oh, I work in reinsurance.

So I guess in layman's terms, I insure insurance companies. So I basically manage risk. I actually like to joke and I say, I'm not a risk taker. I'm a risk taker away-er. Oh, my God, I love takeaways. Because it's another thing we've got in common. Well, the young women are far from the spit of each other both in looks class and character but they managed to achieve a bond

i spoke to ellie white and the creator and director of the series holly walsh where did this idea come from i had a friend who told me about some friends of her parents in the 70s who had exactly this happen to them they had the guy had two families and he called one both the both the children were called the same name so that if he ever got stopped in the street and says someone said oh how's thomas he could just instantly reply without breaking his stride so i thought that's such a brilliant idea for a sitcom and i was also not that interested in this two-timing man I was kind of interested in what everybody else felt about it so sort of taking him out of the equation and killing him off early really helped the story how easy was it to create a whole series when I think originally it was commissioned as a one-off we did it as a one-off we wrote it as a one-off I don't

think we expected to get a series and then what was the joy of it was that the pilot was so fun to make and I think we struck gold with our cast the chemistry was so easy and fun to watch that it just became very straightforward to write because we just knew who the characters were and that's you know any writer will tell you that's like the the biggest bit is working out who the characters are so once once the actors have bought these amazing kind of um 3d uh characters alive we were just just so fun to write really so heli how would you describe your kathy she's the um she's the calm one on the surface on the surface I think she's she's definitely got undertones of sort of neurotic and tightly woundness yes she's kind of got a very practical approach to life as

you heard in the clip with her how she dealt with her grief and I think that's kind of slowly unwound a little bit by meeting her half-sister. And I have to confess that I intended yesterday just watching one episode because I knew I was going to be interviewing you both. And I'm afraid I actually sat through the whole lot. I literally binge watched the whole lot. and i i was in hysterics when when kathy gets obsessed with a spot on the wall just before she's due to get married yeah and and paints the whole wall blue how did you get the paint off your face ellie when you end up with blue i think i think it was water-based was it holly it was i think it was a water-based painting, so it came off quite easily. I thought you had it on for four or five weeks afterwards.

No, yeah, I did. I was a smurf for a long time. You're like a member of the Blue Man Group for a few days. Holly, I know you worked with one other writer, Pippa Brown, rather than a team, as you have on on Motherland which you're also responsible for what was it like just working with one other rather than a group of you you know what was brilliant because Pippa also produced it so we really kept a tight sort of unit and so Pippa and I get our friends anyway and we we well I just had a baby that's one of the reasons why it took so long to make because I had to have a baby in the middle of it all and so I just passed the baby

back and forth to Pippa and because she's such a good friend she just like was so really brilliant with my child well there was more than two of us in the writer's room there seemed to be three of us with the with the little kid as well so we would just laugh and if what we whatever we laughed at we wrote down and then in the sort of stages, we went through it all and tried to work out what would work and what fitted with the characters and stuff. So I have to say, writing it was a joy. It was really fun. And Ellie, what was it like to play a character that I know Holly has said is based on her and then be directed by her as to how to play her yeah it was uh you know it was um I felt suffocated um no I didn't it was it was wonderful I I mean you know yes I think probably Holly did base some of it on her, but I think with any acting role,

you can bring your own, your own character to it as well. And your own ideas. And Holly allowed me a lot of freedom with that. So it was an honor. I was overjoyed that someone, someone made it so, so much funnier than the reality of it,

that I'm just a very nerdy straight boring person would you would you get obsessed with a a mark on your wall to the degree that you oh my gosh to go out and buy paint yes I mean I think previously to having children I would have really worried about a mark on the wall but now my house has got this sort of this layer of scum all around the house from my small children so I can't worry about it anymore but yeah that is completely me Ellie though brought her own neurosis to it so I was I was about to ask Ellie what neuroses of her own she brought to the character oh I don't think people want to know that I don't think people the list is endless um no I'm very laid back I'm very unneurotic I'm incredibly easy to work with what what does having the writer on set

bring to the production Ellie I love being directed by people who've written the show because I think they they know the script out. They know the characters so well. Often it works so well with a vision of what the entire show looks like and not just visually, but what the characters look like and how they interact with each other. And when someone knows the script that tightly, it's quite inspiring. Holly Walsh and Ellie White and the other one is available now on BBC iPlayer. Now do join Jane for Monday's programme, usual time, just after 10 o'clock.

Meanwhile, from me, enjoy the rest of the weekend. Stay safe. Bye bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven 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 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.