Woman's Hour - Comedian Rosie Jones, Grooming gangs, Playing outside

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

We discuss the key recommendations of Baroness Louise Casey's report into child sexual exploitation and abuse, and ask what might change as a result? Nuala McGovern is joined by guests including BBC social affairs editor Alison Holt, social worker-turned-whistleblower Jayne Senior and documentary director Anna Hall, who has spent the past two decades covering the subject of grooming gangs. Comedian, actor and writer Rosie Jones joins Nuala to discuss her first sitcom, Pushers, which she stars in and co-wrote. She plays Emily in the Channel 4 show, who has very little left to lose after having her disability benefits cut when she loses her job - she finds herself building an illegal drugs empire. Emily isn’t your average street-dealer though - she’s sharp, funny, highly educated and has cerebral palsy. What better disguise could there be for criminal activity than to be entirely written off by society? Children are not playing outside enough, according to a new report by the Raising the Nation Play Commission, but instead are "sedentary, scrolling and alone". Nineteen commissioners, from doctors to campaigners, spent a year investigating play and childhood in England for the report. Among their recommendations are raising the digital age of consent to 16 and putting in place a statutory "play sufficiency duty" for local authorities. Joining Nuala to discuss this are Baroness Anne Longfield, executive chair of Centre for Young Lives and co-leader of the commission, and Debbie Watson, Professor of Child and Family Welfare at the University of Bristol. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Sarah Jane Griffiths

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. One of the most famous faces of her time. She was a beautiful woman, a sex symbol, a Hollywood star who was never seen for who she really was. As an inventor, as a brain, a genius that history overlooked. The explosion in telecommunication sciences that was in large due to Lamar. That should not be forgotten. From the BBC World Service, untold legends, Hedy Lamar. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

BBC Sounds, music, radio radio podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, we continue our coverage of Baroness Casey's report. We want to look at what, if anything changes after the publication of Casey's audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, with the recommendations offered by Baroness Casey and also the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday, how long will it take to enact the discussed changes and are vulnerable girls in any way safer today than they were yesterday? Also this hour, the comedian, actor and writer Rosie Jones. Rosie has created a new sitcom, Pushers, where a young disabled woman becomes an inconspicuous drug dealer. It is very very funny but it's also hard-hitting on the issues

facing disabled people. Rosie will be with me in studio. And sedentary, scrolling and alone. That's how a commission described how many children are growing up with less time spent outdoors than previous generations. The sedentary, scrolling and alone. That's how a commission described how many children are growing up with less time spent outdoors than previous generations. The co-leader of that report, Baroness Anne Longfield, the former Children's Commissioner for England, is calling for urgent action to create more opportunities for children to play outdoors and away from digital devices. Now it advocates for unstructured play, giving children freedom and independence and I'd like to hear from you on just how much freedom have you given or do you give your children when it comes to exploring and

experiencing the outdoor world at times without you? Are there some examples perhaps you'd like to share on what your child was able to do independently and at what age, how do you or did you decide the line? And you know, was it difficult to let go? You can text the programme, the number is 84844 on social media or at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note, the number is 03700 100 444. But I do want to begin with the story that we started covering yesterday. You will have also seen that Parliament heard a searing and shocking indictment of child sexual exploitation as a new report by Baroness Louise Casey was published.

This was the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, addressing the Commons. At its heart she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation and serious violence, and from the scars that last a lifetime. She finds too much fragmentation in the authority's response, too little sharing of information, too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice, too many criminals getting off, too many victims being let down. The audit describes victims as young as 10, often those in care or children with learning or physical disabilities, being singled out for grooming precisely because of their vulnerability.

Perpetrators still walking free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims that they had exploited. The Home Secretary there will end the forward to her report. Baroness Louise Casey wrote, if we'd got this right years ago, seeing these girls as children raped rather than wayward teenagers or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job, then I doubt we'd be in this place now. One of her key recommendations is to tighten the law

in England and Wales so adults who have sex with children under 16 are always charged with rape. Despite the age of consent being 16, the report says there are too many examples of child sexual exploitation cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges, where a teenager has been, and I quote, in love with, unquote, or quote, consented to, unquote, sex with a perpetrator. Let us get reaction this morning from a number of guests. I'm joined by Jane Senior, who's a youth worker and a former manager of Risky Business in Rotherham, a youth project set up in 1997 by Rotherham Council to work with girls and young women at risk of sexual exploitation.

We also have the filmmaker, Anna Hall. She was on Woman's Hour, you might remember, just a few weeks ago, talking about her documentary Groomed, a national scandal, where she followed five young women who were victims of grooming gangs or rape gangs as they are known. We also have Anne Longfield, the former children's commissioner. I talked about the report that we'd be speaking to her about later in the program, but also she is so well placed that we've brought her in as part of this discussion

as well. But I want to begin with Alison Holt who's the BBC's social affairs editor. You're very welcome to the programme Alison. Louise Casey will be speaking to MPs at the Home Affairs Select Committee. That's in less than half an hour, about 20 minutes or so. What do you expect her to be driving home? Well, I think she'll be driving home the message that is at the top of her report we have to do much better in terms of protecting children. I mean she makes the point very strongly that when you don't have enough information you create a vacuum and then each side can take that and run with it and you get a lot of heated argument but

no light and in that situation children are not well protected and that is the theme through her report because she says the same patterns of behavior the same problems are highlighted in her audit which was out yesterday as for instance she highlighted a decade ago in Rotherham when she looked at how the council was tackling grooming gangs there. You know, for instance, she made a recommendation around tightening licensing of taxis in Rotherham at the time because they were seen as an area where there was exploitation happening. Yesterday she set out plans for a national loophole tightening so that cab drivers couldn't move from one area to another and avoid that sort of scrutiny.

What about that issue as well that I was mentioning, a change in the law regarding adults who have sex with a child? Yeah, I think this is seen as really, really important because so often, and you can speak to many abuse survivors who will describe that same pattern of grooming where they think that the person who they start off chatting, they might start with a laugh when they're talking on the street or these days online and they think they have a relationship with that person. They will say, oh I love him or he loves me, but in reality it's a grooming relationship, it's a power relationship and as time passes that person then effectively trades that child with other people. I mean it's absolutely tragic and it will take, for

many people, years to shift the way they think about how they were treated because they have been groomed. So by toughening up the law around rape and making it really clear that if a child under 16 is having a sexual relationship with an adult that cannot be consensual. That is about grooming and if it's a full sexual relationship, then it is rape. And I will be explicit here and graphic just to let my listeners know, but what they specified was penetrative sex, so whether that is vaginal or mouth or anus, that those then would become the charges of rape as opposed to lesser that were under, and I put this in inverted commas as well, the boyfriend model that they are trying to tackle with this

particular report. Has there been a response from the police to these proposed changes? Well as part of yesterday's rollout of this report we had the Home Secretary in the Commons talking about how the National Crime Agency will carry out a nationwide operation to target predators who have sexually exploited children. So they want them to look in detail to go after these cases, historic or current, and to I guess change the way in which we deal with this so that there aren't those question marks over whether or not it should be investigated. It should be investigated. That is the message from Louise Casey.

The Director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Millichamp, had this to say, says the report published by Baroness Casey includes several recommendations with implications for policing which will now be carefully considered. They say we're sorry to all of those who experience child sexual abuse and exploitation. The pain, trauma and long-lasting impact experienced by victims and survivors is immeasurable. We recognise that for too long your voices went unheard and opportunities to protect some of the most vulnerable members of our communities were missed. I heard yesterday a lot about this being

time limited in scope when it comes to the national inquiry into grooming gangs that the government announced just in advance of this publication, as Manny focusing on the U-turn by the government. But how long can we expect that to last now? And what can we expect, I suppose, the outcome to be? Because of course, Manny point back to other inquiries that have taken place previously. I think it's three years, but I do need to check that because I think a lot of these details are still being worked out. But it's an interesting model. One of the things that they are saying is that rather than an overarching inquiry as we had with the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse which

lasted seven years and looked at a whole range of different types of sexual abuse it sounds like this inquiry will focus in on local areas. So you will have local seven years and looked at a whole range of different types of sexual abuse. It sounds like this inquiry will focus in on local areas. So you will have local investigations into what is happening in terms of child exploitation, but you will have the powers of the National Inquiry and that overarching eye on what is going on so that if there's difficulty getting documents, if there is not enough challenge going on, it has the legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence. So it will draw those threads together but look in specific areas at what's happening. I thought it was interesting looking at the interview that Louise Casey gave to the BBC.

She talked about what changed her mind about a national inquiry and it was about when she spoke to some local authorities that they just weren't facing up to what happened. Yeah, and I think that has been a theme over the last however many decades. I think, you know, in a bit you're going to be talking to Jane and you're going to be talking to Anna. And they will have seen that in practice in terms of not getting answers to questions when issues have been raised and being dismissed because of the ethnicity in different places of the perpetrators. And, you know, one of the big points that is made in this is that we need to collect much better data on the ethnicity of perpetrators in the areas where they have collected it. They've seen, as the report says, a disproportionate number of men of

Asian ethnicity identified among the suspects. But that's the type of information which, if you don't have it, does a disservice to those communities and also to victims. But then the final goal being with having that information? If you can understand the problem, you can understand what are the drivers to exploitation wherever it happens in whatever community, and you will find it across all communities.

I think if you ignore the, if you think it can only happen in one place then the then you're ignoring it happening somewhere else. If we can understand the drivers then we have a chance of changing them and making a difference for the future. That's the that's the theme that runs strongly through Baroness Casey's report. Alison Holt the BBC social affairs, her pieces are up online at the moment on the BBC website, going through a lot of the specifics as we kind of understand the story on day two that we began covering yesterday. I do want to bring in my other guest, Jane Senior, I mentioned, a youth worker who worked for more than a decade to expose the issue

of child sexual exploitation within Roderum. Her efforts included acting as a whistleblower for a series of articles in The Times about the council's apparent attempts to cover up the abuse. We also have the filmmaker Anna Hall, who was on Woman's Hour a few weeks ago, speaking about her documentary Groomed, a national scandal. It is available on Channel 4 to stream. And Anne Longfield, who is here to talk about children Children and Play which we'll talk about later in the program but as a former Children's Commissioner you have a huge amount of experience dealing with these issues we've been speaking about at the top of the program this morning over many many years. Let me begin with you Anne in studio with me. What's your

reaction to hearing Louise Casey's report and recommendations? Well, it was a great report. She told us exactly how it was. It was full of dismay, some anger as well. Let's remember that we heard all of this, some of it from Louise herself a decade ago, some of it from Louise herself, a decade ago. And frankly then, you know, the nation, I felt, were aghast at the fact that we hadn't, you know, we hadn't accepted that vulnerable girls weren't entering consensual relationships with older men, that actually was part of a business model of grooming, that children weren't believed and the judgment fell in favour of the perpetrators. All of those things, I felt a decade ago a nation had been shocked by that and wanted something different. Ten years on, so many of those are back today. So there has to be no doubt for anyone in any of those services that are there to protect children that actually from today these children have to be at the top of the

list. But do you think this can bring about meaningful change? Absolutely. But why now as opposed to ten years ago? Well there is a question there but I obviously having worked and highlighted many issues about vulnerable children for so long, wanted that to be the point, the tipping point last time 10 years ago. I think there is, you know, the moment where the nation becomes deeply concerned, and then it moves into operation and there seems to have been a mix of it's difficult, an element of complacency, an element of squeamishness and in all of these it's the children who slip through the net and fall from

view and this has been you know a wake-up call yet again. It has to move now into an absolute mission. It's interesting even mentioning that word squeamishness because I know it came up with some of the reporting on ethnicity, but also when you read the stories of what these girls have gone through, it is very distressing and difficult to even read the words on the page. But we should remember they've lived through this. Exactly. That's where our responsibilities as public servants have to be.

It's not about us. Let me bring in Jane Senior. Jane, good to have you with us. Thank you for joining us this morning. I was just reading back on some of the articles. You were the person who handed over a lot of information to Andrew Norfolk, who sadly died last month, but who brought this reporting to the fore. And I'm wondering how you're seeing this moment.

I think it's a bit bittersweet. It's kind of a mixture of why has it took 10 years, you know, why when both the Alexis J and Baroness Ke's reports came out into Rotherham was not every politician upstanding and screaming about wanting change then. You know it's another damning report and it's a difficult read and it's very bittersweet to actually read it and think you know maybe we are going to see lasting change. It's great that we're going to be seeing children as children. And that is one of the recommendations because I don't know any other area of abuse

where we would actually, like we did in Rotherham, say that children were consenting, they were complicit, they were making informed choices, they were lying, you know. And what we now know about Rotherham is these children were telling informed choices, they were lying, you know, and what we now know about Rotherham is these children were telling the truth but we've had to wait 10 years again for another report to kind of shine a light on that. You know somebody got in touch this morning saying are there going to be any

changes to the care homes which failed to protect young girls in this sordid abuse? Do you have any thoughts on that Jane? It's a difficult one, I do visit a lot of care homes and I see some really girls in this sordid abuse. Do you have any thoughts on that, Jane? It's a difficult one. I do visit a lot of care rooms and I see some really good practice. And again, I see poor practice. But, you know, what we need is a change in legislation. And when we talk about mandatory reporting, for me, what does that actually mean? Does that mean that we're going to look, do it in retrospect? Are we going to look backwards? Are we going to kind of hold people to account? We sit here today in 2025, not one person in Rotherham in a

senior position of power that could have made changes happen has ever been held to account. So if we've got people that work in care rooms or whistleblowing mandatory reporting, is there then the so what kind of what's going to happen? Are they going to be listened to? Are they going to be protected? And are people going to be arrested? Is there going to be any criminal teeth when it comes to mandatory reporting? I suppose Jane what people are trying to figure out is whether there has been a mind shift, a culture shift in the way that young, vulnerable girls are looked at. I think that's very different as you look across different pockets of good practice and still poor practice in the UK. And again,

that tends to be around individual professionals. I've sat in statutory meetings and case conferences over the last six months. And I've wanted to bang my head on the table into how professionals are describing vulnerable children. And then I've listened to other people. How do they describe them? Again you know it's always about the child or the parent needing to bring the evidence rather than the police actually going out and seeking the evidence you know what proof have you got have you you know and so I think there's still a lot of work to do and I just hope today is day one of where we kind of see lasting change. And I think our survivors, our victims, you know, have waited long enough for this. And it's not about watching politicians tear chunks out of each other. It's about doing something now.

And that debate continued this morning for those that might not have seen it. Louise Casey was asking for political parties, not to finger point, but to all say they're on the same team and to move on. And instead, it appears to be that there is still political fighting between the parties. What could change right now today, Jane? What could change right now today, Jane? I think that every politician stands up and works together as a cross party and says, we're gonna tackle this together collectively. So that might be a tone change.

Let me bring you in, Ana, welcome back to the programme. Your film took three years to make, you worked so closely with victims of these horrific crimes, a very compelling, a very disturbing watch, and you uncovered information about rape gangs going back 30 years. You say the situation is worse than ever. Right now, for young girls, what are you thinking today when you see this report, when you hear some of the recommendations that are being suggested? Well, I think some of the recommendations that Yvette Cooper announced yesterday are vital.

And so I feel that what we have to do is hold this government to account. They have to bring is hold this government to account. They have to bring in these recommendations. So for example things like mandatory information sharing, which Yvette Koupp renounced yesterday, you know your listeners would be horrified to know that that doesn't happen already. So can you describe an example of it? Yes, so for example a child is in school, a child comes into school and discloses that something is happening, right? So the school has to report that to social services, social services are brought in, the police might be brought

in, but what we've seen again and again, Jane and I've seen this over and over again, is that information gets lost, it's not recorded properly, you know, we have information. So for example, in my film, one of the girls, you know, she brought information, she brought her, I'm sorry to be so blunt, that she brought her knickers into the police station. Her mum brought knickers into the police station with semen on them.

The police lost that information. So mandatory reporting and information sharing means that the child would have one crime reference number, one reference number, and so that all professionals can see what is going on with that child. Now you would think that would be happening right now but it's not. That is absolutely vital. Another thing that you know that Cooper announced that we have to bring in is this mandatory reporting. That is vital and it does have criminal liability attached to it. So for example if I'm a teacher or I'm a youth worker or I'm a priest and somebody gives me information about child sexual abuse or child exploitation, I have to report that. I can't turn a blind eye in favour of the, you know,

the reputation of my organisation, which we've seen again and again. We've seen it recently, for example, in the Church of England, haven't we? So, they have to report it. They would be held criminally liable if they don't report it. Now, Jane's point is, is that mandatory reporting going to be back dated so that people who knew what was going on and did nothing 20 years ago are going to be held criminally to account? Let me throw that just back over to Alison Holt who I still have our social affairs editor. Do we know back dated or not? Probably not yet. No not yet I'm afraid or at least I don't know yet. I think it's one of those things, it's when we see the detail of the changes

that we'll get more information on it. Let me bring in Anne Longfield here as well. Yesterday we had Maggie Oliver on, who is a Victims and Survivors advocate, has spoken passionately about this issue for years. She was calling for a children's minister, someone at cabinet level who's accountable for taking care of children. Your thoughts?

Well, I mean, I and many others have said there needs to be someone just looking at the issues of looking at children's well-being at the heart of government at the Cabinet Office. Now, of course, that is at the moment, lives with the Secretary of State for Education and that is perfectly workable. However, what seems to happen time and time again, whether it's this, whether it's COVID, children's too broad a responsibility often and someone to represent children is absolutely key at that cabinet table. But the role of the National Crime Agency here is going to be really

important. They're starting their operation, they need to be absolutely relentless in their determination to be to really be searing in their investigations through local authorities and the like. I mean I would think that today they need to be writing to the leaders of every council, every police force saying you know you need to be doing your audit now, I'll be coming to you in the next however many weeks, asking for your information. You know, it needs to be this level of pace and momentum. And the accountability bodies need to have this

as the top of their list. I mean, Maggie Oliver, going back to the conversation yesterday when I announced about the NCA that you've mentioned there, she was saying they don't have the resources available to do it properly. So resources has to come into this. Obviously this isn't just about money, this is about will and culture and determination priority, but they have to have the resources to do

this. And they've also talked about the people appropriately trained to carry out this sensitive and complex ... There can be no if onlys to this one. This has to be our making it happen. Let me go back to you Anna as well with this particular issue. The issue of consent for under 16s, many were surprised hearing that recommendation that it's not already in law. How do you understand it? I think it's a really good recommendation because again and again, you know, what we have seen is that, you know, in this issue, children are being told that they're complicit in it.

And, you know, as I said, as I said the last time we talked, Nuala, children are children. They're frightened, they've been exploited, they're terrified. And so they cannot consent to their own abuse. And so therefore I think this is really important that if an adult has sex with somebody who is under 16, it is rape. And that's really important because then the burden of, you know, it's all about the burden of proof in a court of law, isn't it? And that again and again and again these crimes are judged on whether they're going to get through to a jury, for example, who is going to have to decide if that person was raped or not. Did they comply? Were they

complicit? Did they go to that party? You know, and that is not acceptable in these situations. We have to understand the level of coercive control and terror and manipulation that these young women have been through. You're reminding us of one horrifying story which we read about a young woman who would be covered in petrol and told she would be set alight if in fact she spoke out. Jane, may I come back to you for a moment?

Going on to that issue we were talking about briefly with Alison, of the boyfriend model, social workers are dealing with these girls day in and day out. How would you say they can better support some of these young girls who may be exploited by a person saying he is her boyfriend? I think first of all by seeing them as victims, as children that are victims of, you know, an horrendous crime. We know that in Rotherham alone, you know, that that grooming process led on to, you know, torture, the child had the petrol poured over, the child that was made to dig her own grave. And these were children that were talking about being in love and caring

for somebody that we were raising alarms of. So sometimes it's about them understanding who perpetrators are and understanding what the risks are and keeping that information and that intelligence as well, which is something that we did at Risky Business in Rot. We profiled our perpetrator. So when we saw that boyfriend model with another child, we immediately would report that that child was at risk. But because there'd been no sexual contact, it was immediately closed down. A Home Office spokesperson said our hearts go out to Chantelle one of the victims we've heard from previously and other victims of grooming gangs and child sexual abuse throughout the country. The

government is strengthening the child sexual exploitation police task force giving victims more powers to have their cases reviewed and making it a criminal offence to cover up any report of child sexual abuse. We've commissioned a rapid national audit led by Baroness Casey to uncover the true nature and scale, which we've talked about, of course, of the grooming gangs issue in the UK, including a proper assessment of the ethnicity of those involved. We're supporting local areas to hold their own independent local inquiry so we can deliver the meaningful change that victims deserve. I want to come back to you, Alison, particularly on the aspect of ethnicity,

which, of course, a lot of papers, it was dominating the headlines this morning that they need data on exactly who the perpetrators are. They're talking about Asian or predominantly Pakistani? So the report, the first thing, really important thing to say is that the report says the data in this area is really poor. So it's difficult to give a sense of the scale of exploitation, child exploitation, they do say, though it is rare. that in they they also say they it's difficult to get data on ethnicity and the Baroness Casey was asked to look at that specifically she was asked to do that because of after a high a number of high

profile cases involving men of Pakistani heritage, predominantly Pakistani heritage, but they found in two-thirds of cases nationally that information about ethnicity wasn't recorded. Now her team then went and looked at data collected by three police forces, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, and that's where, in the words of the report, she found a disproportionate number of men of Asian ethnicity identified among the suspects. Now, the point she makes is unless you have concrete data that actually tells you what's happening in all of those cases, it's very difficult to draw any concrete conclusions and that it does a disservice to the communities which are highlighted in that. It does a disservice to victims and it makes it really very difficult to tackle the problem of grooming because we don't fully understand it.

And one of the things that the Home Secretary announced yesterday was not just that they would collect data around ethnicity in future but they would also do research to look at what those drivers were in terms of exploitation wherever it is found. Baroness Louise Casey will be speaking at the Home Affairs Select Committee just about now. I want to thank all my guests, Alison Holt, our BBC Social Affairs editor, also Jane Senior, Anna Hall and Anne Longfield. Anne will be back with us a little bit later in the program as well. The conversation continues and of course these are difficult issues. If you've been affected by what you are hearing during this discussion you can go to

the BBC Action Line where there are links to help and support. One of the most famous faces of her time. She was a beautiful woman. A sex symbol. A Hollywood star. Who was never seen for who she really was. As an inventor, as a brain. A genius that history overlooked.

The explosion in telecommunication sciences that was enlarged due to Lamar. That should not be forgotten. From the BBC World Service, untold legends, Hedy Lamar. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. On our website.

Now, I want to turn to my next guest who is joining me in studio it is Rosie Jones who has many strings to her bow. She is a comedian, an actor, a screenwriter and she's starring in her first sitcom Pushers which comes to Channel 4 later this week. I got lucky I got to watch a couple of episodes last night. Rosie co-wrote the show and also plays Emily, a woman who has very little left to lose after the loss of her job results in her having her benefits cut. And soon she finds herself building an illegal drugs empire.

She is sharp, funny, highly educated, kind of like Rosie. She also has cerebral palsy, like Rosie. The sitcom asks the question whether there could be a better disguise for criminal activity than to be entirely written off by society. Rosie, welcome back to Women's Air. Good to have you. Hello, it's so good to see you again. I know, I can't believe I think it's been about a year, but it went in quite quickly. And you have been a busy woman.

Talk to me. I found it very funny I have to say the show, it's brilliant. Not least you and your sidekick but tell me about the inspiration behind the show for you. So it's been a long journey, we came up with a concept in 2018. That was a while ago. Yeah, and it happened because I myself had my benefits cut, which is awful. It's happened to millions of disabled people out there, happened to millions of disabled people out there but always being a comedian I thought right how can I turn this into art? And me and my brilliant co-writer Peter Fellows said,

well what if a character turns to drug dealers? It's quite extreme. Yeah, because as a disabled person I get overlooked, I get patronised every day. So with our comedy minds, with our right, how can we push this to the limit. No pun on push. You know, really from the start of it, I mean very thought-provoking the last time you were on as well, speaking about some of the day-to-day aggressions really, not microaggressions, just aggressions that you came up against. But at the beginning of this, you know, there's the benefits office and you have to prove how disabled you are. And it's very funny, but it's very poignant at the same time.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so first and foremost, it's a comedy. I really hope people can watch it, turn up and enjoy watching it. But like everything I do in my career as a disabled person, I recognise that I have a platform to say more. So writing this sitcom I definitely wanted to show people with a disability because it is hard and minutes has to judge how disabled you are, it is not fair and it is not okay. I think it totally comes across kind of this tick boxing, tick boxing is that the correct word, exercise but also you poke fun at some of the headlines that might be about benefits scroungers by how to work the system. People have to

see it I'm not gonna give any spoilers but this must be a dream come true to have your own sitcom. Oh absolutely. I grew up on a healthy dose of Victoria Woods. Amazing. Carolina Hearn. So to be able to write my own sitcom was the ultimate dream come true and I really wanted it to be a love letter to the Northern working class heart of the country and yeah I am so proud of it. Yeah, gosh, a love letter. What a lovely way to put it, Rosie. I did see we like some of the same things, Dinner Ladies, Vicar of Tivoli, etc. Which you can just watch again and again on the same episode again and again.

And it's still funny. But this is different because you have a cast of predominantly disabled actors and I'm wondering how you went about that. Yeah, so I'm aware that I am one of the few disabled people with the opportunity to create their own sitcom and because of that I wanted to go into it differently. I get so annoyed when I watch a TV show and they've only got one disabled character and you can feel the writers have gone, great we've got one, well done us, let's move on. And when you consider that 24% of the UK knew that the cast needed in terms of disability, but once you have two, three, four disabled characters, you move away from the disability and you get the opportunity to explore personalities and I really hope that 20, 30 seconds watching the show you forget that most of them are disabled.

Because it's not about that. Being disabled is not a personality. It's about who they are and yet we were lucky to find a wealth of amazing disabled actors for the show it we wrote every character to be played by anyone with any disability so we found the and then we simply adapted the script for that person's disability. I suppose it's kind of what you've been calling for Rosie a little bit within society at large, right, to do what you want to do but just make adjustments or adaptations for people to excel? Yeah, exactly. And that went beyond the script and beyond the casting. We really made the set, the crew, the most accessible, welcoming crew possible and we did that by having an access coordinator on set with us every day to make sure that everyone disabled disabled or not, will listen to and have their needs met. It's so interesting you talk about an access coordinator because I don't think

we've spoken about that or I haven't spoken so much in my career about it when I've spoken about intimacy coordinators, you know these other aspects within the arts where people are looking to. So it's a really interesting one. I know that you've said in a Radio Times interview, we talked about your idea catalyst starting in 2017, that you thought when a Labour government came in that in fact this show wouldn't have any resonance? Yeah, absolutely. Because? Because I really hope that by June 2025, when we knew it would come out,

we'd be nearly a year into a Labour government. We'd be in a much better place in terms of disability. I was so naive that I thought this sitcom would be irrelevant. We'd be living in a disabled utopia where we were all cared for and listened to and valued and treated like every other person in society. Unfortunately, we're not there. And unfortunately, I think we need a sitcom about the dire state of the country more than ever? Well, a spokesperson for the Department of Work and Pensions, as many of their brown envelopes that turn up in your sitcom, they say we are determined to create a welfare system

that supports people into work and out of poverty, backed by one million, excuse me, one billion with the B-Pounds, to help sick or disabled people find good, secure jobs, the biggest investment of its kind in 25 years. We will never compromise on protecting people who need our support and our reforms will mean that people with the most severe conditions will be protected from reassessment? Well I hope that is true but I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. I don't want to go let you go without talking about your new stand-up comedy tour it's called Rosie Jones I can't tell what she's saying. Why are you calling it that? So I really wanted to tackle the haters head on and we've spoken about it before

being a disabled comedian means that I get hate online. Shocking, shocking the level of it that we talked about previously. Every day, every single video of me, there'll be so much hate directed towards me because of my disability and it baffles me that the biggest comment from people is saying I can't tell what she's saying followed up by she's not funny and I want to say how can you tell

I'm not funny if you can't tell what I'm saying so by calling it that it's me going, I hear you, I see your hate and your anger and I do not care. I'm gonna carry on doing the job that I love, representing disabled people everywhere. Come at me. You heard it here. When does that start Rosie? In the autumn. In the autumn, right. So before that if you need your Rosie Jones fix you can watch from Thursday 19th June on Channel 4 pushers. It's on at 10 p.m. and all the episodes to stream from that day. I got to see two as a little bonus being the presenter of Woman's Hour. But I have many more to watch. Thank you so much for coming in and you'll come back to us again.

Best to look with Pushers and best to look with the tour. Thank you. Now, I was asking some of you a little bit earlier about how much freedom do you give your children? How much do you let them go? What age was it that you let them out? And, you know, we were talking earlier, of course, about grooming gangs and Manny don't want to let kids out of their sight because they're afraid what might happen to them, that it can feel like a very dangerous world sometimes out there. Manny, of you have gotten touch this morning talking about what you have done. Here's Emma, she says I'm struggling with this

freedom issue for my nine-year-old. We live in West Oxford where there are rivers and meadows plenty. I want him to be able to walk home from school about 800 meters away via the meadow with a friend or go off fishing. The area is pretty safe generally though he may encounter a homeless group who like to drink in a certain corner or a team of teenagers into more adult stuff but really at most at almost 10 I'm frustrated that if I do let him off the leash and if something does happen rather than sympathy for bad luck it will be viewed as bad parenting to have allowed him out. I need that support from other parents

to condone it and to send their kids to as more kids get together the safer they would all be. Thank you for your honesty. Another from Julia. The decline in children's freedom to explore predates mobile phones. My son was a teenager in the 90s in the early 2000s. When he was 14 I innocently suggested he might go youth hostiling with a friend. The friend's mother was absolutely horrified. Her son wasn't allowed to go anywhere without an adult. The advent of screens has just completed the process of confining children.

84844, if you would like to get in touch. The reason I'm reading those comments, the reason I'm asking for them, is because there's a new report out called Raising the Nation Play Commission. It talks about children not playing outside enough, instead they are sedentary, scrolling and alone. 19 commissioners ranging from doctors to campaigners spent a year investigating play and childhood in England for this report. So some of the recommendations raise the digital age of consent to 16, put in place a statutory play sufficiency duty for local authorities so that enough high quality play for children is available. Also

what about this, a national ban on no ball game signs. Yeah, there's a lot of them around isn't there? Joining me to discuss back with us, Baroness Anne Longfield Executive Chair of the Centre for Young Lives and Co-leader of the Commission. Plus we have Debbie Watson, Professor of Child and Family Welfare at Bristol University. You're both very welcome to this conversation. Let me start with you, Anne. Why was this needed? Well, what we've seen over recent decades and accelerated more recently is that the thing that we all associate with growing up, you know, the freedom to play, something all kids do in eight, has dwindled and dwindled away or has changed. It's gone indoors, it's become

sedentary, it's become something in isolation and in many ways that seems a safe option or an only option for so many parents but all of the things that we know are so important about kids playing out, how they learn, how they socialize, how they, you know, learn and challenge themselves and build that resilience. Where does that go? The places that we know children used to play are either out of bounds, they're full of busy traffic or they're yet in an area with no ballgame signs. and parents are often desperate. They want their kids to become independent and have fun and be with their friends.

But the neighborhoods we're building now just don't support that to happen. So they have to go for safety first. Interesting. Debbie, let me bring you in. You know, I mentioned unstructured play there. What's the difference between structured and unstructured? And why should we be striving for the latter? The structured is very often aligned with adult led. So it's thinking about adults setting an agenda, having a particular set of outcomes that they want for children going through a kind of process. So

we would sort of talk about, I don't know, after school clubs, you know, kind of music sessions, sports clubs, things like that, being sort of quite structured play activities. Whereas unstructured is very much that kind of freedom to be with your friends, to explore, to challenge yourself, to take safe risks, you know, to kind of stretch your boundaries. And just really, really important for imagination, for creativity, for a sense of awe in your environment. And so, you know, very much more about children kind of leading the agenda and, you know,

having a voice in terms of what's important to them in their worlds. I'm quite struck by the amount of people who are getting in touch with us this morning. Let me read a couple that are coming in. I have an eight year old twin boys who are curious and confident. They will walk to the corner shop by themselves and they play outside on the street on bikes and scooters. Compared to other parents, I think they have more freedom.

They can safely make a cup of tea and they can put food in the air fryer. I'd like them to have some of the freedom and responsibility that I had as a child. Another, my children played out in the close from a young age but eight, nine I let them do little errands to friends who live short distances away, maybe a five-minute walk, the friend would be looking out for them. Slowly I would increase the distance. Nothing boosted their confidence more than being able to make some, to take some freshly made rock cakes round to my friend Claire, a ten-minute walk away and Claire was equally delighted. My children are now 9 and 12 and quite savvy

when out and about. But I think tapping into what one parent got in touch about is wanting to let them go free but feeling that they might be frowned upon by other parents. Your thoughts on? Well, there is that sense in this country that actually you're being in some way neglectful if you let your children out and that you have to keep them, you know, within view and supervising the like. It's absolutely opposite in many Scandinavian countries where you're seen as not, you know, delivering on your parental duty if you actually don't

enable your children to become independent. But the part of it that enables parents to do that in Scandinavia is that they've been much clearer about children being part of the community, about public design of the public realm, about making safe neighborhoods with green spaces around housing where children can be. Now we haven't done that in this country, you know, in some ways it relates to the earlier conversation. We haven't been thinking about children and that's what we need to do. Back to you Debbie, you want to radicalise outdoor space. What does that mean? Well sadly, radicalising may just mean making space for children again, actually welcoming children

into spaces, you know, kind of reducing the hostile environment that we've created. I mean, in many ways, we're talking about habitat destruction for children in this country. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, reduction in playgrounds and school playgrounds being built on traffic fears and building of new residential areas which don't have access to play areas. We need children to have easy access to green spaces, to inclusive playgrounds that they can feel safe in. So we've eradicated that safety. So, you know, some of the projects that we talked about in the article were, you know, very small kind of things that we can do as communities, you know, and absolutely not individualising parents for,

you know, not taking risks for their children or being too protective. You know, this is about a collaborative approach. And that that means we need communities to come together, we need commissioners, we need statutory services, and we need planners to come together. And that may be as simple as one of the projects that a colleague of mine is working on is actually thinking about how do we signal to children it's okay to play on certain streets. And what age do you think would be appropriate to be out on a safe street for example?

I mean there's no right or wrong with this, it's very very environmentally dependent, it depends on the situation, who the child's with, you know, but I scaffolded, supported kind of observation of children. And that could be parents sharing that responsibility, you know, that your caller who was worried about her nine year old walking to school, you know, that could be, you know, just watching from afar, you know, the first few times it could be holding back, but yeah, letting, letting him walk with some friends, you know, and, and mobile phones can be useful in this context, certainly for building security and confidence. Let me leave it there. I will throw out, I know, one of the recommendations,

which was take maybe one of those structured play groups and leave it for your kid and just let them have unstructured play instead and give yourself a break as well. I do want to read one comment, Baroness Anne Longfield thanks to you and Debbie Watson. Here's Helen. She says, my 14 year old daughter recently went to a friend's house, ended up swimming illegally in a local quarry. When I picked her up late at night soaked she says, I thought you'd be proud of me. I was having an adventure and not on a screen. I'll see you tomorrow for Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

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