Woman's Hour - Julie Heldman, Cannabis, Parents' evenings, Women's centres

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

New research from the University of York shows that the number of women dependent on cannabis has been underestimated and that there is significant gender bias in the way cannabis dependence is assessed and counted meaning that women may not be getting the help they need. Jenni speaks to Ian Hamilton, senior lecturer in addiction and mental health in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York.Julie Heldman is a former American tennis player who won 22 women’s tournaments. She reached number 5 in career ranking playing against stars such as Billie Jean King, Margaret Court and Yvonne Goolagong. She has written her memoir ‘Driven: A Daughter’s Odyssey’ about her time on the tennis circuit, the fight for equality in the game and the role her mother Gladys, the founder of World Tennis magazine, played in starting the women’s pro tour in 1970. You’re ready for that nerve wracking event in every parent’s life – the school parents’ evening. You’ve done your best to look neat and tidy when your son says, ‘Mum, you’re not going in that jacket are you?’ It seems there is no fashion critic so brutal as a child – especially if Mum is going to be witnessed by their peers and teachers. We sent Tamsin Smith to meet some women and their children to find out why it matters so much. For many years Women’s Centres have provided a safe, all-female environment for vulnerable women who can use them as a means to avoid or exit the criminal justice system or as a way to get support for legal, mental health, housing and substance misuse issues. But now some of these Women's Centres are facilitating a community payback scheme, previously known as community service. How much can women's centres be both a place of empowerment and punishment? Jenni speaks to Dr Nicola Harding, a criminology researcher at Lancaster University, Kate Paradine, CEO of Women in Prison and Sharna Kennedy, communications officer for the women's centre Tomorrow's Women Wirral.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Women's centres were designed to support vulnerable women as an alternative to prison, but some also has women doing what's known as community payback. It used to be community service. Well, should a centre which hopes to empower a woman also be involved in her punishment? As Wimbledon gets going, the former American tennis star Julie Heldman on her memoir Driven, a daughter's odyssey. She was a contemporary of

Billie Jean King and Margaret Court and number five in the world ranking. And what to wear to a parents' evening without your son or daughter saying, hmm, you're not going out in that, are you, mum? Now, as you may have heard in the news, a group of MPs has been critical of the government for misleading parents who thought they would be able to get medical cannabis for the sick children easily in this country. They're urging clinical trials to find out whether the substance is safe and effective. Of course, medical cannabis is a different substance from the cannabis that's bought and used illegally as a recreational drug.

It's often been said that it's not addictive, but research carried out at the University of York has confirmed that people can become dependent on the drug, and it's been addictive, but research carried out at the University of York has confirmed that people can become dependent on the drug, and it's been found that the number of women who are addicts has been underestimated. Ian Hamilton is a senior lecturer in addiction and mental health in the university's Department of Health Sciences. Why is the number of women dependent on cannabis underestimated? What got us curious about this is we see quite stark differences between the number of women in the population who use cannabis compared to the number who end up in treatment so that raised our curiosity so broadly speaking you would see twice as many men as women use cannabis in the UK, but there are three times as many men as women in treatment.

So clearly something is going on between using cannabis, developing a problem and then getting help. So as I say, that kind of got us interested to try and understand why there was this difference. And so one of the things we began to look at was how is cannabis dependence defined and how does it manifest itself and how is it assessed so that's where we started really. So when you talk about dependence are you talking about people who just need to smoke it over and over again or are we talking about people whose mental health has been affected by it? Well, I think it's more people who like any drug or any psychoactive drug that you could become dependent on. So if we think typically about drugs like cocaine or amphetamines,

it's a very similar set of principles that you would use to understand whether someone has become psychologically or physically dependent or even both. And I think what's surprising for many people is that you can actually become dependent on cannabis. Cannabis is broadly viewed as a relatively benign drug. So whether it's for men or women, I think some people are surprised to know that there is that risk of dependency, albeit it's a smaller risk than it would be for a drug like cocaine or heroin, for example. So when you started to unpick why women with dependence were underestimated, what did you find? Well, we were quite surprised to find that up until recently, only a couple of years ago, that the main diagnostic criteria included questions around things like,

you know, have you ever been intoxicated while driving a truck or using machinery? Now, clearly, even in 2019, in the UK or America, where most of this assessment information comes from, there are likely to be fewer female truck drivers than there are male truck drivers, and all the more so going back, you know, two or three decades. So there seems, and there's other examples. So, for instance, we know that women are less likely to be convicted for cannabis offences. And again, having a cannabis offence is one of the assessment criteria it's used. So that's just a couple of examples of where there seems to be some gender bias in the questioning and assessment,

which would then get you a diagnosis of cannabis dependence or at least alert a clinician to the fact that you might have a problem so it became apparent pretty quickly there was a problem with the head count as it were of men and women who have cannabis dependence what sort of treatment should be offered to an addicted woman if somebody asked her the right questions well that's really interesting because of course the way we count and who we count who has a problem so if we end up with fewer women we think we have fewer women um who are cannabis dependent that seems to be what the data shows that does affect treatment and um unfortunately when we move on to treatment and intervening when people do have a problem most of those treatments have been tested on men.

Now, it might be that they do work for women. We just don't know. But I'm sufficiently suspicious to think that there are likely to be differences in the way men and women respond to these treatments. So unlike drugs like heroin, there is no substitute drug for cannabis. We can't offer a pill or a potion so what we then rely on is talking treatments now obviously you've got to get to a clinic to get a talking treatment or at least get to an appointment and we know that women face particular barriers in accessing treatment irrespective of what that treatment is but as I

say even if they could get to the treatment centre or whoever's offering the support, the treatment that they will be offered will have largely been tested on men. So if I can just give you one example, Jenny, of why gender difference matters in this area. One of the things we do know about cannabis and a range of other drugs like cocaine and opiates is that women seem to go from first

use to becoming dependent at a faster rate than men so roughly speaking women would that journey would only last four to five years whereas for men it might last anything from seven to eight years so I think what that demonstrates is our window of opportunity to intervene for women is much shorter than it is for men. So if we can't adequately estimate the prevalence or effect of dependence on women, what impact is that having

on public health messages, public health policy? Well, it wouldn't be surprising to find that it's quite biased towards men. And, you know, most of the research we do is conducted in treatment centres, which are dominated by men. So all our understanding around problems, around interventions, and even where public health messages should be targeted, are clearly skewed by this kind of perceived male-only problem, as it were. So I think we need to be a bit more kind of nimble and imaginative in terms of trying to find out what the problems women face.

But I know that there are some treatment clinics who are addressing this. They're in the minority rather than the mainstream. So, for instance, they do just lovely practical things like consider things like childcare, which may sound very small but can act as a real barrier for women who need to access treatment in a timely way. The other thing I've seen being offered, which I think is really helpful, is women-only sessions. We know that, as I say, treatment centres are dominated by men. So it can be quite intimidating for women who, I think, given what I was saying about being a revelation that cannabis can become addictive or you can become dependent, may not view themselves as being a typical drug user or a typical person who has a problem with drugs.

So I think anything we can do in a small way to encourage women to access treatment in a timely way has got to be welcomed. Ian Hamilton, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And, you know, we would like to hear from you on this. If you've had worries about this, do let us know. You can tweet us or you can email us. And, of course, we won't use your name if you ask us not to. Now Wimbledon is in full flow with one great star, Venus Williams, knocked out by the next generation, Corrie Goff, who's only 15. Julie Heldman began playing when she was eight in 1954, reached number five in the world rankings, but then gave up playing in 1966. She started again 18 months later,

but quit for good in 1976 when she was 29. Her memoir is called Driven, A Daughter's Odyssey. Julie, why did you decide to write a memoir now? I had no choice. It came bursting out of me. I had long, many ideas about writing about my life. And I then became incapable of doing much. I had a breakdown that lasted nearly 15 years. And it ended in 2014, 2015. And once I had the energy, I just, it came flooding out. What was it like to play tennis in the 60s and 70s against people like Billie Jean King and Margaret Court? chance to see the world. There was no money to be made in the beginning until we started the Women's Pro Tour in 1970. My mother organized and engineered the event and I was one of the original nine players. Once money came in, it became a different thing. It wasn't a sort of la-di-da, let's travel around. It was let's do something important and make money at the same

time. Now both your parents, I think, were tennis players. How much was tennis your choice? And how much was it their choice? It was absolutely not my choice at all. My mother started playing tennis when I was three months old, became completely addicted, loved it. And when I was about six, she started what became the world's largest tennis magazine, totally atypical for the early 1950s. But that consumed her entirely, and she just could not have us around, me and my older sister. So we were sent away to the first ever tennis camp in Michigan, where we played tennis every day, all day long for 10 weeks, every summer for seven years.

How much did she actually push you? I mean, would you describe her as a pushy mother? You would think of a tennis mother as this tiger mom sitting on the sidelines cheering, not even close, not my mother. She was so into her own world. She was one of the most important people in the history of tennis. Mother, not so hot. And in fact, when she knew that I'd won some of my early tournaments, she undermined me. To some large extent, she was upset without being able to use the words that I was doing better than she did. She is absolutely central to this book. And

you write about, you call it years of emotional abuse yes the emotional abuse can be go in many different ways but um my mother could be characterized as a highly narcissistic personality and often people like that choose a victim child and i was that so she would scream at me unmercifully she would humiliate me I was isolated away from others I had ill health I was neglected it was very severe and very hidden from the world nobody in the tennis I go back to I say hi to my old tennis pals they had no idea it was all hidden. Now, as you said, she started and then ran the World Tennis Magazine. How influential was it? It was the most influential tennis journal. And in that era, there was no internet. This was it. If you lived in New York or London or Prague

or Indonesia, this was it. You got the magazine, you read it cover to cover. It was quality. And she did all of her own. She wrote most of the magazine. She got good writers too. But she also sold the ads. And she knew as a woman that she was not going to be able to go to the advertising agency and say, here I am. She knew she had to learn how to do it. So she went to the top. She went to the CEOs of big companies. And from there, she would pitch them on some ideas she had. And if it worked, that was great. And if it didn't, she'd go to Tiffany and buy a gold bracelet. She had lots of bracelets by the end of it. Now in the book, you do credit her with saving women's tennis. Absolutely true. How would you say that happened?

In 1968, there were no tennis tournaments with prize money at the higher levels. But the tennis world made a massive change, starting basically with the English and the Lawn Tennis Association and also with the All England Club where Wimbledon is played. But once the change was made that prize money would come in, the men who were running the game, and they were all men, stopped getting prize money. They didn't get prize money for women. So the top women players had nowhere to go and nowhere to play.

And it came to a culmination when the Los Angeles tournament run by Jack Kramer had prize money ratio of 8 to 1, men to women. So some of the top players, Billie Jean King, Nancy Ritchie, Rosie Casals, went to my mother and said, help. So she put together a tournament. And she went to this guy, Jack Kramer, and she said, is there going to be a problem running the tournament? Are you going to let us have the proper sanctions? Oh, I'm not that kind of guy. Night before the tournament, every player was called by the men who were running the association saying, you play, you're going to be locked out of other tournaments. So my mother still brought everybody in and said to play, you can become, I will, you will sign a contract with

my mother for $1 for a week to get them out, them and me too, because I was one of the original nine out of the auspices of the men's association, but they kept attacking us. They said, oh, you can't have a tournament because you can't have two tournaments the same week in the United States. Wrong. They said, you can have a tournament, but you can't take prize money. Wrong.

These are all rules they were making up on the fly. So it was a risk, but it worked. It worked, and in part because we had big money that came from a cigarette company. Now, you stopped playing at 20, and then you started again at 22 and played for a few more years. Why this on and off? Something I did not know at the time,

which was these were the first manifestations of mental illness, of bipolar disorder, and I'd had a very difficult breakup with a boyfriend. But it was, and then I got to play for the Federation Cup, which is the World Team Championships. And I was playing, and Billie Jean was my teammate, and I was playing number two for the U.S. And I'd go out in the court and play my heart out.

And the next day, and that night, I mean, I'd go in my room and be flooded with suicidal thoughts. And I thought, well, there's too much pressure in the tennis world. And there's a lot of pressure, pressure from the way I've been brought up. But the reality was it took me until I was 50 to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So I had some very difficult times, and that was one of them. There were some others that were even much worse.

But I came back to tennis because it was also part of my life. It was part of my soul. It was what I knew. And so I decided that because I had been traveling around in Europe, that I really loved traveling. So after I took a year off, I came back to travel. But I took a year off to hang out with a bunch of hippies. I got a job on Madison Avenue.

I did just this and that. And then I realized, wait a minute, I could have my tennis rackets, could pay for my travel. What do you make of women's tennis now? It is extraordinary in so many ways. Everybody is so strong, so fit, so powerful. They're bigger. We were littler people than they are now.

They are bigger and stronger, aren't they? And it's become, because of maybe the Me Too movement and because what's happened in women's sports, it's now something people do, they watch. Julie Heldman, I bet you'll be watching this afternoon. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. Now still to come in today's programme, the purpose of a women's centre designed to support vulnerable women. But some are responsible for community service, now known as community payback. Can a centre really combine support and punishment?

And the serial, episode three of Daphne of Fire in Malta. Now, you may have missed a discussion on Monday about painful, invasive medical procedures. Should you be offered an anaesthetic? And yesterday, the composer Thea Musgrave, who at 91, will have the premiere of her trumpet concerto at the Cheltenham Music Festival. If you've missed the live programme, you can always catch up. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app. Now, I suspect we've all been through it. I certainly have. You're ready for

that nerve-wracking event in every parent's life, the school parent's evening. You've done your best to look neat and tidy when your son says, Mum, you're not going in that jacket, are you? It seems there is no fashion critic so brutal as a child, especially if mummy's going to be witnessed by their peers and teachers. Well, we sent Tamsin Smith to meet some women and their children to find out why it matters so much. She began in Linda's bedroom with Linda and her three children who introduced themselves. I'm Brandon and I'm 11 years old. I'm Destiny and I'm 13.

I'm Tiana and I'm 18 years old. Go on then Linda, open the wardrobe. Okay, here we go. Wow, it's quite packed. Is it organised with any theme? Winter at the top and summer at the bottom. So come on then, I'm going to start with you, Brandon, because you're the youngest. So has there been something where you thought, oh mum, are you really going to wear that? Yes, there has. It was this outfit. Do you want to pull it out?

It's very colourful and vibrant. So it's a sort of tunic, isn't it, in bright pink fuchsia with bright colored panels on it what is it you don't like about it uh linda you might have to step in and defend your top here well i love my top it is actually a dress but i think he's trying to be polite i think sometimes he thinks it might be a little bit too short in terms of it being a dress, and he wonders whether or not it's a top or a dress. Is that right, Brad? Yeah.

I do like this camouflaged one. So, camouflage tracksuit bottoms? Yeah. OK. What do you think she should wear them with? Probably, like, a camouflage jumper. So you know what to wear for next parents evening? Yes, camouflage, top and trousers. Okay, there you go. That's some style advice from Brendan.

Now I'm going to move on to the girls. Okay. Destiny, you're 13. Yeah. Do you give your mum advice on what to wear? Yeah, sometimes she asks me before she goes places if it's nice or should she wear something else. And do you ever tell her what not to wear? Yeah, sometimes, yeah. One time I think she was wearing something green and then I said something else would be better. Is it different when your parent turns up to a school event? It might be a parent's evening or it might be a school concert.

Does it matter what they wear? Well, yeah, I think more not like tracksuit bottoms and stuff. Sorry, Brendan. Tracksuit for your parents' evening. Very different for Destiny's. This is getting complicated, isn't it? It is, because they're at the same school, so I don't know what to do.

You'll have to have a change of clothes in the car. There you go. So it does matter what your mum wears? I think so yeah you've also got a big sister here now is there something that you in the past perhaps have not wanted your mum to wear or advised her against maybe the shorts if it's too short then i'll say or maybe not to wear that do children talk about what their parents are wearing, girls especially?

Yes, sometimes they'll be like, when my mum comes to school, they'll be like, oh, I like what your mum's wearing. So, yeah, we do talk about it. Linda, do you have any memories of this kind of teenage embarrassment regarding what your mum wore? My mum used to like wearing a lot of headscarves, but she'd wear them tied up underneath her chin. And I remember the very first time that I went out with the school on a school trip,

it was in the evening and we went to, I think, to the Royal Ballet or something like that. And she said, oh, you've got to wrap up really warm. And she put the headscarf on my head in the exact same manner, tied up under my chin. And I was about 10 years old and I was absolutely mortified so we're both walking down the road together with these headscarves and we were like twins but I was like about you know 30 years younger than her and it was just really embarrassing for me scarred me for life so what do you think listening to your children I think if I did wear something out of the ordinary that they weren't happy with I think they would tell me would you guys yes yeah I do listen to them yeah because I want them to walk next to

me and be happy walking like 10 miles ahead of me and think oh I don't know who she is I've come to a cafe to meet some more young fashion critics. Who have we got here? Melania. And how old are you? Ten. And your sister is? Sienna.

And how old are you, Sienna? I am eight. My name's Madrika. I'm the mummy of Melania and Sienna. Your girls, you're both in primary school still? Yes. Do you have strong opinions about what your mum wears, especially if she's going to school? Well, most of the time I like her clothes,

but sometimes I really don't like them. I really, really hate them. I wish everyone could see your face right now. Yeah. You have brought along a bag of clothes of your mum's that you don't like is that right yes do you want to show me something uh yeah go on then let's unzip this bag here okay so what have we got first melania why don't i let you introduce this item

it's maroon and it's got these large golden buttons. What is it? It's a blazer and I really, really don't like it. It looks exactly like our school uniform which is so annoying. What would happen if your mum wore this to parents' evening? First of all, I wouldn't be able to tell her apart from all the other kids because we literally have exactly the same blazer. Would you ask her to wear something different?

Yes, definitely. Yes. Do you quite like this, Madrika? I like it a lot, and I haven't worn it yet. It's new, which is the worst thing ever. Is there something, Sienna, that you've chosen? Yes. So it's basically a skirt, and it's this really horrible colour. Light brown and to me it looks like a giraffe just pooed.

And I really hate it. Plus the buttons on the side really doesn't, I don't like it at all. Madrika, I think she doesn't like it. I think I would be a walking giraffe's poo if I did wear it, right? Yeah. And again, this one's new. I haven't even worn it once. I totally hate it. It's disgusting. I think your mum should save it for your 18th birthday and wrap it up.

There we go, that's what we'll do with that one. I've got a stylist actually who bought this item for me and I haven't worn it yet and she has got me to try some new funky colours. Both these items are from her, bought by her for me and kids clearly don't like them. And do you have any recollections yourself of your parents and what they wore and wishing perhaps they didn't? Well, I was actually first generation Indian coming over to the UK. So my mum used to wear a sari all the time and that's all she wore.

So I found that quite embarrassing sometimes, just dependent on the environment. She'd always be in the sari. So it would be like, oh, God, I can't believe she's got that on. Or wearing some trainers with a sari, it would be like oh god I can't believe she's got that or wearing some trainers with her sari you know which just does not work you know so or something you didn't want anymore but she didn't want you to throw it away so you know the jean jacket over the sari you know and did you ever say anything to her like your two do to you no there's no way I would have said a word too fearful so it's good that they have opinions, right?

Yes, definitely. Opinions are good. They don't have to be right, they're just an opinion. Correct. Hi, I'm Tanishka Sethi, I'm 15 years old. Hi, I'm Ashmit Sethi, I'm 13 years old. Hi, I'm Ravinder, I'm Tanishka and Ashmit's mum. Tell me a bit about how your mum dresses. I mean, she's here in a really lovely, vibrant floral print today. No criticisms of this? Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn.

Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn.

Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ddiddorol iawn. to dress sense than my dad. He always wears matching clothes, so he'll wear a black top and black jeans

and they don't go together. And then they wore like brown shoes, which just looks really odd. Do you tell him this? Yes, definitely. I get new out for him. And tell him to get changed? Yeah, yeah, because otherwise I get really embarrassed.

So you're happy with what your mum wears, it's your dad that's the problem? Yes, definitely. I agree, you wear light blue shorts and a light blue shirt and be like, my clothes match, it's fine. Describe to me that feeling when your dad's going to come to school with you and he's wearing perhaps the light blue shirt and the light blue shorts or trousers. How do you actually feel? I feel like I don't want to be near him, like walk with him to school or anything.

What about you? I just feel, oh God, he's done it again. What would be your advice to parents who are getting grief from their children about what to wear? Listen to your kids, because they're not just doing it for themselves, they're doing it for you too. So sweet, aren't they?

That report was by Tamsin Smith. I tell you, I'm glad mine are too grown up to say anything about what I wear these days. Anyway, we stay on schools on Monday and there'll be a phone-in about leaving primary school and going up to secondary school. We'd like to hear your experiences, whether it's with your children or what you remember of doing it yourself. You can get in

touch with us now on Twitter or on email and of course you can call in on Monday morning. Now women's centres have existed in some parts of the country for a number of years with the intention of supporting vulnerable women and trying to keep them out of the prison system. The aim was said to be empowerment, offering help with substance misuse, housing and mental health problems. But some are also responsible for supervising what used to be known as community service and is now called community payback. But it's led to a question. Should a centre designed to offer support also be involved in punishment for whatever crime a woman may have committed?

Well, Dr Kate Paradine is the Chief Executive of Women in Prison. Nicola Harding is a researcher in criminology at Lancaster University, specialising in community punishment, and she joins us from there. Shana Kennedy is Communications Officer for Tomorrow's Women in the Wirral and she joins us from Liverpool. Shana, who are the women who come to your centre?

Yes, so good morning. We are a women's community centre based on the Wirral, as you just said, and we really don't undermine the extent of the women that we um you know we access and that we reach out to there are a huge diversity and variety of women that we engage with to support empower uplift upskill and you know we have women from 18 to you know in their 80s and women coming for a variety of different issues for support for just kind of general confidence building.

We currently have almost 7,500 women registered with us at the centre. But how does community payback work within your centre? Yeah, so we currently have a contract with the probation service. So we recognise that the punishments and sentences are of the court. They are given to women by the court. And what we do is we facilitate a safe space for these women to come and complete their community hours and to come and receive that support.

And then we kind of provide a holistic approach with them to then support them with their underlying issues and their personal needs and things like that. Nicola, what concerns do you have about this community payback taking place within such a centre? I think the thing that we need to remember first and foremost is that all punishment causes harm and that produces trauma. Oh hang on a minute it is deserved if somebody's committed a crime. I think that some of the crimes that women are punished for are crimes that we need to be questioning.

Is it punishment that is needed? Should we be looking at support before we get to the point of punishment? I would definitely push the notion that we need to think about not just alternatives to imprisonment, but alternatives to punishment, especially when the law- breaking and criminalisation comes from issues around poverty, domestic abuse, mental health issues. So I would say that actually punishment should be a last step and that sometimes it's occurring at a point that is kind of too early on. We need to be able to have women access this support

prior to punishment, prior to sentencing to punishment. Nicola, what response did you find among women when you were doing your research using women's centres where community payback was happening for some women and not for others? Within my research, what I found is that there was a conflicting kind of dual identity that the women had to manage within women's centres where punishment was being imposed because the women were having to maintain relationships within the centre but also understand how disclosure of things like domestic abuse would increase their risk profile

and potentially increase the supervision and surveillance around them through probation or unpaid work, community payback. The examples of some of the harm in my research is that women were maintaining domestic abuse relationships as a means to satisfy their community punishment orders. This was for reasons of understanding that if they had a major life change, such as leaving a domestic abuse relationship, that could lead to them being homeless. That would increase their risk. It would complicate their ability to complete their order but other issues such as um lack of child care and within women's centers that are enforcing that women um come in and do these unpaid hours you know the most of the women were primary carers and single mothers who don't have any

family support around them to have those children in order for them to fulfil the orders. Therefore, they were staying within these domestically abused relationships so that they had a father there. Let me put some of your points to Kate, Nicola. Kate, how much does this dual purpose of the centres concern you? Well, I would say that the main issue here is about the role of women's centers which is not punishment which is to provide support and to help women to tackle but it's happening in a number of centers it's happening apparently in a small number of centers not in centers that

we're running but the reasons for this is not about the women's centers it's about the system of funding and contracts that were mentioned by shana when she first spoke and women's centres have been asked to sign up to become possibly too close to a system of punishment. What's important here is that everyone has their role in the system. Probation officers are there to supervise people under the sentence of the court and women's centres are there to provide the support to help women to tackle the root causes of what's brought them there in the first place and it's really important that there is a separation and probation officers know that as well as anybody because if there's a separation then women can build trust which they've often lost in state systems. Shona what

evidence is there in your experience of women suffering the kind of stigma that Nicola is concerned about yeah I mean kind of listening to the points kind of raised there we we really don't find that in practice this this is an issue I mean honestly we we are there ultimately as the women's centre to support as I said with those underlying issues so you know when you're coming in whether you're coming in through the criminal justice system or not we will treat you the same and we integrate and I think this we're talking about stigma we don't attach a stigma to these women that are coming in yes they are they have been sent you know through criminal justice and you know as you said yourself um Jenny um in regards to the proportion you know if somebody's committed

a crime at the moment this is how they are treated this is the, you know, if somebody's committed a crime at the moment, this is how they are treated. This is the punishment, you know, the kind of the punishment that's given. We're tearing them away from prison. You know, we are there to support them and we integrate them. There is no stigma attached within our centre. So in practice, you know, there's not this dual identity whatsoever that we find. We treat them all the same in that way. Kate, there's been a lot of discussion recently about ending prison sentences of less than six months. What impact would that have on women's centres if it happened?

Well, the first thing to say is this absolutely has to happen and it's very good that the government has accepted the real damage that's being done by the revolving door of prison, repeated short sentences and just making people's problems worse. Even a few weeks in prison is enough to lose your job, your home and your children. Now if the government move to do what they say which is to end this practice then what we need to do today is to start planning for community support services that can help people to tackle the root causes of offending

because the problem has been our obsession with punishment whether it's punishing people for not paying their council tax and tv license through prison or women and men not being able to get their children to school who haven't been able to access support these are the sort of ways in which we're punishing people who have problems. Nicola, what would you say is the answer if those kind of short sentences do come to an end? I think I agree exactly with what Kate's just said, is that we fundamentally need to begin the conversation now that allows us to create alternatives to punishment

rather than simply alternatives to imprisonment. Women's centres can play a key role in this. I do dispute the idea of there not being stigma and not being difference within the women's centre when punishment is there because the use of high visibility jackets and women singled out for community punishment in a very visible way was very prevalent within my research and was something that the women really spoke against in terms of their experiences of community punishment within the women's centre. However women's centres are fundamental, they're vital to our communities,

they need to be funded, they need to be funded well, we need these centres to ensure that women can overcome the structural oppressions that we all face within society. However, when so closely aligned to the criminal justice system, we simply cannot empower whilst we punish. Kate, I know you're trying to get the government to use the proceeds of the sale of Holloway Prison, which has happened recently, for women's services. How hopeful are you of getting that funding?

Well, we think it makes sense, and so do an awful lot of MPs that we met last week at our mass lobby of Parliament, where women's centres and women using them came to Parliament. And MPs were saying they needed services like this in their communities, and they needed them to be properly funded. The reality is, as Nicola's rightly pointed out, that there is a major crisis in funding for the existing women's centres that are left and there has been a disaster of reform, so-called, in terms of the privatisation of the probation service.

And this is an opportunity now for the Treasury to take the £80 million that has come to the Treasury from the sale of HMP Holloway and lay a monument to what that prison stands for in terms of the rights of women, which would be women's centres across the country. I was talking to Dr Kate Paradine, Nicola Harding and Shana Kennedy. Now, your response to our discussion about cannabis and its effect on women, Anne said, you mentioned the clinics helping out with issues

such as childcare during appointments. Could it also be the case that women are reluctant to seek treatment because of the fear of intervention by social services? And then someone who didn't want us to use her name said, we need to explore ways that women can find help without feeling they're putting their family at risk. I've been an addict for 18 years. I didn't realise that help was available for cannabis until I got pregnant. After a very uncomfortable consultation when I reached out

for help, I was told that they would have to notify my health visitor and doctor since I had a child under five. I could not risk the potential implications of this for my family or professionally. And Michael said, why is there such a problem with cannabis? Opiates, morphine, etc. are widely used in medicine, but they're not illegal. I've seen what cannabis does to people, having had to confront it several times. It's frightening. But as a medicine, its benefits are wondrous. And Steve said, I'm a childcare solicitor. I see cannabis ruining women's lives daily.

This can mean children removed and adopted. This is very serious and leads to mental illness issues too. We need awareness of how serious the problem is and to make access easier for women to accept and obtain the correct help. And then on what to wear on parents' evening, Maria said, oh my goodness, I'm rushing around trying to find an outfit to wear for speech day today. I've had severe warnings from my 11-year-old daughter, not the floor-length Frida Kahlo print skirt then. Crystal said, I work in a primary school and a couple of years ago

I had to go straight from work to my teenage son's school for parents evening. Unfortunately, this coincided with World Book Day, so I was dressed as Maid Marian in a floor-length medieval dress. Thankfully, my son has a good sense of humour and thought it was hilarious, as did all his teachers. Jennifer said, when my daughter was two, I was getting ready for a rare night out. She saw me in a dress and her eyes widened. Oh you a lady she said was feeling pretty good until i popped on a stripy cardigan she cried with added enthusiasm oh mummy you a zebra and sue said at age eight my son asked if when i went to the parents evening i could dress like other mothers. I asked what other mothers wore and was told,

I don't know, but you don't notice them. And then on women's centres, again, someone who didn't want us to name her, said, I was sentenced to 60 days at the Anarwim Women's Centre in Birmingham in addition to a suspended custodial sentence. This was a transformative place for so many women, for so many women in many situations and from very diverse situations. A one-stop shop at its very best. Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to the folk duo Ohuli and Tido. If you're not familiar with their work, you probably will be. They are

responsible for the closing music of the Sunday night drama series, Gentleman Jack. Join me tomorrow, if you can, two minutes past 10. Bye-bye. 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's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.