Woman's Hour - How to End a Relationship, Alice Oseman, Mother and Baby Units in Prison

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

How to End a Relationship, Alice Oseman, Mother and Baby Units in Prison.

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Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 31st of July. Good morning. In today's programme, a fourth novel for young adults by Alice Oseman, Loveless. Why she described it as a different sort of coming out novel, focusing on asexuality and aromanticism. In the next In Our Summer series of How To advice today, as lawyers report a significant increase since lockdown in couples seeking divorce, how to end your relationship well. And the final episode of the serial, Babelsberg, Babylon. Now today, the Ministry of Justice has announced it's to make improvements to the care of pregnant women and mothers who are in prison.

It follows the deaths of two babies in prisons in the past year. A baby girl died in September at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, and a month ago there was a stillbirth at Stile in Cheshire. Both these incidents are being investigated. There are 12 women's prisons in England and there are six mother and baby units. In a moment I'll be talking to the Minister for Prisons and Probation, Lucy Fraser, about the government's proposals. First I'm joined by Sue who had two of her babies in prison and by Kirsty Kitchen who's head of policy at Birth Companions, a charity which supports women prisoners. Kirsty, what do the deaths of two babies in the past year

highlight for you? Morning, Jenny. I mean, unfortunately, these two tragedies are the latest in a string of serious incidents across the women's estate relating to pregnant women and new mothers. And really, they show us that what we have is a system that's modelled on the men's secure estate, and it is fundamentally unable to provide a safe and supportive environment for pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period, something that we've been campaigning on for years, the fact that this needs to change. And we're hopeful that one of the positives that could come out of these tragedies is that action will now be taken.

When you go into prisons to support pregnant women and mothers, what do they tell you about how things are? Women tell us that they feel invisible. They feel afraid and they feel frustrated. They're scared of labouring behind a locked door. They hear stories of very traumatic miscarriages, of stillbirths, births happening in prison cells. They're frustrated by the barriers that the system creates for them,

missing antenatal scans, for instance, because the prison hasn't managed to arrange an escort for them to get them out into the hospital, not getting the food packs that they're entitled to, the extra food rations that they're entitled to as pregnant women, and then when they do get them, the milk's off, the fruit's rotten. But they also tell us that ultimately they can't share the realities of what they're facing in their lives with those who are in the prison service. They can't share their experiences, domestic abuse, their experience of trafficking, their mental health issues, because they're petrified.

But if they do disclose those things that they will lose the care of their children. We know that women in prison don't automatically go to a mother and baby unit because there isn't one in every prison. How easy is the process of application for a place? It's very challenging. If you're pregnant in prison, the information that you get given and the support that you're given on applying for a mother and baby unit is very patchy across the country. And pregnant women face months of uncertainty and anxiety, not knowing whether that application will be successful and whether they will then be able to keep their baby or whether their baby will be separated from them after birth.

Mothers who give birth before they enter prison cannot currently apply for a mother and baby unit until they are in the prison themselves. So they are separated for weeks, sometimes months, from that infant while the wheels of the system sort of churn along. So avoidable separations like that have to end. And again, we've been campaigning on that for a long time. Sue, if I can bring you in here. I know your middle daughter was born at HMP Newhall in Leeds. What was that experience like?

Obviously, when I went into labour with my middle child, I was actually quite early. So it was 36 weeks when I went into labour, so it was quite unexpected. I did give birth in my cell, but that's because of how quickly the labour progressed. But the nursing staff and the prison staff were absolutely fantastic and they kept me calm and they just helped me through the whole process. And the minute my daughter was born born I was transferred straight to hospital. Now your younger daughter who's now three was born when you transferred to a resettlement prison how did that compare with what you'd experienced in Leeds?

Well obviously my middle child it was unexpected labour, it was just spontaneous, it came on straight away. With my youngest child it was actually an induced labour so I was already in the hospital. And you had the baby in the hospital? Yep. But then you got into the mother and baby unit, how was that? I'd already obviously put an application forward of being already accepted onto the mother and baby unit how was that? I'd already obviously put an application forward of being already accepted onto the mother and baby unit so it was a case of coming back from the hospital with my child and straight onto the mother and baby unit. Mothers though have to be separated from their

babies when the child is 18 months old how did you cope with that? Obviously it wasn't easy because nobody wants to be separated from the child at any stage in any point of your life um but the the staff obviously helped me progress through the stages and you put a plan in place to make the separation to try and be a little bit easier for you and there is a massive support network there for you, obviously through friends, staff, outside family as well. So I'm not going to say it was brilliant, but it was better than I could have hoped for. So, Kirsty, it's not awful for everyone? No, absolutely not.

And the support that's available on mother and baby units particularly can be incredibly positive for women. But what we do need to remember as well is that as the government itself recognises, the vast majority of these women shouldn't be in the system in the first place. Over 80% of women are in prison on non-violent offences, the causes of their offending and their wider needs, particularly birth and the postnatal period, can be much better served in the community where services and support can be built around that woman. Well, Kirsty and Sue, thank you for the moment. Let me bring in Lucy Fraser, the Minister for Prisons and Probation.

Lucy, clearly not awful for everyone, but awful for some. How do you propose to improve the experience for every woman in prison who is pregnant and has a baby? You're right to say it's not awful for everybody. I visited Bronzefield, the mother and baby unit there, and heard some very positive stories about women's experience and saw a nursery in operation, which was really supporting the women and the babies in their care. But what we want to do is absolutely ensure that everybody gets the support that they need, similar to or even better, if possible, than in the community. And what we're announcing today is a review that we've done

speaking to people with lived experience, like you've just heard, those stakeholders who work very closely in the sector, like Kirsty, to try and improve the process. And we want to improve, for example, making sure everyone gets an individual care plan. We want to improve training for those who work with women, not only a liaison officer, but also more broadly within the prison. And you talked

about the application process. We want to start it much earlier. So we don't want to start it when someone's sentenced and then they're separated for a short period of time when they come to prison. We want to start the application process in court, you know, the pre-sentence report stage so that when women come, you know, they don't have a break from their baby. Now, I know you say every female prison will have a mother and baby specialist, if not necessarily a mother and baby unit. Who will that specialist be? Will it be a prison officer who you've tried to train or will it be actually a midwife? So that will depend. So that'll be a question for the governors and the directors of each individual prisons to think about who is best placed to provide that specialist care. Why has the MOJ, the Ministry of Justice,

not been collecting figures for the number of pregnant women, births or stillbirths within the prison estate? Because you don't seem to really have the numbers. This is a really important point and one I've pressed really hard on since I've been a minister. We do collect the data of who is pregnant locally in each institution. So a governor in a particular institution will know about the women within that governor's care. But what we haven't done routinely in the Ministry of Justice is centralise

that data. And many people have called for it. And I think they're absolutely right to do so because when we have that data centrally, we can make good policy decisions on the basis of looking at that data. So what we've committed to in this report is to collect and publish a range of data about how many pregnant women we have, how many births are taking place, the numbers in relation to admissions and appeal rates, because I think it's really important that we know what's going on centrally to make the right decisions and also so that people can hold us to account. When are the results of the inquiries into the deaths of the two babies I mentioned expected? Those two cases are really tragic. You know, to lose a baby must be dreadful and to do so in a prison environment, I'm sure, particularly harrowing. And my heart goes out to those mothers concerned. Both of those deaths are being investigated.

When will the investigation, when will we hear the results? So pretty immediately after those incidents happened, I asked the prison's ombudsman to look at those individual cases. And I spoke to her yesterday to see how she's getting on. Of course, that's her investigation. We don't have any control of the timing of that investigation and there are certain procedures to go through in relation to work that the coroners are doing in those cases but I know that she's looking, working hard on those and that's in the matter of timing is under her control. What do you expect to learn from them?

Well, I will look forward to looking at those reports to see what we learn from them and we will absolutely take on board any lessons. The report that we're doing today is broader than those two specific incidents, obviously, because we have heard a number of things that need to change and we need to continue listening. So one of the things that the report sets out is that we'll have a panel, a panel of experts, which will include women with lived experience, who will continue to advise us throughout the year to make sure that establishment's individually and centrally we're doing the right thing. Well, Lucy Fraser to Kirsty Kitchen,

thank you all very much indeed for joining us this morning. Now, still to come in today's programme, the next in our summer series of How To Guides. Today, as lockdown appears to have increased the risk of divorce significantly, it's how to end your relationship well. And with the last episode of the serial, Bubblesburg, Babylon. Now at the age of only 25, Alice Oseman has just published her fourth novel for young adults. It's called Loveless and is described by Alice as a different sort of coming out novel. It tells the story of Georgia, who's 18 and, like her school friends,

has been rather desperate to fall in love. Here, she reflects on the time she's avoided becoming involved with a boy. And it comes just after she's rejected the chance to kiss Tommy, the boy she thought she'd had a crush on, for seven years, right the way through secondary school. The third was Jan from the boys' school, year 11. A lot of people thought he was extremely attractive. We had a long conversation at a house party

about whether Love Island was a good show or not, and then he tried to kiss me when everyone was drunk, including both of us. It would have been so easy to go for it. It would have been so easy to lean in and do it. But I didn't want to. I didn't fancy him. But the fourth turned out to be Tommy, who I knew from school and who looked like Timothee Chalamet, and I didn't really know him that well, but this was the time that broke me a little, because I thought I really liked him, but I couldn't do it because I didn't fancy him. My seven-year crush on him was entirely fabricated, a random choice from when I was 11 and a girl held up a photo and told me to choose a boy. I didn't fancy Tommy. Apparently I hadn't ever fancied anyone. Alice how would you describe Georgia, the central character of this book?

She is she's 18. She's obsessed with romance, but she has never had a crush on anyone. And I think that is the main thing that is really impacting Georgia's self-esteem. She feels like she should be at a certain point in her life uh by the age of 18 she should have experienced romance but she hasn't and she doesn't understand why she hasn't yet why she hasn't felt those emotions um she has two best friends and jason what binds the three of them together yeah they're very different people. I think what binds them together is that they all feel a little bit out of place within the kind of social hierarchy of their school. You know, Georgia, as I said, she's struggling with feeling like she hasn't got to the right point by the age of 18, while Pip, her best friend, is gay but hasn't had a real relationship,

while their friend Jason has had a relationship but it wasn't a good relationship at all. So they've all had a very sort of somewhat similar experience with regard to love and romance. You've described this book as the most difficult, frustrating, terrifying and liberating thing I've ever made. Why did you write that? Well, it was a very difficult book to write for several reasons.

I mean, firstly, it was a very personal book to me because it does draw a lot from my own personal experiences um but there were various other reasons as to why it was a very tricky book to write um but having finished it now and it being out there is definitely very liberating um because it does express something that I've really wanted to write a story about for quite a long time. You describe yourself as aromantic and asexual. How did you come to understand that about yourself? It was a very long process, I think. You know, it's difficult to explain really because it was something that I realized over a very, very long period of time.

You know, all through school, I just had no awareness of that being a possibility. And then I found out about asexuality at university and started to think, oh, well, maybe maybe that applies to me but even at that point it was still many years before I really got to the point where I felt comfortable saying that that was me and identifying in that way. I think you grew up in what you describe as a rather conservative town how difficult did that make it to establish who you are and how you wanted to be? Definitely very difficult I I mean, I went to a school, you know, I was at school seven years ago. And that's not that long ago. But even then, there was just no LGBT education at school, there was absolutely nothing, I had very little awareness of LGBT plus identities outside of being gay or being bi, that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge

so without that I didn't even have the language or the tools to kind of begin to explore who I was and who I wanted how I wanted to identify. There is a lot of conversation now about sexuality and different attitudes to it how much easier does that make it for young people grappling with it now? I think it makes things much easier. You know, there's a lot of talk about, oh, there's so many new identities. It's so confusing.

I don't like how many different words there are. But in actual fact, I think that expanding that language gives young people, like I said the tools and the knowledge to explore feelings and parts of themselves that are very difficult to articulate and sometimes do take a long time to figure out um so I yeah I think that sort of those those that those tools can only be helpful yeah you you do mention in the novel that asexual and aromantic are sometimes referred to by some people as internet identities what is meant by that i think it's something

that's often used to kind of discredit um identities like aromanticism and asexuality um it you know people will say oh it was just something that was invented on the internet by teenagers um as a way to invalidate that experience um and while it is definitely true that kind of awareness for these identities has grown significantly because of the internet they've existed long before the invention of the internet and people have felt this way before the invention of the internet so yeah it have felt this way before the invention of the internet. So, yeah, it's just a way to invalidate these experiences. Peer pressure is very prominent in the book. What effect does that have in young people trying to fit in and be themselves at the same time. Yeah, so Loveless in particular explores the feeling that many teens have

that they need to find the perfect romance as soon as possible. I think so many teens feel this way and because of that can force themselves into romantic and sexual situations that they maybe aren't completely comfortable with I think many teens have had that experience and part of writing the book for me was trying to express the message that you really don't need to force yourself to do these things even if society is telling you that's what everyone's doing. Now obviously it's aimed at young adults but how useful do you think it might be for parents? I really hope it is useful to parents, particularly parents, obviously, who have people who don't understand these identities and who would want to learn something new about someone they know or their children.

Yeah. Just one quick question. Your fourth novel you first published at 17. How did you manage that? So, yeah, I wrote my first book at 17 and it was around that time that I realized that I really wanted to be an author I hadn't really considered that that was a job that I could have before then um so I decided you know I've got to find out how to do this so I did a lot of googling I just went on google searched how do people become an author and I found out all about the you know the traditional submission process to literary agents. And then once I finished my first book, I went ahead with that, and I was lucky enough to be taken on by an agent.

Alice Oseman, well done. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. And the novel is called Loveless. Now, throughout the summer, we are putting together a series of how-to guides in the hope that we might give you some pointers into the best ways to negotiate some of the trickier parts of life. We've talked about careers, friendship and today's relationships and how to end one well. We've known for a while that lockdown has put a huge amount of pressure on family life. One large law firm has confirmed what we suspected, reporting a 42% increase in enquiries about divorce between March and May. So what is the best way to end a relationship, practically, legally, financially and emotionally,

with the least damage to everyone concerned, including, of course, the children. Well, I'm joined by Lucy Warwick-Ching, Digital and Communities Editor of FT Money, Kate Daly, the founder of Amicable and host of the Divorce podcast, Rebecca Gershany, who's a family lawyer and mediator and the family therapist Joanne Hipplewith. Joanne, for anybody this is a terribly painful time when a relationship is breaking up. What's the best approach to getting through it? I think when it comes to relationships it's always very difficult and the thing that I would say that we need to bear in mind is about being able to

communicate because it's very painful you know are couples actually working to stay together or are they actually working to separate it's emotional you know one person might feel positive about it it's been a long time coming the other might feel it's come out of the blue and it might be a quick process it might be a long drawn-out protracted process but I think it's come out of the blue and it might be a quick process it might be a long drawn out protracted process but I think it's important to realize it's tough even though you think it's the right decision for you and so it's about communicating and and also bearing in mind children and pets and other family members and the effect that you could have on them at any given time. What are the absolute no-no's at this stage?

The absolute no-no's, I guess it's, that's a tricky question because I guess, you know, what's a no-no for someone is a right thing for someone else. So I guess the no-no's are don't talk about it, don't just walk out and leave the other person to deal with it. I think the worst thing you can do is, you know, not tell the children together or walk out on your partner. And I think that's probably the worst thing that you could do. Try to communicate.

Rebecca, how can the impact on any children from your relationship be minimised? Well, I think it's really important when you've got, when you have children, that you really try and focus on the needs of the children. And it is very difficult sometimes to put aside your the emotional trauma that you're going through but if you can focus on their needs and and and and and try not to involve them in any way in the conflict that you're that there is between you and there are there are resources out there that can help people because I know it can be really overwhelming for people. So, for example, I would always encourage parents, if they can, to look at putting together some sort of a parenting plan.

And there are online resources that can help with that, such as such as a CAFCAS and also the Resolution website. And where parents are really struggling to communicate with each other there are also apps such as the Family Wizard app which means that actually you don't really need to directly communicate you have like a shared calendar and other resources to ensure that you know you can you can really focus on the children and support them through what is obviously going to be quite a difficult time for them. There are also courses that are run, there's a separated parenting information programme if you really feel that you need some additional advice about how to take your children through this separation, how to talk to them and mediators can also assist in

helping you to resolve the issues that you might have between you about contact arrangements, the time the children are going to spend with each of you, and they will help you to have a dialogue in circumstances where perhaps that's very difficult. Joanne, how much do children know what's going on, even when they haven't been told about it? I think children know a lot because they know their parents. They know a lot of what's going on. And I think what we do as parents is we try to think, oh, well, they didn't hear that argument. They can't sense the tension because we're all having breakfast together.

The normal daily routines are continuing. And I think it's a myth that parents kind of fall into this trap and they think their kids don't know so I think it's always really important to to remember that your kids probably know more than what you're telling them whether they're very young children or middle-aged children or older children they're very much aware and that's really important that you be whole parents hold on to that and think about ways that they can come together to give their children okay he's this story about what's going on in their relationship we we had an email from dina dina mears and and she said in her email we spent

so much energy on beginnings engagement marriage birth, but often much less on healthy endings. There's no ritual that accompanies separation or divorce. Kate, should there be some sort of ritual at the end? Would that have helped you? I think absolutely. I think there's an awful lot who's talked about how to end things properly, but there doesn't seem to be anything that actually helps you do that. So we've got the right ideas. And when Gwyneth came out with her unconscious uncoupling, we all sort of sniggered a little bit, didn't we, at the phraseology of it. But she was right in a way, what we need to do is process those emotions at the end of a relationship and have an opportunity to sit down together, end the relationship well, before we then move on to sorting out the practicalities of

what happens to the children and who takes what from the financial pot. So I think if you can set some goals for where you want to take your future as you end the relationship that can be really helpful in separating the idea of ending the relationship and then sorting out the next stages rebecca if when you're making the plan where can you go for initial and preferably free information about the practicalities of separation? I think it's always really overwhelming when you're going through separation to know actually where to go. And sort of my one message is to try and go anywhere apart from going to the court. So in terms of where you can access information, I think that I would always recommend that if you can, you seek some legal advice. Even if you can't necessarily afford that throughout the whole process, maybe just some

initial advice to set you on the right path. There are free advice centres, there's law works, there's citizens advice bureaus, there are barristers that offer some pro bono advice as well. I think another good starting point is mediation and that's particularly so because if you're on benefits or on a low income then you can still get legal aid for mediation and that means that mediation for you would be free and there's a full list of family mediators on the family mediation council website and mediators will arrange initial meetings which with each of the couple and and those meetings aren't only about mediation obviously they will explain the mediation process, but they will also highlight what other options there might be and also provide signposting if there's other information the person wants. Let me bring in Lucy here, Rebecca. Sorry. But Lucy, what's the most common inquiry about divorce and separation that you get from your readers? Well, so I write the Readers' Questions column for the FT

and lots of people write in. And as well as mentioning, you know, the severe emotional strains of splitting up, they talk about the financial implications of breaking up. So they worry that they can't afford to get divorced, that they won't be able to pay rent on their own or pay the mortgage. Because when you get divorced or split up from somebody, there's obviously two separate households to run. And that gets enhanced when people have young children.

So they worry that they won't be able to afford a place that's big enough to have separate rooms for the children. And even for wealthier families, they worry about the ongoing costs of things like school fees or perhaps running two cars and things. And then there's also, I hear from a lot of people about maintenance payments. So, from the main breadwinners of the family, they worry about whether they will be able to afford to continue to paying maintenance for an ongoing period of time for children. And then the homemakers, perhaps people that have given up work to look after the children, they then worry about how much they will get to live on so there's lots of financial concerns and that's on top of all the emotional strains that people are going through someone who didn't want us to use a name uh wrote this she said it took a year from when i told him

i wanted to end the relationship for him to leave he only left in the end after i found him a flat to move into as he was extremely reluctant. I wish I had felt less sorry for him and less guilty and been more assertive in order to let him in order to get him out of the house. I had two children and I was trying to protect them from the breakup but they were and are much better since the split. So Jo, this decision of where everybody's going to live is very tough and not necessarily just about the money, is it? No, it's not at all. I just wanted to go back to when people were talking about endings, because I think that's what we do as family therapists. We don't just think about coming

together. We also think about endings and endings, you know, friendships, ending jobs, they're all really important. And I think we do forget about endings and endings, you know, friendships, ending jobs, they're all really important. And I think we do forget about endings in relationships. And what we try to do is to kind of help people to end relationships well, to model to themselves and to model to their children that, you know, even though we've been emotionally connected, but we are now uncoupling as well. And I think that's really important. But coming back to your question about yes you know at the actual process of separation and and you know how it you know it can be really difficult and and long and protracted it is it's again it's about you know how each member of that couple acts and responds to ending to leaving

you know and and what we have to do in order to do that. So there's no right way or wrong way. It's what works. And it's often when you've come out of that journey, like your viewer said, you know, I'd wish I'd done this sooner or done something to enable him to kind of make those changes. But that was her journey and that was her process.

So, yeah. Rebecca, what are the legal protections that you get if you're a married person or a civil partner compared with somebody who is not married? Well, there are really significant differences. I think it's very important that people understand what they are. I think there are still a lot of people that think there's something called a common-law marriage and there absolutely isn't. There is in fact no guaranteed rights to ownership of the other person's property if you're not married. If that relationship breaks down there are really none of the same rights that you would have as a married person or

somebody that's in a civil partnership and so I would always recommend that if you're going into a relationship where you're not going to be married or not going to have a civil partnership that you you think very hard and get advice about entering into a living together agreement that sets out exactly what what sort of your expectations are if you're going to buy a property together then have a declaration that sets out exactly what each of your interests are you may also want to consider having making ensuring that you each have a will in the event that either of you you know either of you were to pass away what was what would happen because there's no automatic right to inherit if you're not married. You do have rights as a non-married person

under the Children Act for your children. So you can make claims for their support, and that might also include housing. But other than that, you could really put yourself in a very vulnerable position. Kate, we've been talking about people trying to talk about things, work them out together, but are there couples who shouldn't approach this process jointly? Yes, I think there's a range of solutions when you split up and the key thing is to pick the right process for you. So for example, at Amicable, we are specifically a couple service. So we help people who have

decided they want to end the relationship together, want to put their children first, and want to divorce and separate as a couple together. So the system we have at the moment is that the law is an adversarial system. It calls people parties. There's a petitioner, there's a respondent. And if you go down the traditional route of going to see a lawyer, you each have a lawyer. You hear your best case scenario from your lawyer. Your partner hears their best case scenario from their lawyer. your partner hears their best case scenario from their lawyer and there's a big yawning gap in the middle to fight over. Now sometimes you need that protection of somebody batting for you, so a lawyer who's looking after your interests

because your partner might be hiding assets, there might be abuse in the relationship, there might be somebody putting means beyond your reach. So in that scenario, absolutely, you need to take, you need to find the process that works for you and that will protect you. But for many people these days, that's not how they're ending relationships. They're ending relationships as a couple who want to prioritize their children. And for those people, what we're now starting to see is services like ours and others where they'll work, where we can work with people as a couple to end in a much more positive way. Lucy, what is a separation or divorce going to cost you if you do have to go through the full court route? So the cost of splitting up is rising, unfortunately. So in 2014, a relationship breakdown cost just over £12,000. But now that figure has risen to over £15,000. So those costs are down to things like legal fees payable on disputes over children

and also people disputing the division of assets. But there are ways to kind of maximise the chance of being able to afford to get divorced. I think the key for everyone is to, you know, both married couples and those cohabiting is to start thinking about the financial side really early on. So, you know, although one of you might have taken a step back in terms of finances in the relationship, both of you need to actually get an understanding of how much your joint finances come to.

So that could even be just things like knowing how much you have in savings, where your investments are, whether you have a pension and how much that is. Even things like your insurer and energy provider. It's just key to educate yourselves in the matter of finances. So then you actually know rebecca how

would a court decide what's a fair division of assets and a fair level of maintenance so what the um what the court will look at is the both parties as they're referred to as parties when you go to court, both parties' financial circumstances in order to find a fair outcome. Now, the starting point for the sharing of the assets is equality, so 50-50, but that isn't necessarily where it always ends up, because it very much depends on what the needs of the party are, and it's really the needs of the party that are the most significant factor. 50-50, ond nid yw hynny'n bosibl lle mae'n dod o hyd, oherwydd mae'n bwysig iawn ar beth yw angenion y rhanbarth, ac mae'r angenion y rhanbarth yn ffactor mwyaf sylweddol. Felly, efallai, er enghraifft, bod rhywun angen ymwneud â'r ysgol, un person angen ysgol ac nid oes ganolbwynt mor fawr â'r person eraill, ac felly bydd angen

bod yn ysgol teulu, er bod y person eraill yn gallu allu cyflogi i ddod i'r ffwrdd a byw arall. Felly mae'r holl bethau hynny wedi'u ffactorio. Ac mae'r un peth mewn gwirionedd o ran cefnogi, gwaith. Bydd y Cwrdd yn edrych ar beth mae pob un o'r rhanbarthau yn ei gwerthu, bydd yn edrych ar beth yw'r cyflawniadau ar gyfer pob un o'r rhanbarthau hynny, goings are for each of those parties both now and potentially also going forward um to to to meet to meet those to meet those needs and and ensure that it's a that it's an affordable fair and reasonable division rebecca how much flexibility should you have in the arrangements over your children that's a really good question. I think that from

a children's, from the children's perspective, it's generally thought to be better that there there is a structure to the arrangements that you have for them so that they so that they know where where they're going to be and on what days they're going to be there and exactly what the pattern is. But I think that it has to be recognised as well that it's important that there should always be some flexibility in those arrangements, either to meet the parents' needs or the children's needs, you know, maybe a party event or kids have a birthday party that they need to go to.

So there are all those sorts of things that I think you should factor in. And you can also, I would also as a mediator be recommending to parents that they think about what flexibility means. How much notice do they need in order to change those arrangements so that they minimise the arguments that there are between them john the last question this one how good an idea is it to try and stay friends that's another good question i think some some couples are able to stay friends i guess it's what you mean by being friends um how that is defined because i think there's a difference between being friendly and being friends um it might depend on you know if it's an amicable separation or if it's less

amicable um and what is the context of being friendly is it being friendly to kind of get through the process and then you're not going to be friends is it you're friends until one of you meets another partner um so i think it's a both and really and it really depends on on the couple and what they can achieve yeah i was talking to joanne hibble with rebecca gershonny kate daily and lucy warwick ching now we had a lot of communication from you about your circumstances about splitting up. Someone who didn't want us to use a name said I split up with my partner he had an affair just before we were due to move abroad as a family for his work. Lockdown delayed things and we were forced to stay together. We have an 18-month-old. I've decided to continue with the move as I want my child to see her father grow up bilingual and

frankly for us to be supported by him while I look after her for the first six months we're there. We're planning to have separate rooms but otherwise continue to be parents for her together. Are we mad? Obviously, the problems will arise when we meet new people. Rachel said, my advice is to try not to be vindictive or say hurtful things to each other, however angry you are, as you will have to live with those memories of how you ended things for the rest of your life. Make it as kind and measured as possible. Ruth emailed to say what had helped her. After my husband left me suddenly 13 years ago, I went to relate on my own. People think it's a service to aid communication between people, but I find it very useful to review the relationship, the roles and behaviour, and have a good attitude to moving on as an individual with children.

It helped me with taking a balanced opinion toward whose fault it all was, and having a really positive long-term view of raising happy, healthy children. So please do mention Relate as a service, even after a relationship has finished. Joanna from Sweden added, please don't forget that relationships often end with one person being really angry and uncooperative. Putting the children first, agreeing how to go forward amicably, etc.,

requires both parents to be on board. And then in response to the discussion about pregnancy in prisons we had an email from a midwife and she said as a retired midwife I found the deafening silence from the Royal College of Midwives to your article on pregnancy and birth care in prison. Really rather sad. The suggestion that someone at the prison could be trained up to do the work of a midwife is actually illegal. You're either a qualified midwife with all the expertise to help these vulnerable women or you are not.

And that was from Merle Granshaw, SRN, SCM, retired. Now do join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. It's at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, as I'm sure you know. And you can hear a discussion about cycling. The government's trying to get it all onto our bikes. But if you're a woman, how do you find a comfortable saddle? Find out tomorrow. Bye-bye. Hi, I'm Joe Wicks and I'm just popping up to tell you about my brand new podcast with BBC Radio 4.

It's extraordinary. It almost turbocharges you. I'm really interested in the links between physical and mental health and what kind of ordinary everyday activities people do to keep on top of things. I keep fit because it's relaxing, because it absolutely relaxes my mind. and mental health and what kind of ordinary everyday activities people do to keep on top of things. I keep fit because it's relaxing because it absolutely relaxes my mind and that's so important.

So in this podcast I'm having a chat with some of my favourite people to find out their tips and tricks to staying healthy and happy. For me it's a

full body experience and it's a total game changer. I think you're going to love it. Hit subscribe on the Joe Wicks podcast on BBC Sounds.

Let's do this. 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. 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.