Woman's Hour - Fiona Govan, Louisa McGeehan, Tom Bennett, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, Namulanta Kombo, Helen Wood.

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

We talk to journalist Fiona Govan based in Madrid who writes for Olive Press about the controversy surrounding a new ad campaign in Spain proclaiming “All Bodies are Beach Bodies”. Posters including women of all shapes and sizes, including women with mastectomies with a slogan “Summer Belongs to Us too.” Helpful messaging? Or “absurd” as some opposition politicians claim which is creating “a problem where it doesn’t exist”.Should children who misbehave be excluded permanently from school? Recently, Southwark Council in London hit the headlines when it urged its headteachers to sign up to an ‘Inclusion Charter’ to avoid school exclusions. Some campaigners argue that excluding troubled children leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and puts them at risk of becoming part of a world of crime. Others say that it is necessary to exclude pupils who are disrupting the education of others or pose a danger to staff and other children. Anita is joined by Louisa McGeehan, chief executive of Just for Kids Law, a legal charity for children and young people; Tom Bennett, School Behaviour Advisor to the Department for Education, and Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, headteacher of Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham.We talk to Namulanta Kombo about her award winning podcast “Dear Daughter” which started with her idea of writing letters to her young daughter with advice for life. And the writer and comedian Helen Wood who wrote shows such as ‘The Usherettes’ and ‘The National Trust Fan Club’ tells us about her latest production ‘Let’s Talk About Philip’ which explores the the mystery and secret surrounding her brother’s death 32 years ago.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Sue Maillot

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, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. We're sharing life advice this morning and I'll tell you why. Because a brilliant new podcast called Dear Daughter has just won Podcast of the Year. It's where people write letters to their daughters, giving them advice. Everything from the sublime, the serious and the wonderfully ridiculous. So this morning, I'm asking you to do the same.

What piece of advice would you give your daughter, whether you have one or not? Advice about money, marriage, fashion, hair removal? We've had a few tweets already on this this morning and Bex messaged in to say to her daughter, don't play down your intelligence just because people are intimidated by intelligent women. Try to avoid getting into debt, in brackets, mortgage excluded, and keep stopping climate change in mind in everything you do. Then Celia tweeted to say,

everyone lives life at their own pace and don't bother with tiny plants. Andia tweeted to say, everyone lives life at their own pace and don't bother with tiny plants. And Lucy tweeted to say, go and see bands while you and they are both young. I saw AHA for the first time this year, aged 47, made me wish I'd seen them 35 years ago. Wish I'd seen them this year. So your advice, please. what would you tell your daughter this morning? You can text me 84844. The texts will be charged at your standard message rate, so make sure you check with your network provider. You can also contact us via social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us via our website. We'll also be talking about whether we should be

excluding kids from school this morning, the closing down of the Gender Identity Development Service for Children and Adolescents in London, and a new campaign by the Spanish government to make us all feel beach body confidence. Plus, of course, your thoughts on anything you hear in the show this morning. That text number again, 84844. But first, the NHS is going to close the UK's only clinic that's dedicated to gender identity in children and young people. Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, who runs the clinic, had been accused of rushing children into life-altering treatment on puberty blockers and have now been told to close the clinic by spring next year. Instead, new regional centres will be set up in more locations to cater for more children with stronger links to mental health services.

Keira Bell was referred to the Tavistock Centre as a teenager. She was prescribed puberty blockers but later stopped the transition process. She brought a case against Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust alongside a former employee, and she says she's thrilled with the decision to close the clinic. I went through a lot of distress as a teenager, a lot of teenagers do, and I just thought that that was the way I needed to go but I just needed, really, I just needed some support

and mental health support and therapy really from my growing up from growing up with everything that I'd been through there needs to be mental health support first and foremost. That's Keira Bell's reaction but for parents of children struggling with their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria this could be worrying news. Gender dysphoria is when you feel a sense of mismatch between your assigned gender at birth and the gender you identify with. This can be a devastating situation for teenagers who are dealing with enough emotional turmoil as it is. According to the service statistics,

the number of people being referred for treatments is 20 times higher now than it was a decade ago. And the worry is that though the closure of the Tavistock, through the closure of the Tavistock, some children might fall through the cracks and not get the help they need. Jo is the mother of a boy who was treated at the Tavistock from the age of 14. I was just desperate to get help and support. I was phoning up the admin team and literally sobbing down the phone saying, I can't do this any longer. We need somebody to help and support us. I mean, I am concerned for other families that things may well fall through the cracks now

and there's a huge waiting list and a backlog. So I think it's not going to be straightforward to set up these new services. I do worry about the people who are currently waiting to be seen, who are currently on the TAVI's books to make sure that they do get the continuation of the care and support they need. Susan Evans is a former nurse at the TAVI stock. She says she was concerned to begin with when a colleague said they'd referred a patient for hormonal treatment just after four sessions. When you work in mental health and particularly with adolescents, most people who do that kind of work would explain that it takes a long time to sort of gain the trust of many young people and

then to start thinking with them. It's certainly not something that I would ever feel confident could be done in four sessions. And I have heard reports of children as young as 10, 11 being commenced on puberty blockers and really that was why we felt that the only recourse was the judicial review. And Dr Hilary Cass is leading the review into Tavistock. She's written a letter to the National Director of NHS England, John Stewart. In the letter she says that young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria need a comprehensive package of care to ensure they get on the right pathway for them as an individual. She said the current model of care was leaving young people at considerable risk of poor mental health and distress and having one clinic was not a safe or viable long term option.

Instead, new regional centres will be set up to ensure the holistic needs of patients are fully met. The NHS. So what happens next? Well, Hannah Barnes is a journalist at BBC Newsnight and joins me now to fill us in. Morning, Hannah. Welcome to Woman's Hour. We've heard clips from some of the patients and the whistleblowers from Tavistock.

Can you give us the background to the ongoing Cass review? What prompted it? Well, the background goes back quite a long way. I don't know where to start, really. I mean, you heard Sue Evans there. She first raised concerns about the speed at which some young people were being referred for pubes to blockers back in 2005.

And there was actually a review back then, but we didn't find out what it said until Newsnight got hold of that a couple of years ago. But really, the concerns started in volume around sort of 2015-ish. And this is when referrals were absolutely rocketing to the Gender Identity Development Service. So that was the year they doubled. Up to that point, they'd been increasing 50% per annum since 2009,

and we went from about 50, 100 to thousands in the space of a few years. And in this year, 2015, they doubled from around 650-h to around 1500 and it wasn't just the numbers that was surprising the staff that worked at JIDS it was the nature of the referrals coming across so historically gender dysphoria or gender non-conformity tended to be seen in young birth registered boys and they would have that gender non-conformity and distress from from very early childhood and that would continue and for those for whom it persisted into adolescence those are the ones that it was judged that would most benefit from a medical transition. And the limited evidence base that does exist is based on really that group of young people.

And what JIDS staff were seeing was not only this absolutely exponential rise in the numbers, but actually the people being referred to JIDS weren't these boys that had experienced their gender non-conformity from early childhood, but actually birth-registered females who first had problems with their gender identity in adolescence, so once they'd hit puberty. And not only was there that shift in the sex ratio, if you like, but also many of the young people being referred had numerous associated difficulties. So mental health problems, as Dr. Hilary Cass has talked about there, anxiety, depression, a high proportion appeared to have had quite traumatised childhoods

or they may have suffered abuse, whether physical or sexual. They may have had eating disorders. And it made several staff working in the JIDS at the time, many of whom had worked in other challenging areas of the NHS and other mental health services think is the model that we are operating under really appropriate for this new group of young people um does the evidence that we have albeit pretty limited apply to you know is the pathway to this gender-related distress the same for a young boy as a teenage girl and do we need to think about just as there might be different ways into the gender dysphoria maybe there's

different ways out of that as well and staff felt increasingly that all the gender identity development service could offer was was a medical way out of that. So that would start with puberty blockers and then onto cross-sex hormones and then in adult services, potentially surgery. So they started raising those concerns internally and they were talked about, but I've spoken to dozens of clinicians now, I've worked at JIDS and they use this phrase, nothing changed. So they saw everything changing, but nothing changing in terms of practice. And they could be taught, but no action. And eventually 10 staff spoke to Dr. David Bell, who didn't work at JIDS. He was a very respected senior psychoanalyst elsewhere in the Tavistock Trust, which housed JIDS. And at the time, he was on the council of governors and he was

the staff governor. So they went to speak to him. Dr Bell compiled a report of detailing some of their concerns, which were about the speed at which young people were being put on puberty blockers. The fact that there appeared to be so much else going on in their lives that didn't appear to be being addressed. They were concerned that many of the young people were same-sex attracted, but there was homophobia going on, either internalised or within the family setting, and they saw a sort of transition as a way out of that. Lots and lots of things.

They were concerned about the consent process, how puberty blockers were actually working in practice, whether, you know, what the purpose of them was. And that's something else raised in Dr Cass's letter. So, yeah, I was going to say, so let's talk about some of the key points, because now we've had this review and Dr Hilary Cass has written this letter to the director of NHS England John Stewart so what are some of the points that she's made? So she has said that we can't have this one central national service that it's not safe and it's not a viable model so what she's saying is we need to move to

regional services um and at the moment the plan is immediately to set up two one one at london which is going to be operated by great ormond street and the evelina um with mental health support from from remordsly and then one up in the northwest as well um and and nhs england have said that that would be expanded They're open to what the optimum number might be, but they're thinking seven or eight eventually. But those two are hoping to be up and running by spring 2023. And what Hilary Cass is stressing is exactly what so many clinicians have tried to raise for the last seven, eight years, that there needs to be, the young people need to be taken as a whole.

You can't siphon off the gender difficulties from the rest of what's going on in that young person's life. And so those regional centres are going to have mental health support attached to them. They're crucially going to have a research arm or facility that will start monitoring the outcomes for these young people. And that was something that came out of Keira Bell's judicial review, that the Tavistock, despite running the clinic for 30 years,

appeared to have essentially no data on what had happened to any of these young people, how they fared. So that's one component. And she's acknowledging that there will be different outcomes for different people, that for some medical transition will be the best path for them. For some it won't be, and it will be a more mental health approach, and perhaps there are other difficulties that once they're addressed, the gender-related distress will ease, and as they go to rather lessons. There will be specialist help for autistic young people or neurodiverse young people. I mean, this was another concern of clinicians

that over a third of young people referred to JIDS displayed moderate or severe autistic traits. And again, this was not what the medical protocol, it's known as the Dutch protocol, of puberty blockers was designed for um so she's really she's moving away from the medical model to a more holistic model and moving it regional i think so i mean crucially she's not she's not said there's no place for for a medical model yeah she there is a place for that and And I think this has been a bit of a mischaracterization of the concerns of many of the staff. I mean, none of the staff I've spoken to have worked there in the last decade or so have said it doesn't help that, you know,

that medical transition should be banned or doesn't help some young people. Indeed, they've said that young people thrive when it's the right young people. Yes. Dr. Cass is saying, how do we how do we's the right young people yes dr cass is saying how do we how do we identify the right people um because it's clear that a one-size-fits-all model isn't working and isn't the right approach all right um hannah thank you so much for that hannah barnes um speaking to us there and we have had a statement from uh an nhs statement a spokesperson for the tavistock said its staff had worked tirelessly and under intense scrutiny in a difficult climate.

They added, we're proud of them and thankful for their unrelenting patient focus and extraordinary efforts. Your thoughts on anything you hear this morning, 84844, including your advice to your daughters. If you were to write a letter to your daughter or any younger woman in your life, what would you write? You've been getting in touch already this morning.

I tell my 20-year-old daughter, Lily, who starts her first job this week, the biggest secret as adults keep from young people is you never really feel grown up. Nobody knows what they're doing. We're all winging it. That's from Emma. And Sally says, great subject.

I'd already written a couple of messages and stored them in my phone. Be kind. Say yes more than no. Worrying is a waste of time. Try to do the right thing, even if it seems difficult. And if something seems hard, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You'll get there. Good advice. Good advice. 84844. Well, it's a question my next guest, what advice you'd give your daughter, posed to women all over the world. The letters she received were made into a podcast, Dear Daughter, which has just won Podcast of the Year

at the British Podcast Awards. In a moment, I'll play you some excerpts. They range from the serious to the silly, but all contain really wonderful messages based on the experiences of the women who wrote them. Numolanta Kombo is the presenter. She had the idea and entered it in for a competition with the BBC World Service. She says she wanted to make the podcast as a handbook for life for her five-year-old daughter,

Coco. Well, earlier I spoke to Namalanta from Nairobi in Kenya, and I began by asking her how it felt to have won Podcast of the Year. It feels very surreal because, you know, if anyone knows my story, it started off as something that I was doing for my child. So for it to become something for so many people is a really nice feeling. And we're so excited. We're walking on cloud nine. Well, you deserve it because it is absolutely brilliant and totally binge worthy. Once you start listening, you can't stop. So let's tell everybody the story

because this didn't start out as a podcast, did it? It started out, as you said, letters to your own daughter. Yes, I wanted, I became a mum and then I just wanted to give her something in terms of advice from myself and all the people that we love, friends and family. So I wanted, I asked people to write letters to my own daughter. And I thought I'd publish it and make it into a book and give it to her that she can look through and never feel alone.

And then a friend of mine told me about the BBC International Podcast Competition. And I decided to turn it into a podcast. And it's worked out because here we are. I mean, it's worked out brilliantly. Why do you think it's captured people's imaginations so much? I think everyone wants to be heard and everyone has a story in them. Everyone wants the best for the person that they love. So I think it's a combination of all three. So just wanting to share your story and having a story and wanting someone else, you know, someone that you love to hear that story and maybe

help them. And I think what's really nice is a lot of people that have come on to the podcast also want their story to be shared with people they don't even know. So it's my daughter Coco and somebody in Canada wants to tell her something. And I find that really beautiful because I don't know who that person is. They don't know who my child is, but they still want to share something that they think can help. So I found that quite beautiful. And also as a listener, there's so much in it that's relatable, particularly this next clip, especially for an Indian woman like me. You speak to women from across the world. And one of the letters is from Emma, a in the UK and it's about eyebrows let's let's listen to a clip dear daughter appreciate and love your thick dark wild eyebrows even if

it goes against current beauty trends don't shave your eyebrows don't wax them or bleach them blonde even if everyone else has their eyes canopied by two thin black lines. When I was 13 in the early noughties, I became obsessed with my eyebrows. It was very popular to have skinny eyebrows that were harsh and angular. I was blessed with a pair of thick, dark statement brows viewed as rather grotesque at school. I'd often hear slugs shouted across the corridor between classes, or have you ever heard of tweezers bellowed across the playground? It's so relatable for those of us who lived through the 90s and the thin eyebrow phrase.

Why did Emma want to share that with her daughter? So Emma doesn't have a daughter yet, but she wanted, and that's the beautiful thing that I'm saying, that she doesn't even have a child yet. But she knows that there's girls and boys going through changes in their body and not accepting who they are because she's talking about herself being a teenager and not being happy with the way she looked and that's something it doesn't matter what country you're in that's something that's happening with kids everywhere and adults um so she really wanted to just let that next child know let that next person know that um you're. Your body is beautiful. You might not see it now, but you are beautiful just as you are.

And she also touches on bullying, which, again, is something that's universal. And there's so many kids going through it. So as the humor behind the story is there, I love that it was quite humorous, but it touched on really important parts that affect, you know, people all around the world. And you do, I mean, you talk to, as I said, women from around the world and you do touch on subjects that are fun and frivolous, but also really serious issues that impact women's lives. And one conversation that really stayed with me was with your friend Elle in Zimbabwe talking about marriage. And she didn't have a daughter either. So Elle was the first letter I ever got. So I got it from her as a friend. She didn't write in for the purpose of the show, because I didn't have a show yet. I just

wanted to say something to my daughter. And she wrote this really beautiful letter. If anyone listens to it, I mean, it's just so well thought through. And she sent it to me and it was part of the submission that I made for the competition. So I believe that, you know, she helped me win. But, you know, being an African woman and having that stance and, you know, because in Africa, it's getting married is a milestone. Having children is a milestone. Having children is a milestone. So for somebody to say, I don't know whether I want that right now, and just allowing herself to make that decision and be happy with that decision for now, she doesn't know what's going to happen in the future. But I thought it was such an important conversation to have in context of where we live. And it was something really I wanted someone to say to my own child. I'm married, I do have children, and that was my choice. But if my

daughter chooses not to, then I have to figure out how to support her if that's what she wants to do. Why do you think writing letters is such a good way to express our thoughts and feelings? Why do you think this is working so well? I think it's cathartic. I think putting pen to paper and putting your feelings or your thoughts or your history, whatever it is, putting it down to paper. You don't have to think about the right way to say something or the connotation. It's very honest. It's a very honest way to express yourself. You feel like you're talking to someone, but you're not. It's just you. But you do feel like you're able to get out whatever you're feeling whatever you're thinking i've talked to so many people who have wrote letters and um even as they're having the conversations

on the podcast they're still discovering things about themselves so that the letters are very honest first reaction and then talking about it later on has made them realize even more so i just think the letter the writing down is just a it's a very pure expression of how you're feeling and then you can think about what you've put down later so just just put it down it's a really good exercise actually and everyone out there listening should should give it a go in fact we've been asking our listeners to give us the advice some of the advice they would give to their own daughters and they've been getting in touch in fact mike says he's a father who has a daughter and says he says find a partner in life that makes you laugh it's really important isn't it did you get

did you speak to many did you speak to many fathers and what about sons so we spoke to one dad. He's Dutch based out in the US and he's on Instagram and he does self-defense clips for women. And we found him because he had put a whole set of nails or false nails on just so women can know how to get themselves out of a jam if they have a long set of nails. So I just found the empathy in that and the thoughtfulness in terms of pushing yourself into a woman's shoes and thinking about all the impediments she might have when she's trying to get her, you know, herself out of a jam was really sweet. So I spoke to him.

We haven't had that. And we also spoke to another dad who is Catholic and his wife is Muslim. And they're talking about how to raise, how they plan to raise their child coming from those two different backgrounds. So it's been great. We've had a lot of men who also listen in. So we've had lots of comments from men,

but we would love some more men to write in about letters that they have their daughters. And maybe in the future, we'd have letters to our sons as well. Well, Namalata, 50% of our audience is men. So they're out there, they're listening. And I'm sure they'll have plenty of advice to give to their daughters. You know, you need both perspectives, don't you? We need the male perspective as well.

We can't live in a silo. So it would be great to hear stories and pieces of advice from men as well. Absolutely. And you spoke to your own mother. How was that? I did. That. Absolutely. And you spoke to your own mother. How was that? I did. That was fantastic.

Do you know what? Like, you think you know someone until you sit down and completely focus on them for an hour. And I discovered so much in an hour. And I've known my mom, I'm 38 now. I've known my mom all my life. And there's things I discovered in that hour.

And it's really important if you do have the opportunity to speak to your parents, if your parents are still there, because so much of what they went through has had an impact on your own life and made you who you are. So there was things I discovered just chatting to her about my own self that came from what she experienced and how she ended up raising me. So it's such a nice exercise to do just, you know, with your parents, if you're lucky enough to have them, just talk to them about their lives because they actually had a life before you came along. I know. Unbelievable, isn't it?

You are also lucky enough to have a cousin that seems like an absolute hoot. And you speak to her on the subject of thongs. Arakama, what was her name? Naliaka. Naliaka. OK, so let's hear, this is Naliaka talking about thongs. This was it. I was going to wear my thong and win the heart of the cutest boy at the party. Everything was going swell.

The cutest boy did notice, but nobody, nobody told me about how I would feel like my pants had gone for lunch permanently. I'm talking wedgie for days. And as I fought the urge to adjust my undergarments for the umpteenth time, my composure failed me. As a result, nothing happened. No phone numbers exchanged, no goodbye kiss, just an awkward church-like hug at the end of the party.

I could not wait to get home and take it off and return, shame-faced, to the end of the party. I could not wait to get home and take it off and return shame-faced to the Mother's Union Club. Namalata, the stories are brilliant. The conversations are great. But what we don't hear there is when you asked your cousin what her life, her advice would be, what would she pass on to her daughter? And what did she say? She said, always wipe from front to back.

Good advice. Good advice. say she said always wipe from front to back good advice good advice um i want to say congratulations once again it is a brilliant listen you are a great broadcaster i know it's your first step into the broadcasting world you're just so warm and great to listen to are we going to get a second series fingers crossed we really hope that we'll um i hope i hope you'll hear from us very soon um no details yet but if you stay stay tuned we will have to say stay we will we will be well done and uh thanks for speaking to us on woman's hour this morning and congratulations once again thank you for listening thank you namalata combo and if you'd like to listen to the podcast it's on bbc sounds now and it's called Dear Daughter. And your advice is coming in thick and fast.

I have two daughters in their early 20s. My advice to them has always been to trust your intuition and view any advice from previous generations with scrutiny. Our track record of looking after vulnerable people on the planet has not been great. So do things differently. Someone else has said cultivate a compassionate voice to counter that critical negative voice that undermines us. That's from Claire. And advice to my daughter. Keep friends who deserve you.

Don't fret about being popular at school. It won't matter when you leave. Know your mind and don't be scared to speak it. Such good advice coming through this morning. Thank you to all of you getting involved. 84844 is the number to text. And please do give me your name if you'd like it to be read out on Woman's Hour. On to our next item now. Should children who misbehave be excluded permanently from school? In the last academic year before the pandemic, almost 8000 children were permanently excluded from English state schools. Even in the COVID-affected year of 2019-20, there were more than 5,000 permanent exclusions.

Recently, Southwark Council in London caused controversy when it urged its headteachers to sign up to that excluding pupils was sometimes necessary to prevent damaging the well and well-being and the education of other children, as well as to protect staff. Well, to discuss this, I'm joined by Louisa McGeehan, chief executive of Just for Kids Law, a legal charity for children and young people which is concerned about school exclusions. Tom Bennett, school behaviour advisor to the Department of Education and Sarah Hewitt Clarkson, head teacher of a primary school in the West Midlands and spokesperson for the School Leaders Union, the NAHT. Morning to you both. I'm going to come to all of you and ask you the same question. Louisa. Good morning. Morning. I'll come to you first. Are there too many children being permanently excluded from school yes there are we can do better and three cheers for Southwark really for leading the way um we believe that that many of the times exclusion is unnecessary and look at it from a child's point of view and the children and young people that we work with have said know, imagine what it feels like when your school is your world, you look to it for your social life, the adults in school are very significant in your life,

and then suddenly they say, you are no longer wanted, we wash our hands of you. The anxiety, the insecurity, the isolation, loss of faith in adults and authority, loss of confidence in education. The lifelong effects that this can have makes it one of the most serious issues. So, you know, we would like to see it consigned to history in the same way that, you know, schools used to beat children to provoke behaviour that they wanted to see. And exclusion should be there too. There should be no need in this day and age to exclude children. So Tom, no need for exclusion in this day and age. What do you think? Good morning. I couldn't disagree more. And I think that is an extremist and highly

activist position. I think if you work in schools with children, you need to be aware that not only do the children who are at risk of exclusion matter, all the children there matter. And as the guidance clearly stipulates, all children in schools deserve a safe, calm environment where they can learn in dignity, including members of staff, I might add. And if you don't exclude children when they need to be excluded, then you are depriving the vast majority of the rest of the school community of that case can safe learning environment i mean what do you say to the children who are exposed to sexual harassment or abuse um or other indignities caused by misbehavior in schools do you expect them to share the same space as their abuser or the harasser or do you accept

that in certain circumstances some people's behaviour means that they need to leave the school community in order to keep that space safe? And I think that when we ignore this, it's a huge dereliction of duty. And I think that the people that tend to advocate these types of positions traditionally tend to be people who are very, very remote from challenging schools, have not worked in challenging schools, or have had the privilege of growing up in environments where they routinely and solely experience communities populated by the sons

and daughters of Swiss diplomats. Schools can be very challenging places. There are 20,000 schools out there. The rates of exclusion are historically low now, and the exclusions have gone down massively, particularly in primary schools. So I think it's something that we need to massively reassess whenever anybody tries to advocate anti-exclusions. As the new guidance released supports, which was released just last week, schools have the right to exclude when necessary. And of course, they must explore other opportunities and options before doing so. I'm just going to get Louisa to come in. I'm wondering where these schools are with all the Swiss diplomats' children. But Louisa, yes. Well, I'm not one of those.

I have to say, you know, as a child, I was excluded from school myself. I've spent 10 years as a chair of governors of a primary school in an in-city area. So I know something of the challenges and I would never tell a teacher, a head teacher, how to run their school. But I think what we see from the fact the numbers are coming down is that there are alternatives that schools can deploy.

And I think, you know, for what we would say is, you know, look at every case individually. Rather than looking and saying, well, what has this child done? Look and say, what has happened to this child in their life? What are the problems that they're facing? That if we can help them sort these problems out, they can stay included, they can be part of the success of the school and, you know, and have brilliant, successful lives. So, you know, there are many alternatives to this. And let's try and, you know, solve these problems together. I'm going to bring Sarah in here because Sarah you're a head teacher what examples of poor behavior have you and other school leaders come across that have resulted in children being excluded? I think it's very similar

to what Tom was saying earlier and it's always the end of a very long process it's never an instant decision and it's always the very last thing very long process. It's never an instant decision. And it's always the very last thing any school leader wants to do. We know the best place for children is in school. And sometimes it's, you know, for that child to be at home is not the best situation for that child. balance between a long line of often physical violence maybe sexual violence um even things like sexism misogyny racism homophobia that schools always work very well with children in primary and secondary schools um to do all the things Louisa has said I don't think there's a school leader out there who wouldn't explore many many options and consider the contextual safeguarding issues for an individual

child but there has to be a line because other children may get harmed staff may get harmed staff are incredibly resilient and caring and want to be wholly inclusive for all children. But particularly mainstream schools, we just don't have the resources we used to have. We are mainstream schools. We have classes of 30, 32 children with one teacher. We don't have enough money to have a teaching assistant in every classroom, for example, anymore. And so if there was this incredible net to catch these children

within a mainstream setting absolutely fantastic we could we could we could reduce the number of permanent exclusions even more but that money doesn't really exist anymore to the extent it did years ago uh in my own school for example probably going back about four or five years we used to have three learning mentors one of whom was training to be a play therapist. Incredible work she did and had an incredible effect and probably stopped one or two children from being excluded. We now have one learning mentor because, you know, budgets are very different now. It's a falling birth rate, which affects quite a lot of primary schools um so i agree with lots of things that louise has said utterly as a school as a school leader i do not want to exclude any child neither do any of my

colleagues um but the the mechanism to support and the expertise therapy is very expensive it's one-to-one it's incredible it has great outcomes but to access that and for a long time to have the effect it needs to have on a particular child is very expensive and difficult to get so so what do you need then what do schools need to support children to make sure that you you don't have to resort to exclusion if that's not what you'd like to do we need a much bigger um investment in things like mental health services for children and so that we can access those very quickly for a child who is very vulnerable and may have suffered adverse childhood experiences or traumatic episodes in their life. Is it often

the case that the children who are at risk of exclusion are the most vulnerable? Absolutely, without doubt. Yeah. In our experience as headteachers, it's children who maybe have missed a lot of school or maybe they're starting school for the first time in year two or three. Chaotic backgrounds, lots of movement around different homes, homelessness. Not always those things, but I think in primary school,

that's what we're seeing. And if very quickly headteachers could get the support from therapists or CAMHS workers and things like family support, because a child is not an island, a child is part of a much bigger contextual situation for them. The family will need support, somebody will need to go and support at home, see what's going on, how can we help with other things, maybe housing, maybe other signs of poverty, for example. If all of that could kick in quickly, I think the timing is so important. Children often have to wait a year to even get on the CAMHS waiting list, for example. So there you go, Tom. So Sarah is a headteacher and she's saying,

actually, headteachers don't want to have to do this. It's just they need more money. They need more support. Well, nobody wants to exclude. I mean, you know, it's not an ideal situation for anybody. What it is, it's optimal sometimes. Because headteachers would far prefer that students were behaving and flourishing and succeeding in all their schools schools but we'd all like that we'd all like that

throughout society the problem is that even when we have extra support like mental health support and incidentally i absolutely support what sarah just said about the need for more resources to be funded in these areas but we cannot expect schools even with that support to unpick the stitches of every child's life you know we can't you, you can't fix everybody, and no social service can. You know, no doctor can save all their patients. And what we try to do in schools is to try to create an environment where exclusion happens as rarely as possible. And to be honest, it is quite rare.

Now, from my experience of visiting hundreds and hundreds of pupil value units and alternative provision, and this is anecdata for me. They would say that three quarters to 80% of the kids are there really need to be there, that mainstream schools cannot meet their needs, and that maybe 20% of the children who are there, if they've had better support in schools, could have avoided exclusion. So I think you can certainly get exclusions down, and I think that's a very noble aim.

But a no exclusion policy in itself is a safeguarding risk because it leads schools to be put under undue pressure not to exclude potentially putting other children at risk and they matter let's talk about what happens children who are excluded and they end up in what's called alternative provision um often this means they're sent to pupil referral units or PRUs. The research indicates that the education they provide is lower quality than mainstream school. Four percent, Tom, of pupils in alternative provision, four percent pass English and maths at GCSE compared to 64 percent in mainstream schools. Aren't these children being catastrophically let down by the education system. I think that could come across as a tremendous insult to the thousands of people working in pupil referral units who are doing their absolute best to give the best education they can.

And I think this might mistake causation for correlation. The factors which cause a student's misbehaviour, which causes them to be excluded from school, and let's not forget, these are behaviours which are often extremely violent or disruptive, then lead to further educational lack of success later on. So, you know, it's correlation, not causation. The pros don't cause the kids not to succeed academically. It's the risk factors and the behaviour which then causes later life lack of success. And we know these things are very, very strongly correlated. Louisa?

Yeah, I just want to come in on that, not to criticise the staff working in pupil referral units, but from the children and young people that I've worked with, some of them are amongst the smartest, most articulate, intelligent young people you will meet. There is no doubt they have the capability to succeed in school. So I would dispute that. But the biggest risk in that now the evidence is starting to show in being sent to a pupil referral unit is instantly that makes that child then more vulnerable to criminal exploitation. We don't think there is enough focus put on this and as one of the factors of the behavior that a

child may be may be displaying sometimes it may be to do with an undiagnosed learning need it may be because of difficult situations at home and past trauma but it might also be part of a pattern of criminal exploitation where exploiters will encourage children to do behavior that will get them sent to a pupil referral unit because then they know that they are available without the usual kind of anchors in their lives to be exploited. They are groomed and from there, you know, it's a well-known passion called the Prue to Prison Pipeline.

We see children's lives ruined and then led into, you know, into criminal activity as a result. Well, we have a statement from southwark council who says we have highly qualified social workers working in a trauma informed way with school settings and in addition trained practitioners from mental health service called the nest who can also come into schools to support the children this helps children who've suffered neglect trauma or have mental health issues or otherwise vulnerable stay in formal education of all kinds not that they will be left long term either at home or in an educational setting that doesn't fit their needs and we've run out of time on this it's a big issue i'm sure we will be coming back

to it at some point but for now louisa mckeon sarah hewitt clarkson and tom bennett thank you very much thank you um now spain'squality Ministry has launched a summer campaign encouraging women of all shapes and sizes to hit the beach with the slogan Summer is Ours Too. The campaign's promotional image features five women of different body types, ages and ethnicities enjoying a day in the sun in a move away from the traditional summer images, which often depict unattainable beauty standards. However, it's received a lot of criticism. Well, I'm joined by Fiona Govan, journalist and editor of the Olive Press, who's normally based in Madrid, but is actually on a beach herself at the moment on the north coast of Spain. Nice that you're able to join us, Fiona. What's this campaign all about? Bring us up to speed. So it was launched a couple of days ago, and it seems pretty innocuous sort of summer campaign

encouraging everyone to go to the beach. It's got this sort of an artist impression of five women enjoying life at the beach but it's you know it comes it's a very sort of positive message and it goes against the sort of you know beach body ready kind of build up to summer that we normally have, which is called in Spain Operation Bikini. And but it's it's received it's caused a real stir here. It's really upset people. First of all, it's been released by the Spanish government, by the Equality Ministry, and people say it's just very patronising to women, that women don't need the permission of the government or the Equality Ministry to go to the beach. They're perfectly comfortable going to the beach.

And if you go to the beach, you see people of all sizes enjoying summer. But it's stirred up a lot of controversy from all sides. So, you know, one would traditionally expect there to be a fuss made from the right who really don't approve of the fact that the Equality Ministry exists at all. And they say that Spain's left-wing government is obsessed with this sort of women's issue which they think is creating a problem that doesn't exist and um and they're they're saying that you

know really instead of spending public money on a campaign like this solving a problem that doesn't exist they should be thinking about the people who can't afford to go to the beach the people who um you know because of the cost of living crisis uh can't take time off't afford to go to the beach, the people who, you know, because of the cost of living crisis, can't take time off work, can't go to the beach. So we've got this sort of row, but that's been compounded in the last day because it turns out that a couple of the images depicted by this artist are of real women

and their images have been used without their knowledge. So in fact, one of them is a British model, a curvy model who's sort of suddenly started getting messages from friends and family who recognised her. And I thought, wow, congratulations for being the face of this campaign of which she knew nothing about. So, you know, that's caused even more embarrassment for the government.

So something that should have been a straightforward empowerment message, women of all shapes and sizes, get to the beach, let's kind of change the landscape when it comes to images of what is beautiful has turned into something that is a bit of a political hot potato? Yeah, it is. I mean, any kind of women's issues is always a bit of a political hot potato yeah it is i mean any kind of women's issues is always a bit of a political hot potato in spain because um there's just always a backlash from the right you know they don't like

it when women take the streets on women's day the call for equal rights they don't like it when people try and um talk about body positivity. So that was sort of to be expected, but we're getting it from the other side as well a little bit, saying it's very patronising that, you know, no one needs the permission to go to the beach and be who they are. Is it? I'm just thinking about putting it into the context of the UK. We've seen similar initiatives from private companies here like Dove, but it's altogether different coming from elected officials, isn't it?

I'm trying to wonder whether it's something, anything we'd ever do here and how it would go down. I mean, you know, this is a government that has really sort of put women's rights at the forefront. We've had some quite revolutionary, really, for Spain or for Europe. You know, we've had the, recently we've had the menstrual had the paid menstrual leave, first country in Europe to get it. We're having an overhaul of the rape laws at the moment, which is changing, it's called the yes means yes,

and it's sort of changing the crime from any non-conceptual sex to be classified as rape. So know there's there's it's not surprising to come from this government this kind of movement and it's it's really innocuous you know it's a really sort of positive image it's just that it's being handled not in the best way and the timing maybe necessarily isn't isn't brilliant but um you know there's other people who are complaining that why is it just about women in this image you know there's other people who are complaining that why is it just about women in this image you know there's a lot of men who've got who've got image issues and why does it not include trans people in the image you know the usual sort of fuss about anything

um of this sort well i'm sure we will put it out on our bbc woman's hour twitter and see what the audience think of it and get their reaction but for for now, Fiona, thank you very much for joining me to speak to me about that. Now, August, we'll see the return of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for 2022. Writer and comedian Helen Wood, who's no stranger to the fringe with previous shows such as The Usherettes and the National Trust Fan Club, will bring her latest show, Let's Talk About Philip. It explores the mystery and secrets surrounding her brother's death 32 years ago. After her mother's funeral, Helen's father suddenly said, let's talk about

Philip. It was the first time anyone in her family had spoken about her brother since his suicide in 1985. Well, Helen joins me now. Helen, welcome to Woman's Hour. Before we start, I think we should have a listen to the snippet of the play. There was a note. I thought I knew everything there was to know. What else had I never been told? What might other people know? And despite his failing memory, what more might Dad tell me? All these years of silence, carrying our own burdens, and now Dad's talking. Away from the family I'd been talking about Philip for years, not so much to friends, there was a silence there as well, but in theatre workshops when asked to explore personal stories or in a comedy show where I brought out a photo and said to the audience maybe there's a whole show to be written about him. And recently, on a playwriting course, when the tutor said to me,

that's your story, that's your play, and I knew he was right. It's a very powerful clip, Helen. And is that when you decided that it should be the play that you take to Edinburgh, the play you write? Well, that particular playwriting course, it was the theatre maker, Tim Crouch, actually, was the tutor. And I'd been toying with it for probably ever since I started talking to my dad.

And I was starting to learn so many new things that I'd never known. So let's go back then to what happened after your mother's funeral when your dad did say let's talk about Philip because for 32 years no one had spoken about your brother's suicide. It was a taboo in the family. It just very soon after the funeral I didn't see my parents for probably about three weeks and the next time i visited it was oh we're not talking about him and of course i felt well no i won't say anything that might make it worse for them and it just carried on so what did you discover what did you what did you find out about your brother yeah so he one of the first things um he said was that there was an inquest uh now that might

seem strange that i had no idea that there was an inquest i was 26 i it didn't occur to me then that you would always have an inquest if there was a suicide and that started making me think okay if there was an inquest what would that tell me if I um tried to get hold of it get hold of the the notes from the inquest he also told me about the suicide note which I didn't know about and my dad had no memory of what happened to it or a particular wording of it uh he found he um it wasn't my dad that said this at the time but that came from when i did get the inquest uh that he'd seen a psychiatrist at some point so many things so many things started uh my dad started saying that uh yeah i realized that i had i'd had i'd had a narrative for all those years

of what had led to his depression and what had led to him taking his life. You're right, and I'm sure that lots of people listening can understand the idea of taboos within families and secrets and not being able to talk about things. And once you'd opened it up and started the conversation, how was that? How did you feel after 32 years? It was so lovely.

I mean, it gave me such a new and, yeah, amazing relationship with my dad in these last few years. I mean, he lived after my mom for another another three years and and then you've written the play and then yes it was this feeling i'm going to write this play and share this this well this cathartic this empowering journey i've been on but how important it is to talk and what's's the reaction been? Well, last night was our opening night, our first preview. Well done.

In my hometown of Stroud, a local theatre there. So, yes, I'm sort of buzzing on that first night and getting the responses from the people who, they laughed, they cried, they seemed to find it really powerful as well. And was it hard to find somebody to direct it who would understand? Okay.

It was a bit of a magical story, how the director appeared in our lives. So I've written the play with a local actor who's also performing it with me, Gregor O'Hunt. I was inspired when I was writing one of the scenes in the play, which is about my childhood growing up with Philip. And I remembered a particular play I'd seen in Edinburgh a few years ago called Jess and Joe Forever, but I really enjoyed how it had been directed to children, very fast paced and being children together.

I was inspired by that. I was told that there was a director living five minutes from me in Stroud. I looked at his CV and he directed that play. So it's like he was total serendipity. And he fortunately loved the idea. And he's been great to work with. And last question. Great. Good. We should mention his name um has it made you feel differently about your brother knowing what you know now having written the play it's made me learn so much i i'd put him in a i'd put him in a box i'd shut the lid let's not think about that part of my life let's get on with my life and yes i, I've learnt who he was,

who he was as a child for me, who he was then growing up. And so I do hope I've sort of honoured his memory and made him a real person for people. And he's become a real person for me again. I said last question, but I've got one more. What would you like audience members to take away? What would you like people to...

I guess it's really important to talk. Yeah. Just break those silences. Yeah. It will do so much good. I'm sure you saying that this morning will have triggered something in somebody to make sure that this weekend they have an important conversation. I hope so.

Helen, I want to wish you the best of luck with it thank you very much for joining us on woman's hour this morning and if you have been affected um by any of the issues discussed then you can find help and information on our website bbc radio 4 slash woman's hour which is also the place you can go to if you'd like to send us an email and lots of you have been getting in touch with your advice to your you'd like to give to your daughters um so many so many people by the way thank you so much to all of you who have been getting in touch and this show flies when you are involved um my advice to my daughter who i feel operates at a million miles an hour and is so sensitive towards any negative negativity is to pause take a moment out and trust that it will work out.

Instead of looking to blame, look to problem solve. Instead, acknowledging there is a problem that needs solving and inviting others to help solve a problem is positive and empowering. To my daughter, pursue your dreams and believe in yourself no matter what a struggle it is or what people may think. It's what you think that's important. Don't get old with any regrets, says Jan Hunter. And know yourself inside out. Then you'll always feel a little bit stronger. Like I said, thank you so much.

If you would like to get in touch with us, go to our website, send us an email. Otherwise, join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. Have a great weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. because Prince Harry was there. Would it be liberating? You couldn't believe the ferociousness with which she just fought restlessly for inequality and always championed the underdog. Glamorous? They all knew that Victoria Davis was a very special little girl.

At the end of term, this royal coach would rock up at the school and take her away to wherever the royal family were staying. Or perhaps just a bit sad. She was not cast in a Vogue photo shoot because the people running the shoot decided that she was too large. She wasn't slim enough. I'm Anita Arnathan. For my new podcast on BBC Radio 4,

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