Woman's Hour - Female comedic characters, Mental healh support in schools

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

The television comedy dramas Fleabag and Derry Girls finished this week. What’s the appeal of the seriously flawed female character from Jane Austen’s Emma through to Bridget Jones?Upskirting is now a specific criminal offence across England and Wales. We hear from the activist and writer Gina Martin who started the campaign for a change in the law after being targeted at a music festival. Next week, one of the subjects on the agenda at the NEU (National Education Union) conference is the mental health of pupils. Increasingly, staff in schools are being asked to provide emotional support for the children they teach. But do they have the adequate resources or training to help these vulnerable individuals? We discuss with Sarah Kendrick from the children's mental health charity, Place2Be, Brenda McHugh from Anna Freud centre and Anne Lyons, the former president of the National Association of Head Teachers. Bev Thomas is a clinical psychologist. She's written her debut novel 'A Good Enough Mother' about a trauma therapist who is trying to treat a patient who bears a striking resemblance to her own missing child. She joins Jenni to discuss.As part of Late Night Woman's Hour we hear from the barrister Samantha Davies about what we can do about modern slavery in the supply chain. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 12th of April. Earlier this week, the Children's Commissioner said young people face an extremely worrying postcode lottery when it comes to mental health services. What impact is that having on teachers who are trying to deal with the fallout

Bev Thomas is a clinical psychologist who's published her first novel A Good Enough Mother how has she brought her professional experience into her creative work and in one week we saw the end of two brilliant tragedy comedies Fleabag and Derry Girls what's the appeal of the seriously flawed female character from Jane Austen's Emma through to Bridget Jones? Now, as you may have heard in the news, today is the day when upskirting is officially against the law. If anyone takes a picture without the

victim's knowledge for the purpose of sexual gratification or causing humiliation, stress or alarm, the perpetrator may face a two-year prison sentence and may go on to the sex offenders register. It was Gina Martin who began the campaign to change the law nearly two years ago. How surprised was she at the campaign's success? It's crazy. I think it was almost two years ago that I came in to speak to you, wasn't it? You were the first to have me me actually. Of course we were. You were you were yeah yeah it's been amazing I thought I'd give it go I thought I'd take it as far as I possibly could and we got really serious about it but obviously if you told me that I'd be here 20 months ago I probably wouldn't have believed you. How easy then was it to navigate the process with the politicians?

Very complex I have no political background or legal background, so I find it really difficult. That's why I brought in a lawyer, Ryan Whelan, who's my good friend, and he was my campaign partner. But we had to be very strategic and very clever about it, and it was very political. But we did things the right way, we got the right support, we did all the work up front and now we're here, which is wonderful. And how much of your life has it taken up? My entire life. I dream about it. It's unbelievable. I was working full time the entire time, getting up at sort of 5am, doing it before work. I've just about, I've just left my full time job, but it's consumed my life. It's become my life. But I feel proud to be able to do this kind of work. I mean, it's terrifyingly hard, but I love it.

I'll probably continue to do it. What do you make of figures which are out today showing more than half of 43 police forces in England and Wales recorded allegations of upskirting last year compared with only 15 forces two years ago? Yeah, I think there's been reports are increasing because there's way more awareness. This campaign has really helped with awareness. And not just with victims, but also with the police forces and prosecutors as well. But the statistics are obviously unsurprising

in terms of convictions as well, because this didn't exist in legal language. And now that we've changed the law, I'd be really interested to see what the statistics are 18 months from now. Of course, it did exist in Scotland. Yes, for 10 years. Scottish law had it in place.

How surprised are you that women and girls say they've been targeted in shops, at work, in the street and at school? Yeah, it's devastating. I hate it, but unfortunately I'm not surprised. The amount of messages I've received over these two years is unbelievable on Instagram, on Facebook, emails. A seven-year-old girl was messaging me for a few days. She didn't want to go to school because she'd been upskirted by her teacher.

By her teacher? Yeah, yeah. They found thousands of images on a USB. This is a bigger problem than we realise and that's why it was so important for us to go really hard with this campaign and change the law as fast as we could so we can protect people quicker. Yeah, I'm really proud of the work

but I'm not shocked by the figures unfortunately. What impact has it had on the way you feel about what happened to you? I mean you were upskirted at a music venue. Yeah, it was an interesting one. After it happened, I was going to a festival a week later and my case was obviously immediately dropped.

I was going to pack skirts and I was like, I don't want to wear these skirts. And it was actually my boyfriend that was like, you can't not wear what you want to wear because someone else is behaving like this. So it's kind of made me, I would say, more confident and more bold to go out and change things because I was angry

like that that wasn't a motivator for me was anger um I don't think we should change our behavior um because people can't control theirs Gina Martin well done thank you thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning I suspect you've had rather a busy morning yes indeed going around talking to people but thank you very much for joining us today thank you now earlier this week the children's commissioner published a report in which she said that a lot of young people face what she described as an extremely worrying postcode lottery when it comes to the provision of mental health services well next week, the Teachers' Union Conference will discuss the mental health of pupils. They're concerned about the degree of emotional support

teachers are having to take on, often without the resources or training to help the youngsters in their classes. Sarah Kendrick is the Head of Services for the South at Place to Be. Brenda McHugh is one of the directors of mental health in schools at the Anna Freud Centre. Anne Lyons was head of a primary school in North West London

until last year. She's the former president of the National Association of Head Teachers. So, Anne, what sort of mental health problems were you dealing with in a primary school when the children are so young? There are lots of things going on, from sudden things that happen like bereavement, divorce, illness, to much more complex things in schools where children and families have complex mental health issues and in times gone past there might have been more staff in school there would have been teaching assistants who would

maybe be able to support and guide but now staffing is so short that schools do not have the capacity. We've lost school nurses who would come in and support schools and families. That doesn't happen anymore. So how did you deal with it in your school? So in my school, about 20 years ago ago we were able to get a grant that gave us access to a counselling service we we bought in ourselves from our school budget a counsellor who worked in the school one day a week and that gave support to staff how to deal with things in class. It gave instant support for sudden things that happened.

And it gave us long-term support for children and their families that needed ongoing support. What role did the local authority have in all this? The local authority is there to support. We would access CAMHS, education psychologists, but that's become more and more difficult because of the cuts, not just to education, but to health as well. Sarah, what does Place to Be offer in support to schools? To support schools, Jenny, we provide an in-school service

so we provide counselling and therapy for schools but a mental health professional in a school so we're in 300 schools nationwide and offering training to school staff in 300 other schools Most importantly, we provide what we call a whole school service and that is not just seeing children one-to-one therapeutically but also supporting teachers because we feel that's really crucial to the well-being of children and young people and also parents and carers and we provide a suite of training for school staff. But given what Anne

was saying about the money problems that schools have who's paying for these extra staff or training? So schools commission our service and they pay a contribution towards the service. We're a charity so we fundraise the balance but it's incumbent on schools to pay now for the mental health services in their schools and we're seeing headteachers really struggling to do that. Now Brenda, the Department of Education commissioned you to start something called the Schools Link Programme. To what end? So the Schools Link Programme was put in place to try and bridge that gap between what happens in the classroom and getting the help to the children where they need it and when they need it,

which is bringing not just CAMHS services, but services such as Sarah's talking about, more accessible to children, parents and teachers within schools. So the School Link programme worked in over a thousand schools up and down the country, bringing together CAMHS clinicians, people from the voluntary sector, and those that work with the most vulnerable children in schools to develop good, reliable pathways for referral and have support back in schools. And that has been successful, and we're thinking that that needs to be in all schools and accessible for all children that need it, because there is a growing concern.

But given that you are working on evidence and providing evidence of what's going on, what have you found needs to change in schools? I think that the evidence that we have is that we used to think it was one in ten children needed some support, that they had a recognisable mental health issue that deserved specialist treatment. We now know that that's one in eight. We know that girls increasingly are having emotional disorder problems and need specialist support. And we know that boys are also much, much younger than we ever thought before having conduct problems. You talked about what's happening in primary school, in our family school. You know, we have many, many children, boys who are referred to us, who do not know how to handle emotions,

do not know how to express grief, sadness, trouble. Why? Why is it getting so much worse? I think there are massive pressures on families and there are massive pressures on schools and children need the support at a place and time when they need it and where they need it and I think that's what all of us around the table are striving to provide and at the Anna Freud Centre we're trying to do that in two ways one we are supporting the development in the green paper of the education mental health practitioners that are being trained now to go into schools and to provide that support

that we were just talking about used to be there and is no longer there and we're also providing evidence-based resources that teachers can rely on. But Anne what's your response to what seems to be an assumption that teachers are responsible for the mental health of their pupils, are they? Teachers are not responsible. Schools have an important role to play, but teachers are educationalists. And they have the responsibility to signpost, to support their families, to the correct service. One very positive thing that's come from the Royal Foundation is the Mentally Healthy Schools website, which is quality assured, and that's really important.

It's quality assured information that schools can use to be able to signpost, direct their children and families to the right service and support their families in the right way. But do enough of those services exist? I mean, how easy is it to get a child to where they need to be? Yes, I was going to say the biggest issue is that it takes such a long time to access those services.

And I've seen times where children are threatening to take their own lives and they still have not got appointments with their CAMHS service. Sarah, where has there been success if a dedicated counsellor has been appointed? Well we see success if you like all the time. 80% of the children who come to us with the most severe issues will improve. They show some improvement according to teachers and according to parents. So we have evidence that an in-school whole whole school approach therapy in school works so we we know there's really good evidence and I'm sure that Anne and Brenda would agree that there's really good evidence about what works we're under-resourced and as I said it's the duty of schools it comes down to schools to commission services in order to be able to

provide that help. Now Sarah obviously we asked the government what they thought about all this. How hopeful are you that the government's promise which was made to us of recognising that early intervention is vital and that a new dedicated mental health workforce for schools will be trained will it do the job you can hear my pause um i'm really hopeful that it will and we are delighted that children's mental health the mental health of children and young people is so high on the agenda um you know this is a great thing for me i've been in this business for 25 years and I've seen a huge change. This initiative by the government needs money behind it. It really needs to be given real kind of financial support. And the government has promised one and a quarter billion by 2020 for this cause. Will that make the difference? It's a start. It's a start. But we must be clear

that this isn't for schools to do on their own. This is a shared responsibility that schools can do their bit, that medical services can do their bit and and charities like the place to be and many others can do their bit as well brenda what about the money is it enough uh we are always welcoming money for children's mental health but i think that it's also what we do with that and that's the importance of making sure you know teachers don't have time children can't wait we need to make sure that the tools are there and they're accessible for the teachers for the parents to support those children and that's why i think all of us around the table are making sure that those evidence-based resources are there and accessible i mean there

will be people at home now that are teachers still thinking about a child that worried them when they were last at school. There'll be parents thinking, I don't know where to turn to help my child. Brenda McHugh, Sarah Kendrick and Lions, thank you all very much indeed for being with us this morning. And we would like to hear from you.

You are listening at home. If you have experience of the things we've been discussing, please let us know about it. You can send us an email or of course a tweet. Thank you all very much. Now still to come in today's programme, Bev Thomas who's a clinical psychologist and her

first novel, A Good Enough Mother, drawing on her own professional experience. And as Fleabag and Derry Girls come to an end in the same week, what is it we love about female characters with serious flaws? Now, a new episode of the Late Night Woman's Hour podcast is out now, and this week Emma Barnett's guests are the scientists Sophie Scott and Maggie Edrin Pocock, and the barrister Samantha Davies,

who specialises in human rights. They discuss how it can seem increasingly difficult to know how, Edwin Pocock, and the barrister Samantha Davies, who specialises in human rights. They discuss how it can seem increasingly difficult to know how, as an individual, you can have a positive impact on the world. But, as Samantha explains, modern slavery is an area where you can bring about change. There are approximately 40 million people in the world still living in slavery. And I think that figure is staggering. Approximately 33.5 million are in Southeast Asia, and approximately 9 million in Africa. So we can think of these things as happening elsewhere and beyond our borders.

But why I want to bring it up is because actually it has real relevance for us here. Because actually, these people are working on Thai fish farms or fishing vessels they are working on cocoa farms where we get our chocolate they are working on tea plantations in Assam they're working in stone factories in Rajasthan there are children mining mica which produces the glimmer and shimmer we get in our makeup and our cars. So these things, although, yes, the victims of modern slavery, principally the majority are outside the UK, there are still victims in the UK as well with approximately, I think, 10,000 to 13,000 is the estimate within the UK and a total of 1.5 million across the developed nation so that's still a significant amount and on our doorsteps we know it's against the law and people

are more sensitized to the fact that you can look at what happens when you go to a car wash and see all these people washing your car for five pounds or a nail bar yeah or a nail bar or even in restaurants and in hospitality, it's very prevalent in the hospitality sector as well. So which people aren't always aware of. And that's right under our noses. And actually, the majority of victims in the UK are actually from, there's quite a number from EU territories, such as Romania and Poland. But the reason I wanted to highlight it is because we can actually do something about it. The fact that it's happening in the supply chain millions of miles away doesn't mean that we're

totally removed and totally powerless. So section 54, bit of law, of the Modern Slavery Act. We've not talked about Brexit yet, so I've missed a bit of law and tariff action. Sorry, to be boring. No, it's not boring, it's important. Educate us. It means that companies with a turnover of over 36 million who do business in the United Kingdom need to publish a modern slavery statement, which is telling us what they do to tackle the issue of modern slavery in their supply chains. So these are the people who make our tea, who make our makeup, who make our coffee,

everything else. And so that modern slavery statement is meant to be a comprehensive document sort of telling consumers what they do to tackle modern slavery now for me and in fact the second interim report on the act which came out just at the end of last year also concluded this so i'm not alone um is that we don't seem to know about our power as consumers that we can actually do something about this that you can actually write to any one of the manufacturers and sort of say, you know, who is making my tea? Who is picking my tea? And there are charities such as Tradecraft

that have fantastic template letters that you can send and ask about this. Have you changed your buying habits because of this? Yes, I have. Have you? I mean, very much so in terms of the food I buy. Can I not buy certain major tea brands? I would never say, you know, avoid a specific brand because actually it's very difficult to get specific information.

And in fact, what the reality is, and this is why I bring back this staggering figure, you're going to struggle to find a brand that isn't tainted with it at all. Really? So that's the real issue. When we take on board that figure of 40 million people, if we say 33 million are really the ones involved in the tea industry and the other 9 million perhaps in cocoa and coffee, then clearly it's going to encompass like a large amount of the entire industry. So actually a boycott isn't the way forward. The way forward

is us asking questions and telling the manufacturers that we want them to do something about it. And can I just say that it has an impact. So there has been a recent move, having said boycotts aren't the best way forward, when they act collectively, they can be effective. So some of the anti-slavery charities, they've come together and put forward what was the cotton pledge. So this was requiring, asking manufacturers to pledge not to buy cotton from, in this case, Uzbekistan, because there was a lot of information on forced labour in that territory. And so manufacturers stopped buying from Uzbekistan.

And the net effect is actually, as of 2018, the International Labour Organisation is able to say that there's been a significant reduction in forced labour. Sophie, where could you come in on this? I gave a talk at TEDx Exeter last year, and one of the other speakers worked for an anti-slavery charity. And she was giving these examples of UK-based situations, very specific examples.

And she said at the end, you may think none of this applies to you in Exeter. Everything I talked about happened in Exeter. Exeter. All the examples were expressed locally. It was absolutely stunning. And it was very effectively making you suddenly realise that we are completely immersed in a lot of these,

you know, currently, you know, low cost, to me, industries have got a terrible cost somewhere else. But what you're saying is absolutely staggering in terms of this, the scale of it at a worldwide level. As you say, that means the thought that you would struggle to find something uncontaminated by it is kind of a staggering. And you can subscribe to the Late Night Woman's Hour regular podcast through BBC Sound. Now, Bev Thomas' day job for a long time has been that of a clinical psychologist. She's now published her first novel, A Good Enough Mother, in which the central character, Ruth, is a psychologist whose main work is with patients who've suffered trauma.

Her own son, Tom, has gone missing. And when she's confronted with a new patient, Dan, she's struck by his strong similarity to her own boy. Dan Griffin is my last patient that afternoon. He's hunched in the chair by the door, head in hands, hair hanging down over his fingers. I hear myself make a noise, and then a wave rolls gently through me. I feel suddenly light, elevated. He's grown his hair long again. David would hate it but I'm pleased. One of the last times I saw him he tacked it off completely leaving long golden curls in the bathroom sink that made me want to weep. As I move closer I can see his donkey jacket, the one we bought him for Christmas. My heart is thumping now. There's a new shirt, one I don't recognise, and a red rucksack on his lap. On his feet, Doc

Martin boots. Always those black boots. The sight of them makes me smile. Tom, here you are, is what I think, or perhaps I say out loud. My chest rises and falls and I break into a clumsy run, startling the patients in the waiting room. Some look up. One of them is Tom. As he lifts his head, I feel a dull pain in my solar plexus, swift like a punch. It is not him. Bev, the title, A Good Enough Mother, is a reference to the famous Winnicott theory, which I think was published in 1953. Why do his ideas fascinate you? Well, I think it's very interesting, I think, the good enough mother issue,

because I think it's been used, I mean, it's used now as a sort of excuse for a bit of mediocrity and being a bit rubbish, and that's all right. And of course, what he was saying was really innovative. What he was saying is that it's important as your children get older to allow them to experience some degree of frustration because that equips them as they go on in life to understand that that's part of life. And if we don't actually allow them to experience that

and sort of protect them from all those things, we're actually not doing a really good job. So he was sort of advocating really for the sort of imperfections of parenting. And of course, I was very interested in exploring that. And of course, we've got a character in my book who is unable to do that in a way with her son who has difficulties.

So why, when Ruth first sees Dan, who is not her son, is she so convinced that he is? Well, she's a woman, she's a mother who's grieving. So her 17-year-old son is missing and she doesn't know where he is, which, I mean, I did quite a lot of research into missing people. And I think one of the things that is really poignant and striking is that people do, there is no end to that grief, that loss. So people do describe seeing their loved ones in a cafe or in the high street or just on the tube.

And of course, it's not them. So I was very taken with that. I think grief is such a powerful emotion. it does make people do very crazy things sometimes and i suppose one of the things that i was thinking about with her is that she's managing that at work um and but it's with her the whole time um so her personal and private you know her personal life and her professional life are kind of split in that way so there he is yeah she does rather try to mother everyone she meets, in a way, with not a good ending, in Dan's case, which we won't give away. Why does she do that? Well, I think, I mean, it's kind of interesting, isn't it?

I think there are some insights into her own childhood and background. So she's had quite a challenging background herself an alcoholic yeah so her mother had alcohol problems and I think she was she sort of from an early age which I think it can be quite common that children become the sort of adult carers as it were so they in a way perhaps lose some of their own childhood because they're kind of managing and looking after their parents, which is definitely the case for Ruth in this story. So in some ways, she's been caring, as it were, and looking after from quite a young age.

So perhaps it's no surprise that she goes into a field where that's part of her role. So I think that there's some issues that are around for her that perhaps have not been resolved but she also makes a very good clinician but what you were saying about the separation of the professional and the personal life it is striking that you know when she's dealing with other people's trauma all the time yeah she doesn't seek any help for her grief at her missing son yeah of which she must be completely aware yeah no i think i mean i think there is a uh and i and i would argue that that

that she has up until the point that she sees that character she has been doing in my head she's been doing a brilliant job you know and my aim was to show her in the rest of the book doing brilliant clinical work. But I think my sense is that unresolved grief comes out somewhere, you know, whether it's a bereavement or whether it is somebody like Ruth who is missing somebody. It doesn't really go away. So I suppose that's partly in a way what I was trying to get across through the story is that in a way she's she spends all her day helping other people connect with their emotions but she herself is disconnected from her own how common would it be do you think for a therapist to in a way set aside their own problems and just deal professionally and try to ignore what's going on in their own life well it's interesting isn't it because i think that all therapists are human beings too so they go through everything that everybody else goes

through. So while I don't practice now and I did quite a few years ago I now work with teams who work in mental health services. I mean we all have unwell relatives, we all have bereavement, I mean everybody has something and I think that one of the things that is really important for people who work in that field is that they have regular supervision their structure in the services to support that but of course as we also know that our mental health services are in crisis so i imagine that quite a lot of reflective space and support is the first thing that gets eroded so i'm also a kind of passionate advocate for enabling that you're kind of setting up systems to support the carers carers need to be supported in order to do this work so it's not a requirement that a therapist must be

yes supervised and and have yes yes it is so a lot of i mean i i'm not trained as a psychotherapist but ruth in my book is a psychotherapist. She would have undergone hours and hours and hours of personal therapy to do this job. Clinical psychologists and other professions, yeah, there's a requirement to have supervision. And Ruth does have supervision, but she chooses to take some things to her supervisor and not. Now, we were talking earlier, as I'm sure you're aware, about the shortage of mental health services for the young. And in the novel, Ruth feels it's really difficult to provide patients with the level of care they need.

How much is that a problem that you all face professionally? I think it's a huge problem. And I work with some excellent teams in the NHS. And I think there are a number of things that are difficult. One is the huge resource implications. So there have been massive cuts to beds, mental health beds. So there's a constant crisis. So the kind of criteria for admission has changed enormously over the last 10 years because there simply aren't enough spaces. I also think there needs to be, it's not just about money, I think there needs to be a kind of rethink a bit more creatively about early intervention so that we're not

just dealing with things at a crisis point. Bev Thomas, thank you very much for being with us and the very best of luck with the novel. Thank you very much. A Good Enough Mother. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Now, it's been a rather sad week for fans of two brilliant television series.

Derry Girls on Channel 4 came to an end with hopes of peace for the future for the four wild and wacky teenage girls. And then on BBC One, Fleabag came to a close after two series made for BBC Three. Just in case you haven't watched the last episode,

I won't spoil it by telling you what happened with Fleabag's father and his fiancée and the gorgeous Catholic priest played by Andrew Scott. So what is it about such flawed female characters that fascinate and delight us? There must be a reason why it's the gap-toothed wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales who's his best-remembered character, or the meddling, often thoughtless Emma, who's a favourite of Jane Austen's work, or that Bridget Jones lasted for so long. So why do we love to laugh and sometimes cry

at the woman who gets so much wrong? Well, Erin Kelly is a novelist. She's just published So Mothers. and sometimes cry at the woman who gets so much wrong. Well, Erin Kelly is a novelist. She's just published So Mothers. Danielle Dash is a TV development executive and writer. And Terry White is the editor-in-chief of Empire magazine. Terry, what did you love about Fleabag? What I loved about Fleabag is not just that she was flawed,

because I think flawed women existed in television and film for years um but it was it was handled in a really positive way she wasn't just a chaotic mess and she looked like women we knew she spoke like women we knew the writing was impeccable by any standard whatsoever it was brilliantly smart brill funny, but just the recognition of it being a really well-drawn female character and it not all just being a chaotic mess. Danielle, what did you love about Fleabag? I liked how irreverent it was. I liked the end in particular. Don't give it away.

No, no, no. Because some people won't have caught up yet. Absolutely not. No, I know this game. No, I really enjoyed her relationship with her sister and i think that that is important just the idea of two women who are completely different knowing how to love each other at the right time i think that's important in representation in tv erin what i loved about it was that it combined some incredibly broad humour. So the kind of wink to camera is nothing new. We've seen it in Uppample and we've seen it in Miranda

with incredibly profound issues that affect women. So Fleabag takes in divorce, baby loss, adultery, grief and guilt and shame. It addresses shame in a way that makes us laugh. And I think that's what's compelling about female characters. When I'm writing, if I feel that I'm niggling at something in my own experience that I find shameful or awkward or embarrassing I know that that's a rich theme to mine and that's what Fleabag does so brilliantly we laugh and we cringe in equal measure because we recognise ourselves. Terry what about Derry Girls didn't get so much publicity as Fleabag did but what did you make of

it? I loved Derry Girls and I think it was important in terms of showing a experience of not just Northern Irish women but working class girls it brilliantly captured what it was to be a teenage girl but I do think there is something in Fleabag which was about a white middle-class woman which meant that it got this somehow broader appeal that people were talking about it I think where it intersects with both class race and sexual identity I think those things are still kind of a little bit outliers when it comes to TV. Who's your favourite flawed female of them all Danielle would you say? I think right now I think there'll be two of them so um Michaela Cole

in Turingham is one who stands out what was it about her that you loved I just I just loved I could see myself just and and that's just it and that's that's where for Fleabag it doesn't quite go all the way with me is that um I really enjoyed it I love seeing it but I don't know that experience I don't know that experience I don't know those problems I know what it is to be a woman and I share that with her but in terms of actually seeing who I am as a black queer woman like that's um that wasn't represented and I think with with Chewing Gum and with um Issa Rae's Insecure you get, for me, I get to see myself and the women that I know and their experiences. And who would your favourite be, Erin?

And do you want to see yourself on the screen? Well, I am a straight white woman, so I see myself on the screen all the time. There is no shortage. Fleabag is, she's posher than me, but she's not a million miles away from me. I am not an underrepresented voice on TV and in books but certainly in terms of books my favourite flawed character is Manon Bradshaw who's a detective in Susie Steiner's crime novels and she is funny. I'm talking about

crime fiction but what is relatable about Manon Bradshaw is that she is what you'd call a hot mess and for example she's out there solving crime, but she's also going on Tinder dates where after this first successful sexual encounter in years and years, instead of playing it cool, she just turns around to the guy she slept with and said, I've been so lonely. And that's a kind of Fleabag moment. So I love to read that on the page as well as see it on the screen. Fleabag Terry was at times really shockingly overt in her sexuality.

Why were we never shocked by her carryings on well I think you know there has been some progression over the last decade or two in terms of showing women just having sex on screen whether you're talking about sex in the city whether you're talking about girls but she handled it with such kind of relatability and women have sex you know spoiler women have sex all the time we know what it looks like what we haven't seen is realistic depictions which are it's not always pretty we don't all always have perp boobs we do sometimes have sex with more than one partner who we're not in a long-term relationship with we weren't shocked because we know that's reality I think girls broke ground

for that as well showing sex in its messy awkward clumsy sometimes quite unattractive glory yeah where the way the woman didn't have to be seen absolutely I wasn't I I've had problems with Lena Dunham in terms of like her feminism so I had made a stance that I wasn't going to watch girls right and then I started my job and everybody at the office was watching it and so I had to get on board and it was the last season so I had to binge it quite quickly. And I found that I'd always cried in the changing rooms but the first time I went shopping

after watching Girls for So Much I didn't cry and that was because the normalisation of a big body is important and I think that really helped and that's where she was revolutionary was our Lena Dunham. Erin, when we look back to characters like, you know,

I mentioned the wife of Bath, Emma, Bridget Jones, why do they stand out as characters women in particular just love? Because, well, we're talking about flawed characters, but what I would say is we're talking, when you talk about a flawed woman, you're actually talking about a truthful woman, because there is, or a truthfully depicted woman, there is no such thing as a woman without flaws.

I mean, I write thrillers about people whose flaws lead them into terrible places. We're getting a lighter version of that in comedy. But we are under so much pressure to keep up, you know, my grandmother was in some ways no less liberated than I am, because I am now stifled by Instagram in a way that she was stifled by the social mores of the 1950s and flawed women are just people who are real and truthful and that's what responded and also it gives you agency if you're making a mess of your life you are creating things you are creating the action and you're not sitting passively waiting for a man to kick your story off stifled by Instagram that of course we are we're stifled by Instagram. That is fascinating. neighbours say, now it's what will the strangers say? What will the person I'm never going to meet say? And it's extraordinary that in some ways we've come incredibly far

and in other ways we are hung up and that's why flawed stories matter, that's why messy sex is important to see on screen and crying in changing rooms and awkward bodies and, you know, bad skin, all the stuff that we're seeing, it really matters. Danielle, obviously Chaucer was male,

we assume. Emma, Bridget, girls, Fleab Chaucer was male, we assume. Emma, Bridget, girls, Fleabag, Derry Girls, all written by women. How much difference do you reckon the gender of the writer makes? It makes a huge amount of difference. I think that when women are in control of their stories, that you see the way it connects with the audience and you see the way that we're able to all feel included in that and so if we look at shrill with lolly adephopian ed m ad bryant you're seeing representations of not just you know a black woman a white woman but big black women and big white women and just about the realities of what that is navigating the world and that's

something that men can't assume to know or even have any clue about. When I think that when men are in charge, there's a lot of assumptions about what women do and you watch it and you can immediately feel that, oh, this doesn't actually happen. And so I think that that kind of confidence that comes from white men always having opportunities to see themselves in everything

that they do. I think that now that more women are in charge of their representation on TV and how we are consumed, I think that's where we start to see a difference. As a development executive, Terry, what difference does the gender of the author make? Well, I think the gender of the author is massive. If you look at Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she also writes, for example, Killing Eve. Killing Eve, I think, has some of the most real, brilliantly detailed female characters on TV going. And I think it's not that men can't write women, but they just can't write from a singular personal experience. And when you have women writing women, you have them creating real women that you recognise. That is where the recognition is born from. Erin, female writer, obviously, so the gender matters?

It's a generalisation, but I have noticed that when men write women's bodies, they tend to internally sexualise them. So men write women's bodies. When I inhabit my body, I do it in terms of, you know, my bra hurts, my my period is due my jeans won't do up I'm walking alone with my keys in my hand because I'm scared men there's a quote that you see it does the rounds on Twitter all the time somebody wrote about a woman breasting boobily down the stairs you know men tend to write as though as though we're so turned on by inhabiting this gorgeous curviness that we can't think about anything else that's that's where it can sometimes fall apart. I was talking to Erin Kelly, Danielle Dash and

Terry White and thank you for all your emails and tweets. Lots of you got in touch about the discussion about mental health services in schools. Hannah tweeted, the only support I've ever been able to give to my students is due to my personal experiences. I've had to put my own mental health to one side to do so but that's just part of the teaching expectation isn't it? Deborah emailed her experience I teach science full-time but I'm also the teacher dedicated to mental health issues and listening support. I've been trained in counselling skills but I'm not a counsellor. For 12 years I've been trained in counselling skills but I'm not a counsellor. For 12 years I've listened to some of the most horrendous stories and dealt with suicide attempts and I then have to go straight off to teach year 8 science and keep it together. I don't get any clinical supervision as other counsellors do.

It's emotionally exhausting but I recognise the real need so I keep doing it. Teachers need more than training to take on this role, they need aftercare too. Someone who didn't want us to use a name tweeted, in 20 plus years as a teacher I've never had any training in supporting students with mental health issues. That's in several schools and in three local education authorities. Sheila tweeted, teachers and teaching assistants have got enough on their to-do lists every day with government targets to achieve to give them mental health responsibility as well when it takes an average of three years to train to become a counsellor is ridiculous. Emma tweeted that the degree of pastoral care for the children in my primary school class is overwhelming.

It's by far my biggest concern and challenge. They are always on my mind. Hannah tweeted, as a PE teacher in one of the most deprived places in the country, I can spend all lesson talking to the girls about mental health and well-being and issues impacting them taking part in the lesson. No support at all. And we knew lots of you would enjoy our discussion about fleabag and flawed comic characters. Simone tweeted, why do we like such flawed female characters as Fleabag? Because they are utterly realistic, well-rounded characters still rarely shown. Bev said Fleabag was about being frank.

If that means rudeness or naughtiness, it did at least go there. She spoke to her inner voice. Men are vulgar, so why not a woman? Miranda said, finally, Women's Hour gets someone on saying that they didn't relate to Fleabag. I've never related to anything less, and because of the hype, it's made me paranoid that I'm not living my millennial life properly. And to be honest, I don't buy everyone's insistence that they relate either. Karen tweeted, great conversation on flawed women on Woman's Hour. I agree with all

this, but can I just say Lillian from the Archers is fabulous. Do join me tomorrow for weekend Woman's Hour when you can hear Katie Bourne, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, talking about how she was stalked for five years and how the experience motivated her to get her own police service inspected and we will discuss how feminist is the archers join me tomorrow just after four if you can bye-bye oi you while you're here have a listen to this, would you? Forest 404. An environmental thriller for BBC Sounds. I'm so sorry. Meet Pan. Oh, I did.

She lives a few centuries from now, after a data crash that wiped out most records of life. So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest, she has no idea what it is. Forest 404. Nine-part thriller, nine-part talk, nine-part soundscape. See what it is. Forest 404. Nine part thriller. Nine part talk. Nine part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody and Pippa Haywood.

With theme music by Bonobo. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now. 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.