Woman's Hour - Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, Adoption breakdown, Visual artist Bharti Kher, Fawzia Mirza

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

The Chief Executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has stepped down. It follows an independent review which found the centre failed to protect women-only spaces. It was commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland - after an employment tribunal found the centre in Edinburgh had unlawfully discriminated against an employee - who believed sexual assault victims should be able to choose the sex of those supporting them. Anita Rani hears more from Lorna Gordon, the BBC's Scotland correspondent. Karen Maguire received an out-of-court settlement from South Lanarkshire Council last year after her adoption of a two-year-old boy broke down. She won the payout after her lawyer argued that the council had failed to provide her with sufficient background information on the child and did not support her during the placement. Karen tells Anita why she has decided to speak out. And Anita also hears from Dr Polly Cowan from Scottish Adoption and Fostering, who has separately carried out research into child adoption breakdowns. Visual artist Bharti Kher’s new exhibition, Target Queen at the Southbank Centre, features supersized bindis reimagined from their microscopic form to the macro size worn by the goddess, transforming the brutalist building into a powerful feminine force. Bharti joins Anita to discuss the exhibition. Director Fawzia Mirza joins Anita to talk about her feature film debut, The Queen of My Dreams. Set across Karachi and Canada, the film follows Azra, a queer aspiring actress who clashes with—and ultimately reconciles with—her conservative Pakistani mother. Partly inspired by Fawzia's own life, it explores the bonds between mothers and daughters and how gay brown girls can also have an epic Bollywood-style romance.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Good morning, welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. This morning, you will hear a very powerful and honest interview with Karen Maguire. It's her first broadcast interview discussing what led to her being awarded a six-figure sum by South Lanarkshire Council after her adoption of a two-year-old boy broke down after only four months. Now, as usual, if you are moved by anything you hear on the programme,

we would love to hear from you, so get in touch with us in the usual way. The text number is 84844. Of course, you can email us by going to our website. Also, if you happen to be in London and were on the top deck of a bus riding across Waterloo Bridge, you might notice the side of Hayward's art gallery looking very different. The brutalist concrete building is covered in giant bindis,

the work of artist Bharti Kher. It's added a touch of feminine, and that's right up our street here at Woman's Hour, so we cannot wait to speak to Bharti shortly about it. Also, filmmaker Fawzia Mirza will tell us all about her film The Queen of My Dreams and showing how queer brown women can have a Bollywood fantasy too. All of that, plus, as usual, your thoughts and opinions.

The text number, once again, 84844. And the email address, well, if you want to email us, all you have to do is go to our website. And if you want to follow us on social media it's at bbc woman's hour but first to scotland where the chief executive of the edinburgh rape crisis center mridul wadhwa has stepped down it follows an independent review commissioned by rape crisis scotland which found the center failed to protect women-only spaces and the needs of survivors were not prioritized the bbc scotland correspondent l correspondent Lorna Gordon has more details. Lorna, good morning. Welcome to Woman's Hour.

Tell us more about what prompted this review. Yeah, it was the ruling from an employment tribunal back in May. That ruling was that a woman who worked at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was unfairly dismissed for believing survivors of sexual abuse had the right to know the sex of the staff who were tasked with supporting them. Ros Adams had been a counselling and support worker at the centre when she'd spoken to survivors about how to respond to an abuse survivor who'd asked if her counsellor would be a man or a woman because she would feel uncomfortable talking to a man. Miss Adams said during that tribunal that while she was supportive of staff who were transgender, she believed victims of sexual violence had the right to know the biological sex of staff working at the centre in order to feel safe.

But the tribunal heard that her managers decided to launch a disciplinary process because they wanted to make an example of her gender critical beliefs. And that this had led to a completely spurious disciplinary process, according to the tribunal, which the judge stated was reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka. He said that the CEO, who was a transgender woman called Midrel Wadwar, appeared to believe Miss Adams was transphobic and conducted what the judge described as a heresy hunt against her. The ruling went in Miss Adams' favour. She is still to have a remedies hearing, but off the back of that, an independent review into the practices and procedures at Edinburgh Rape Crisis was commissioned by the umbrella body for those rape crisis centres in Scotland. It was commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland, And that's what happened yesterday with the results of the review came back. So what exactly has the review found?

It was a very critical report. Edinburgh Rape Crisis provided specialist support to more than a thousand survivors of sexual violence last year. But the report said the actions of some staff at the centre had a detrimental mental impact on some women. The centre should have been helping. Some women did not feel safe. It said that the centre's values were inappropriate. If you look at their strategy document, those values are being loving, empowering, inclusive,

accountable and brave. And the review said they're not fully consistent with the national standards, which are values such as being survivor-centred, trauma-informed, gender-informed, embodying a culture of belief, etc. In essence, it said it did not put the needs of sexual assault survivors, the vast majority of whom are women, first. And it also said there were instances when the CEO, Midrel Wadhwa, failed to behave professionally or understand the limits of her authority.

A pretty damning assessment. What's the reaction been? Well, no one has been speaking publicly, but they have issued statements. Rape Crisis Scotland, which sets those national standards and is this umbrella charity, has said it paused referring people who'd been sexually abused to the centre. It said it was extremely concerned that the centre had failed to provide dedicated women-only spaces for 16 months while claiming otherwise and it described this as a significant breach of national standards. So while it's important to say though of, that people who are still getting support and counselling from the centre, that is still continuing and people can still refer themselves to the centre. The centre's board has said they apologise, they've got things wrong, they are working to make things right and they are going to implement all the recommendations

from this review going forward. What does this mean for survivors of rape in the city now? Where did they go for support? Well, it's an interesting question. They can still refer to the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. That will still receive government funding. But there is, of course, this other centre centre in Edinburgh which was set up by JK Rowling she has been commenting on social media she has said that she set up Bearer's Place because according to her she knew sexual assault victims were self-excluding from Edinburgh rape crisis centre and that she founded it as a woman-only service for female survivors

of sexual assault in Edinburgh and Lothian. And it's interesting that the review, one of the recommendations of the review, is actually that Edinburgh rape crisis makes links with Berra's Place, which the board has said it will now endeavour to do. And the CEO has stood down this morning. Have we heard anything from Mridul Wadhwa herself? No, we have not. Not at any point in this process. Mridul Wadhwa went on leave

at the beginning of this review process. I asked repeated questions of Edinburgh Rape Crisis yesterday saying what is Mridul Wadhwa's position. They said they wouldn't comment on individuals. But many people would say that Mridul Wadhwa has legitimate questions to answer about the ethos that they set in the centre,

the comments they made publicly whilst they were the chief executive of the centre, and indeed those very critical comments in that tribunal back in May that the judge made of Mriddle Wadhwa's action. This morning, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre issued a statement saying that Mridul Wadhwa and the board have decided that the time is right for a change of leadership and that Mridul Wadhwa has stepped down. But Mridul, of course, has still not answered the questions about their actions whilst being in position as CEO. But they have now stepped down from that position

and the recruitment of a new CEO will happen in due course. OK, Lorna Gordon, thank you. And we'll be following the story. 84844 is the number to text. Now, the new film, The Queen of My Dreams, follows the story of a mother and daughter who seem worlds apart. Azra is an aspiring actress, queer, living with a girlfriend in Canada

and struggling to get on with her conservative Pakistani mother, Mariam. But when Azra has to unexpectedly return to Pakistan, she realises that she and her mother have more in common than they might admit. Flashback scenes to 1960s Karachi show a rebellious and irreverent Mariam in her 20s, partying in mini dresses and swigging martinis. They both also share a love of Bollywood and dream of having their own epic cinema style romance. Well, the director is Fawzia Mirza and the film is partly based on her own life as a closeted queer South Asian girl growing up in Canada and coming out to her mother. And I spoke to Fawzia earlier, and we began with what inspired the title of her film. The title comes from the name of the song that's very present in the film, Merisapno Kirani. And it is a song that I heard growing up as a kid from a very famous film from 1969 called Aradhana,

starring Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna. And that song was just a huge part of what I dreamed love would be for me. And what was that? That was a man in a Jeep. he would see me while i was sitting in a train reading my book nonchalantly and uh we would make eye contact and it would be love at first sight but i'd be coy and then he would sing to me and his friend would be driving the car recklessly and he knew that i was the one for him and that's it do you you know what's so weird, Fosia? That was also my, that was my dream too. How weird is that? Identical. Oh my God, I love it.

The coyness. It's meant to be. All of it. Who is the queen of your dreams? Well, the lesson that I learned is the queen of my dreams is me. Not Bollywood's, not my mother's, but self-love was really the major lesson that I found

because, you know, when I started coming out as queer, I had to reimagine this idea of love and romance. So I thought, oh, well, there's a woman who's going to sing to me from the Jeep. And then I realized, no, no, I have to love myself first before I can love anyone else. That being said, I do have great romantic, epic love in my wife and producer, Andrea Wilson Mir mirza we are happy to hear that yes we love it for you um first of all i have to say congratulations i absolutely adored watching this film thank you on so many levels a pakistani girl growing up in nova scotia who is queer and it's a coming of age film i I've never seen anything like it. That means so, so much. And it's funny and joyful.

Yes. And relatable. Where did the journey of this film begin? You know, it started as a short film called The Queen of My Dreams. It was a three minute short film. I made it in 2012 and I made it before I knew I was a filmmaker. I was really trying to reconcile whether I could be queer and Muslim and still love this Bollywood romance that I grew up with. And, you know, let's be real, in 2012, which doesn't feel like that long ago, there just weren't as many representations of, you know, South Asians or queer people or Muslims. And we weren't as connected on social media as we are now. And so I was craving

representation. And so I was struggling to figure out if I could be these identities at the same time and making that film really saved my life. Okay. What do you mean saved your life? You know, people process in different ways. And I processed very publicly. Instead of keeping all those struggles and emotions in, I shot them on video. And I basically the short film was taking four of the iconic scenes from Aradhana and reimagining them in a queer lens. So, you know, I present the way I do with my short hair and my acid wash jeans and my book boss t shirt and corduroy jacket and rad spectacle. I appreciate you. And I did drag I became in the short film Shermila Tagore with the wig and the sari, the makeup, everything. And then I another actress, I know she did drag and became Rajesh Khanna. And so really, truly imagined these scenes that we just talked about and we're dancing to, but made them queer. And that really helped me see that, A, Bollywood is inherently kind of queer. And B, there was still room for me in this story. And then fast forward to this wonderful film that you've created. I felt that you were making universal the story of a young Pakistani girl who is queer growing up in a,

you know, Nova Scotia. But also, it was interesting because you're exploring a younger version of your mother and what she would have been like as a young woman. And it's joyful. And the key, the heart, I think, of the relationship is between the daughter and the mother. Why did you want to explore this relationship? I am obsessed with my mother, clearly. And I think so many of us are, whether we want to be or not. And I think oftentimes we're struggling not to be like our parents, or we fight against it. You know, my mother is a very conservative Muslim,

lives in Indiana in the United States now. And I used to see these photographs of her from the 60s and she looked totally different. How did she look in the 60s? I mean, come on. She liked Sharmila Tagore, you know, like wearing those hair pieces, the eyes. Eyeliner. Eyeliner, the saris, the sleeveless. And, you know, she lived a life that I didn't know. And people used to talk about a life in the 60s that doesn't seem like a life that was what is now in Karachi in Pakistan. And if I'm being honest, part of why I wanted to think about the way she used to be was because I's deep and intrinsic to, I think, loving myself. Can I ask about you coming out to your mom? How was that?

Oh, boy. It was not easy. I had just gone through a really hard breakup. The year was 2006 when I came out or started coming out because it took me a long time to really come out. My mom thought I was living with a friend, but it was a girlfriend. I was so sad in an airport, like devastated. And so I sent her a message and I was moving out of where I was living with my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend. And my mom was like, why are you sad?

Like, I could have helped you. I could have gotten a truck. I could have helped you move out. And I was like, no, mom, it's I'm going to miss like the cats and I'm going to miss the play. I'm going to miss everything. And she was like, oh, you'll find a new roommate. And I said, mom, she wasn't my roommate. She was my girlfriend. And there was a beat and a beat. And she said the thing that we, I guess, maybe expect going to be queer, I had to figure out how to do it in a way that I could just be who I am publicly, openly, in every single way, unabashedly, without shame. Yeah, and you do that is by telling your mum. Yes.

And how she reacts is on her. A hundred percent. And honestly, I think my queerness brought me closer to my family and to religion because no one can tell me who I can or cannot be. And so I don't feel that my queerness makes me any less Muslim. And I don't feel like my queerness makes me any less Pakistani or Indian or Desi or any less Bollywood or Canadian. Or badass.

Yeah. Fawzia, what was your experience like growing up? I mean, how much of it is your life in the film? I mean, there's so many things that are inspired by me. You know, the character, the protagonist, queer, Muslim, brown, Nova Scotia, Canada. My father did die in a very dramatic way in Karachi on a trip. My mother did sell Tupperware. I did do a chicken dance on a cable access show. So there's so many kind of these touch points. But I feel like as a writer, the world of the film really unlocked when I allowed the characters to do what they wanted to do. So the 60s, for example, I don't know my mother's story. She won't tell me.

Well, she won't talk to you about it. No. Why do you think that is? Because God brought her to the right path. And just as much as I want her to accept me for who I am, I accept her the way she is. And that's very profound. I accept her the way she is. That's very profound. I think that's one of the greatest lessons of my life.

Difficult, though. Difficult. And I just think about how much better we'd all be as a, I don't know, as a global community. And even with one-to-one, if we could just give people grace. Yeah. Has your mom watched it? She has not. One of the other great lessons of my life. What's mom's name? I always like to get mom's name. Mom, are you listening? Her name is Shahnaz. Shahnaz, beautiful. Yeah. Has she seen it? She has not. But one of the great other lessons of my life is to be detached from outcome. You know, when you do something, you cannot expect anyone to do the thing you want them to do.

You apologize. You cannot expect a certain kind of reaction from an apology for it to be a real apology. And so I would love for her to see it. But I also know that she may never be able to, and that's okay. Did you film in Pakistan? We did. How straightforward was it to be able to film a queer film in Pakistan?

Well, the queerest bits were shot in Canada, and I'd say 75% of the film was shot in Pakistan, in Karachi. We were so blessed to have incredible local producers, Carol Norona and Kamil Chima and Anam Abbas, including an incredible locations manager, which, for those of you who don't know, the locations manager is the person who finds you all the places

and makes sure that it's halal. You know, like what you're doing there is going to be halal to the people who have to deal with the community locally. And we were able to shoot on like several beaches. How did you make the beach scene halal? The beach scene, there were large blinders we put up on the sides. I don't even know what you call it,

almost like giant dupattas. Big scarves. Yeah, right. Big scarves, big saris, just like flanking the sides of the beach. One thing you've did, you normalized things that within the South Asian community,

we know we do. So for instance, taking a lota to the bathroom, which is a little jug with water in it, or having a bucket bath. And it was almost like the things that we have been made to feel shame about growing up, you just put out there. This is how we do it. And I've got to that point where I don't care about any of it anymore. But I think, you know, there's a little part of me, a little younger me that really appreciated you doing that. I appreciate that. There's a younger me

that appreciates through the process of sharing this film, the younger me sees how far I've come, because I think in order to put those things as matter of factly in the film as they are, what I've realized is that it's because I don't carry the shame anymore. It's like, I love the Lota, but used to be terrified of people seeing it in our home. There's a moment where the younger brother calls young Azra, the protagonist, which means mustache girl, basically. And that, like being a hairy South Asian woman, like, it's been a terror most of my life. And now I'm like, yeah, I am robust with my follicles. You know?

I go on my dad's side. And all his suiteness. Exactly. And I have gotten lots of laser hair removal, although now the mustache is in. So it's really a reclamation of all of those spaces as well. And I think just imprinting who we are in everyday ways is also really key. It is a beautiful story that we follow, and we follow the relationship of the mother.

I don't want to ruin the ending, but, you know, we kind of get to a certain place with their relationship, the mother and daughter. And how about you and your mom? How are getting on you know shana's shana's is uh she's doing well mashallah um you know if you told me 15 years ago that i would be able to tell my mother that my wife and i were going on a trip to Turkey together and we're going to send her photos and that my mom wouldn't get mad at me. I wouldn't have believed you.

And so we're at that place where we can have that conversation and it's okay. And I don't take that for granted. It's so beautiful. Filmmaker Fawzia Mirza speaking to me there. The Queen of My Dreams will be available in cinemas from the 13th of September. 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. Now, a woman has been paid an out-of-court settlement from a council after her adoption of a two-year-old boy in 2013 broke down after just four months. Karen Maguire won the six-figure payout from South Lanarkshire Council last year after her lawyer argued it failed to provide her with enough background information on the child and did not support her during the placement. Well, Karen joined me earlier this morning to talk about what had happened. You might find some of the details distressing. I started by asking her why she decided to speak out now.

I've been speaking out since this happened. It's just I didn't have a platform. I was on my own, really. I've been speaking out since this happened. It's just I didn't have a platform. I was on my own, really. And where do you go with something like this? You know, it's such a stigma associated with what's happened to me and my child. And nobody really wants to hear it. But the BBC have given me the platform that I need to to speak about it and why is that important it's important because I don't want what happened to me and my child to happen to somebody else that's why it's important to me.

And if I can raise awareness and stop it happening to somebody else and other children, then that's what I want to do. And that's what I've been trying to do since 2014. You've been through a lot since 2013. I think we should go back to the beginning. And if you can start by telling me what led you to try to adopt a child in the first place? Unfortunately, I suffered from major fertility issues. And in the end, I thought, why am I doing this? I've got so much to offer I think I'd like

to adopt a child you don't need to be genetically linked to be a parent or to love somebody so I decided that that's what I was going to do and I started the journey and did everything that I was asked to do, expressed to do. I went into it with my eyes wide open. I did a lot of research myself. I know that there is no such thing as doorstep babies anymore, that all these children that are in the care system, well, at least the majority, all have issues of some level or another. And I was quite clear about that when I was getting into the process. And by doorstep baby, you mean young mothers who've had to give up their child because they're single mothers? Yeah.

So how did it feel when you found out there was a child available for you to adopt? I was ecstatic, just couldn't believe it. It was a dream come true. I just couldn't wait for it to happen. It was just wonderful. But the adoption only lasted four months. Yeah. What happened? So I was placed with the most gorgeous wee thing. But my goodness, he was a bombshell.

As soon as I got him, Anita, I knew there was something very wrong. I knew. He came to me covered in bruises, self-harming from cutting his face and hitting his head off any hard surface that he could get. He had uncontrollable rages, emotional meltdowns, where he was just inconsolable for hours on end. And it was horrific to watch. And although I was dealing,

and you do your best to deal with that as your child and I did everything that I could to try and stop it but it just it was almost as though he couldn't control his emotions in any way whatsoever. Very distressing situation. Very distressing. For him, it was awful. Absolutely awful. And for you? For me, it was awful.

Everything was for him as far as I was concerned, you know. Yeah. Did you have any support? I had very little support from South Lanarkshire Council they didn't believe that there was anything wrong I had them here in my house flaying their arms and telling me that he didn't have any issues there was nothing wrong with them it was my imagination were you given any information about the child before prior to him coming to me um i had verbal information i had no written information he was described to me as, in glowing terms, is all I can say.

I was told that I had won a watch, that he was relatively uncomplicated. However, he did have developmental delay. He was presenting as an 18-month-old. But that didn't bother me. I come from a family of teachers. I know that you can work from developmental delay. You know, I'd looked it all up and everything, you know. So that didn't faze me.

They told me he had tantrums, in inverted commas. That wasn't the case at all. How bad did it get? Unbelievably bad. It got to the point where I just couldn't keep him safe, Anita. He, during these rages, I used to try and hold him. He then would hit me about the head and the face with his head and I was covered in bruises. He had no notion of self, so what he would do was to let me know that he was there. He would hit me about the body. It was like, here I am, mummy, bang, here I am, checking in, checking in, you know. The tops of my hips were covered in bruises, my shoulders, black and blue from

me trying to contain him. I was physically and emotionally drained. But he was actually thriving physically you know he came to me and he was wearing like 12 to 18 months clothes and he was two and a half he was tiny what happened after four months how did the relationship come to an end so I'd had a particularly difficult day um and I was here and he was overlooking out the window and he picked up a paperweight that was sitting on the window and he was a strong wee monkey really strong tiny as he was, and he took the paperweight and he threw it at me across, and it skimmed by the top of my temple. And in that moment, I thought, oh, if that had hit me, he would be here on his own and I would have been knocked out and at that moment I thought I can't keep him safe what am I going to do what do you remember about the days after you gave him back

oh god it was terrible the grief the loss when I watched them taking him away. I couldn't stand it. I'll never forget it. and they took him. After, it was just a mess. I never went out the house. It happened for four months other than to go to my GP. Didn't want anybody looking at me and talking about me and the stigma associated.

It was just awful. That's what happened. Did you have people around you supporting you at that point? I did in the terms of friends. One friend in particular, Gerry, was just phenomenal. He was there from the very start. He's still here now. He's been at my side through all of this, supporting me, doing what he can to help.

He saved the both of us at the time. He was always here. And you just mentioned the word stigma there and how you couldn't leave the house. And you felt that people's opinion, judgment, reaction. What was the reaction from the wider circle of friends and family? I've got a very small family first and foremost, I mean it's really small. But I've got a wide circle of friends and some of them are very close and they were fantastic, absolutely fantastic.

However, there were others who didn't want to know Anita just didn't want to know in fact there were others who made judgments about me who said that you know they thought because I hadn't birthed them that I'd just given them back like a pair of trousers out of Marks and Spencer's. When in actual fact, even if I had birthed him, he still would have needed the care that he needs today. That must have been very difficult to hear. It's very, very hard to deal with, especially when it's people you thought were your friends. When did you decide to approach a solicitor to help you? I decided to approach a solicitor in 2016.

During the disruption, they'd said to me that the work that I had done was commendable. But because I had complained, because I'd caused so much trouble, they wanted me to go away. And I thought, I'm not going. I'm not doing it. So you fought? So I fought. And it's cost me everything, but I fought.

What did you want to fight for? I wanted to fight for him. I wanted to fight for people like me who's been through it. I knew that nobody had ever done anything like this in Scotland. And it was important to me to try and get some kind of redress, some kind of answers, some kind of change. Yeah, as I said in the beginning, Karen, that in March last year,

the court awarded you a large sum of money. Yeah. Has that provided any kind of closure for you? Absolutely none, Anita. The money is inconsequential. I have not touched that money. I've had it for a year and a half and I have not touched it. It feels like blood money but because the way the legal system works I had to take it. It reflects to some degree South Lanarkshire's failures, the fact that they made this award.

I had to take it because that's considered good legal practice. You know, and if I'd have gone on and wasted the court's time, having already had an offer, they wouldn't have looked kindly on that. But the law's only way to recognise a professional negligence case is through financial compensation. And the only way that I a professional negligence case is through financial compensation and the only way that I could raise that case was to have compensation as part of the deal but compensation

was never what I wanted I wanted answers I wanted to raise the profile of the case and have you got what have you got that I have now yeah I have now. Yeah. I have now. And that is purely thanks to Elizabeth Rose, my solicitor, who has been absolutely phenomenal supporting me. She's been by my side in a way that I will never be able to thank her for. She believed me, Anita. Yeah. She believed me. And she believed in me.

How do you feel today? How do you feel now? I'm still I'm still very broken I still think about him every day he's still here, he's still in this world and that makes it so much more difficult I was not allowed any contact, nothing, not even a picture to tell me how he was. I know he's out there every birthday,

every Christmas, every anniversary when I got him, when I lost him, it's all there and I live with that every day wondering if what I did was the right thing to do. A very honest and moving account of what happened to Karen Maguire she was talking to me earlier this morning and if you've been affected by any of the issues discussed you can find details of support on the Women's Hour website. We have a statement from South Lanarkshire Council in Scotland as well. They said, We always aim to provide full support to any prospective adoptive parents. It would be inappropriate for us to comment on individual cases. Our policy for practice reflects national standards and regulatory requirements.

Support is offered following adoption, which we endeavour to tailor to the needs of the child. Now, listening to Karen was Dr Polly Cowan from Scottish Adoption and Fostering, a voluntary adoption and fostering agency. Polly separately conducted research into adoption breakdowns in Scotland, speaking to both families and social workers. Good morning, Polly. Welcome to the programme. As I just mentioned, you've done research into adoption breakdown in Scotland. Can we start by asking how common it is? Yeah, good morning. So the really short answer to that is that we don't really know. It's very, very difficult to track the data. And in terms of my research, I'd hoped to kind of estimate a

breakdown rate in Scotland. And I was unable to do that because a lot of adoption outcomes aren't tracked. Internationally and within the UK there have been kind of various studies and those studies would estimate that an adoption breakdown rate happens somewhere between 2% and 25% of the time. But we don't know what the figures are. But we don't know the full figures. Julie Selwyn in 2014 with colleagues undertook a really comprehensive piece of research that looked at adoption breakdown in England and Wales and she estimated a figure of 3.2%.

Is it quite telling? No, it's fine. Is it quite telling? I think the percentages are interesting but only if you know what numbers we're talking about. What can we read into the fact that they're not no it's fine but is it quite uh telling i think the percentages are interesting but only if you know what what numbers we're talking about is is what can we read into the fact that they're not tracked i think it's very difficult to to track adoptions in many ways um once a child has had an adoption order granted then they're no longer part of that local authority and of course they can go back to that local authority to request support they're no longer part of that local authority. And of course, they can go back to that local authority to request support.

They're entitled to that. However, their outcomes are no longer tracked. And whether that is right or not, I suppose, is an ongoing conversation. You spoke to families and to social workers who you mostly accessed via local authorities. How forthcoming were they in giving their data? So I was very grateful to everybody who met with me and spoke with me and I found them very helpful in providing these kind of really honest and reflective accounts it was a little bit more challenging to directly

access some of the adoptive families and I think partly that was a little bit out of some misplaced paternalism probably um as I suppose everybody has heard this morning the adoption breakdown is an absolute tragedy and the impacts ripple and carry on rippling for those involved and I think um the local authorities who are almost the gatekeepers at times had that real awareness that for some families they had experienced something that had really affected them and they may not want to talk. I suppose I found the opposite when I did speak to families I think they were pleased that they'd had a chance to tell their story. So what did they tell you? Why what did you find to be the most

common reasons for breakdown? So there's a real mix of things. I suppose one of the things that kind of came across quite clearly was about that early stage, the beginning and how difficult that could be. And I suppose one of my recommendations from my research is around the transition and getting that right. Because if you think about children who have a plan for adoption, before they move in with an adoptive family, they've been living with a foster carer. And they're normally happy, well settled, well established with that foster carer. And so everybody around that child wants them to move. And there's been a plan around that being in the child's best interest, maybe apart from the child in that moment, because they were settled where they were. And so then you have this really kind of complex interaction between this child who's moved and then often can present with as a grieving child. And alongside that, you have got a family who are very excited

to embark on a new parenting journey. And sometimes the children when they move in can be quite rejecting of the new carers. And also, many of the families in my research spoke of losses that they'd had before they came to their adoption journey and so you have this kind of complex interaction of loss which can be really difficult in the bonding process right at the beginning of the adoption. And what role did you find the child's early trauma and the adoptive parents preparation in you know playing in in the in the breakdown of the adoption? So interestingly, all the families that I spoke to, apart from one, and all the social workers that I spoke to, all said there'd been very thorough preparation.

But what they then went on to say was that there was this really thorough kind of theoretical preparation. So the families had done lots of reading. They'd attended preparation courses. They'd learned about things like attachment theory and developmental trauma. But when it came to actually living with a child, they felt that that was when the preparation that was really theoretical didn't seem to kind of cut it. And what they noticed was that they felt very unprepared for the huge emotional responses that they had. And they also felt really unprepared for how it actually felt to live with a child who has experienced a loss. Well, the unprepared bit is the interesting bit, isn't it?

Because you'd hope that they would be prepared. So when you spoke to social workers as part of your study, what did they say about the preparation and the support that's provided to the families? So I suppose the interesting thing for me was the families and social workers said pretty similar things on that, in that the social workers were also very clear that we provided a lot of information. We did preparation in relation to specific children. They talked at length about the reports they'd shared, how the child presented. But the social workers were all really reflective that I think it didn't hit home. I think what they took away from our preparation, they didn't then feel prepared once they had a family. So what support should be available?

So that's very difficult to say. I think certainly at our agency at Scottish Adoption and Fostering, we've really focused in on this early stage. So we run an early days group. We bring in therapeutic play games for children and their families in the really early stages to kind of help try and build those games together and build those kind of relationships and we offer a lot of peer support we've got some really amazing experienced parent practitioners because I think one of the things about adoption is it can be really isolating a lot of people when they start their journey all their friends and family around them expect them to be excited they they don't really find it that easy to hear when it's hard and and I think that's the same for the social work team often as well because everyone's really invested adoption is a really significant thing legally it removes the rights of the birth

family it's very it's a very extreme intervention and so everybody is very invested in it and it can be really hard to voice concerns or when you're when you're struggling and i'm just curious i'm aware of time probably i think it's i just want to uh understand them when it does break down which is incredibly traumatic as we've heard from karen there for the adoptive parents the child what and then the stigma that they have to live with after that and we've heard from Karen there for the adoptive parents the child what and then the stigma that they have to live with after that and we could hear from what Karen was saying how difficult and crippling that experience has been for her is there any support what did the people you spoke to tell you about that so I think that was one of the most difficult findings really from from my

study was just that kind of lack of support in the aftermath for families when they've been a breakdown I mean first of all it was really difficult to hear about the journeys of the children after an adoption breakdown because obviously the gravity for them it's another loss and and that was kind of having knock-on implications for those children and for the families I think stigma is the right word. There was a real, they felt shame. They felt judged by a lot of other people. And even though often the beginnings are really carefully planned for an adoption, when it ends, there isn't the same.

Well, certainly in these examples that I heard about, there weren't the same processes put in place for the ending. So they often felt abrupt, very difficult. And all of the families that I spoke with, apart from one, accessed private therapeutic support themselves.

And you need the finances to be able to do that. Really interesting speaking to you. Thank you so much for your time, Polly. 84844 is the number to text or if you can relate to anything you've heard uh on the program today feel free to send us an email by going to our website and just to say again there are links of support on the woman's hour website now the british indian visual artist bharati kher is known internationally for her

signature use of the bindi her latest work target queen can be seen at london south bank center's hayward gallery her works look at the female body and experience through sculpture and installation and this work features super-sized bindis reimagined from their microscopic form to macro size worn by the goddess turning the brutalist building into a powerful feminine force uh she's one of India's most prominent artists. I would say one of the world's most prominent British Indian artists. Bharti Kher, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you so much, Anita, for having me.

I'm really delighted to be here. I'm delighted to have you here. I've got so many questions to ask you. I saw the work last night. It was actually there at Hayward's Galley and I tried to describe it to the listeners this morning that if you're on a double-decker bus going past that brutalist building building it will make you smile.

These giant bindis tell me about it. So Target Queen was envisioned in 2012. I did a project in China at the Rockbund Art Museum and the bindis are a sign that I've been using for many years of my work. It really is about potential and possibility. The tiny dot that South Asian women place between their eyes is a symbol of the third eye. And this is the gateway to your consciousness. And I always thought that the idea itself was so beautiful. I mean, in the work is grand, it looks it's it's big, but actually, this the message is very simple. It's look within. And suddenly, this small dot that's been transformed, like you said, into this macro huge version is the Bindi for the goddess, she is now supersized. And what I liked

about the potential was now that the building, this brutalist building, now has a consciousness to itself. So it's a kind of portal and a door for you to enter. I mean, also, I mean, for me, it's also quite a joyful work because of the colour. And these are the colours of India, aren't they? Anyone who's been to India or who's been lucky enough to be in India will know that the sun is strong and the colours are wonderful. And you've feminised that building. Yeah, I mean, the South Bank's a really interesting place. I mean, it was built in the 60s.

People always sort of go on how it was quite brutalist and quite ugly. I actually find it quite fascinating. I think it's mad. It's like a jumble of geometry and towers stacked on top of each other. And it's quite a male building. I mean, there was five architects, five male architects and a whole plethora of other people who were consulted. I mean, Henry Moore was one of them. Apparently, even Houdini was one of the consultants who was like, what kind of space do you want? So the building was built from the inside out. But at the same time, the

outside of the building is it's it's brutalist, it's masculine. I like I felt like we needed some sort of feminine energy in the building, but also something that was circular, because all the angles are very tight around the building. They're very angular. It's very geometric. And I've been working with the circle, which is the most simple form. It is the primordial form of life. It's the structure of your cells. And it just needed something. I responded to the building. And people looking at it will respond to the work because it makes you smile.

It's your first time on Woman's Hour. So I feel like we need to get to know you, Bharti. You mentioned India there and people who have the joy and the privilege of going there. You're born and brought up in London. And at 22, you flipped a coin to decide where you were going to go. Was it you were going to either go east or west, New York or India? Yeah. How did you end up in Delhi?

Well, I flipped the coin. It was heads and I went to Delhi and I actually wanted to I'd never been I hadn't been to India since I was four years old um and my mother uh was a single parent and she brought us up in um the suburbs and we'd never been to India because I mean if you know I mean if you imagine in the 70s tickets were expensive to go to Delhi then. And I wanted to meet my grandmother, who I hadn't seen. And I wanted to connect with just family. It was like a calling. I just felt something very strong that I needed to go.

And I went. Three decades later, you're firmly entrenched in the Indian cultural landscape, you and your husband. Yeah. Well, when I got there, I didn't intend to stay there. And within a month of being in Delhi, I met Sibaud. Sibaud Gupta. Sibaud Gupta, my husband. And we bumped into each other looking for studios. I was looking for a studio.

It's like a Bollywood film. We were talking about Bollywood romances earlier. You had yours in Delhi. In Delhi. And, yeah, three decades later, I'm still there. India was really, I mean, it's been my everything in many ways, my learning. I mean, I always say that England is my anchor, but India is my spiritual home. But you'd qualified from art college in the early 90s. Yeah. The whole YBA thing was happening in London. Did you not want to, you know there wasn't a place for me there what do you mean by that um I I wasn't ready

I didn't have a language I didn't know what I really wanted to talk about or say in my work and also my work wasn't resolutely British I mean I'm a British Indian. I'm not English, but I'm British. And I felt that there wasn't, England wasn't ready for that dialogue yet. It wasn't ready for the other. There'd been a show at the Hayward Gallery in 84, something called The Other Story. It was a radical and revolutionary exhibition at the time, but it was way ahead of its time in many ways and I I just got the sense I needed to go away there was there's going to be there was going to be a long gestation period of the YBAs and I wasn't part of it interesting yeah the foresight um and we need to talk about some of your other work as well as it's on women's hour because um you've got an exhibition on at the

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Alchemies yeah what will. What will people see? And they should see it. Alchemies, it's a show that I'm really proud of, actually. And it's a two-year project working with the creators Claire, Lily and Sarah. And we were, I really wanted to bring together like 20 years of work really and I've been looking at the female body or the way that the body manifests itself through sculpture or two-dimensional work or the Bindi works and I really wanted to just bring them all together so there is a ginormous plinth and there's about 18 works of all the women's sculptures that I've been making and casting. Casting friends of yours, people you know. Casting the body and the body's memory and when I cast my friends or people that

I know I'm able to there is a I'm able to catch something of them like I think that material has material is very powerful and when you cast the, you catch a part of a memory or something about the person that is an unspoken. It's unspoken. Why women? Because I'm a woman and it's what I know. And it's I think that we are. Women are really amazing. I mean, they're interesting. They're amazing. They have so many stories. They play so many roles. They have so many roles to play in their lives. But also, our bodies are transformational at every given hour. We're cyclical. Our bodies are determined by the stars, the moons, the planets, things move. Plus, we are the greatest creators. We give birth and we have children. And that is an extraordinary experience experience and it really is the universe and the cosmos and nature all coming together to create life I mean it is women are amazing

it's out there yeah I was wondering whether you would have had the same level of success had you stayed in the UK and not gone to India yeah the million the million dollar question. You know, I get asked a lot. I get asked, like, if I'd gone to New York instead of Delhi, what would happen? I mean, certainly, if I hadn't gone to India, the language that I use in my work, obviously, the bindis would never have come into my work, the kind of materials that I pick up, the saris, the bangle pieces, the casting. I also learned how to make sculpture in India. I certainly didn't learn at college because for my own reasons and for not anybody else's reasons,

I was rather intimidated by the sculpture studios, you know, because it was more of a sort of masculine space and that's got nothing to do with anybody else except me. But I did go to India and I started to develop a team who I could work with who could work with me in the studio and we taught ourselves how to make sculpture. How talented are they? Super amazing talented technicians I work with and I'm really lucky to have a really incredible team in my studio and a lot of them have been with me for about 18-19 years so we're all kind of getting great together and we are very lucky that you

came to see us at woman's hour and that we can see your art and your work um in two different places thank you bradley thank you so much for having me about this show the target queen is on a hayward gallery at the south bank center get that bus it, it'll make you smell. And her solo exhibition, Alchemies, is currently on at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. That's it from me, but do join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour, where I'll be looking back at our special programme this week on SEND, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

and the Mums Bridging the Gap. That's tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour at 4pm. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. TVs, hairdryers or vacuum cleaners, hearing firsthand from people who make them. We still make products with DVD player built in. You would be very surprised how many we sell. Then our expert guests choose their favourite game-changing innovations which shape the products and the past before we follow the money to where they're going next. Think of the TV, 98-inch or 100-inch.

Doe makes the mundane marvellous again. Listen on BBC Sounds. 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.

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