Woman's Hour - Kanye West allegations, Government Experts at Hand programme, Author Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

A model who alleges Kanye West choked her on a music video set has told the BBC she was left feeling "suffocated, unsure and scared". Jennifer An, a former contestant on America's Next Top Model, is suing the rapper, now known as Ye, over an encounter she alleges took place in 2010. Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty, presenter of BBC podcast Fame Under Fire, has interviewed Jennifer An and joins us to explain the story.A British woman has become the first ever to cross the Atlantic in a hydrogen gas balloon. Alicia Hempleman-Adams, from near Bath, set off from Maine in the US late on Wednesday and landed in Luxembourg on Sunday with her teammates Bert Padelt and Peter Cuneo. Alicia Hempleman-Adams took the spot on the crew of her father David, who has completed the flight twice before. She joins us live.The government has just announced how it is planning to roll out quicker and easier access to educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and occupational therapists for SEND families. Nuala speaks to the Schools Minister Georgia Gould plus Principal Educational Psychologist for Salford Claire Jackson about the upcoming Experts at Hand programme.And the award-winning writer and poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa devoted three years of her life to researching and imagining the lives of the women who once inhabited the Victorian asylum in Cork. In her immersive work of creative non-fiction, Said the Dead, we meet some of the women who lived and worked in that institution between the 1890s and the 1920s. Doireann Ní Ghríofa joins Nuala to explain how she went about writing these vulnerable, often voiceless women back to life.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Simon Richardson

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. To smooth the coast of jagged boulders, all you need is centuries of salty waves and howling winds. See, the elements in Halifax can soften you, make you a little less rough around the edges. It's probably why people here seem more easygoing. Relax from being shaped by the meeting of land and sea. You can come let it erode you to your softer self too, and remember why sometimes it's good to feel. a bit worn down. Discoverhelifax.ca.

The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Hello, this is Neula McGovern and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast.

Hello and welcome to the program. Well, this morning, we continue our conversations on send with the schools minister, Georgia Gould. As part of the government's changes to the English system, they are promising more of what they call experts at hand, so specialist support for children will hear when parents might be able to expect to see them. Also,

the model who made allegations of sexual assault and strangling against the rapper Kanye West has spoken to the BBC. We will hear that story. Plus, travelling for 70 hours, flying in a hydrogen gas balloon. My guest landed in Luxembourg.

all the way from Maine in the United States and so became the first British woman to cross the Atlantic in such a way. If you'd like to respond to anything you hear on the program, you can text us on 8444-844 on social media where at BBC Women's Hour or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note

that number, 0-3700-100-444. But we do begin with a story that contains some graphic descriptions of a sexual assault. I do want to let you know that because we want to speak about a model who alleges that Kanye West choked her on a music video set

and she has told the BBC she was left feeling suffocated, unsure and scared. Jennifer Arm, that it was a former contestant on America's Next Top Model, has brought legal action against the rapper. He's now known as Ye. In 2024, over this encounter that she alleges took place in 2010.

She has spoken publicly about the case to Anushka Mutanda Doherty for the BBC's Fame Under Fire podcast and Anusha is with me this morning in studio. Good morning. Good to have you with us. How did this story first come to your attention that led you to investigate it in your podcast? So I was covering the Diddy trial in New York for two months and Diddy was accused of three serious federal crimes and somebody who came to show support was Kanye West. And he'd also tweeted some stuff in that effect in supporting him and kind of making light of domestic abuse as well. I thought it's worth looking into what's going down with Kanye.

And just literally in a simple search, I saw Jen's civil lawsuit pop up. And I thought, that's interesting. Because what you get with civil claims of sexual assault is they're usually closed-door claims. It's two people. Nobody else was there to witness. Jen is alleging that there was a full set of people there at the time,

and she has corroborating witnesses. So I approached her literally when she filed the lawsuit. Again, when I was in New York, I've taken her a year to feel like she wants to sit down and tell her story. but she has decided to do so. So this is Jennifer Rand, Jen, as you mentioned. She was performing in the filming of the music act, LaRuez, in for the kill video.

This is 2010 in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. What does she say happen to her? So she says it was a really good day at the beginning. She was 24 years old. She'd just come off the back of America's next-door model, and it was a collaborative, fun environment. She wasn't actually where Kanye West was going to be there. He turned up and everybody was surprised.

all the models were put into a holding room, she says. She then says that he lined all the models up and then selected her specifically for a one-on-one scene. She didn't know, she alleges, what was going to happen in that scene. She was just sort of told to sit on a chair in front of him. And then we have a clip of what she tells us. Yes, and I will just let people know it does include disturbing details,

which are part of her allegations. He pulled a chair up in front of the camera and he pulled a chair beside the camera. He had me sit in the chair in front of the camera. of the camera. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was given no direction. I was just told to sit in this chair. And then playback started. And then all of a sudden, he just reaches a hand out and starts, like, choking me. And I'm just not sure what's happening. And then he pulled his other hand out and starts choking me with both hands. And then starts smearing my makeup all

over my face and sticking his hands inside of my mouth, which I think, I mean, it simulated like oral sex. It started. It started where he, um, he went up to my face and he was like smearing my, my makeup on my face and... Okay, did you need a minute? Yeah, sorry. It's okay. He was smearing the makeup on my face in a way that felt like he was trying to, just, I don't know, smearing the makeup all over my face in a way that just felt wrong.

He started sticking his fingers in my mouth and I feel like he was like trying to touch as much as he could. It is shocking. We can hear, of course, how upset Jennifer is there. She does say there were multiple witnesses, Anushka. Did anyone come to her aid? Jen alleges that nobody stepped in. That is a claim that is backed up in the messages between her and Leroux, which I have seen from Leroux's official Instagram account. Leroux claims that everybody was just simply too scared to step in.

Jen says she was left alone after Kaniad finished. She's wearing lingerie in the middle of a room full of people and nobody comes up to her to even ask how she is afterwards or tell her what's going to happen with the footage. So let's hear another clip, what Jennifer did. told you about that time. I just started looking around the room, like someone. It was a room full of people.

And I was looking around, like, hoping that someone would see me and be like, hey, like, maybe we should stop. I was on the phone with my agent right after I left the room. And then Leroux was walking down the hallway, so I got off the phone with my agent. And I went over to Leroux, and she was like, I'm so sorry. that happened to you that's horrific I'm so sorry and then I was like um you're not gonna air that right like you're not gonna share that with anyone because like I can't have my mom see that and she was like no of course not no I would never so many might be familiar with Laroo

Ellie Jackson is that the name of the woman goes by Laru or her group is Laru what else has she said that has happened what has Laru said um so in the so we're so we're Jen contacts Leroux in 2024 because she's thinking about filing this lawsuit and she says she was praying that Leroux had the same memory of what happened as her and it was as traumatic for her as it was for Jen. And in the messages Leroux also says gives Jen another perspective of saying Karni found this funny. He came up to me afterwards and said,

I bet you think I've just set women back 10 years. And I responded saying you've just set women back 500 years. And Jen is saying that when she's reading this in 2024, that's the first time she knew that that interaction has taken place at Hall. It's the first time that she knew that people were watching on the monitors and were sort of paralysed and frozen. We're talking directors, producers, people from UMG, from Interscope. We've contacted them for their response and they haven't replied. But yeah, Jen was getting another perspective to an incident that happened in 2020, 2014 in 2024. And UMG is Universal Music Group

that the BBC has contacted and also Leroux's record label for comment. The impact, what did Jennifer tell you about what this is hot on her. I suppose that she looks back as well. Yeah. And this is a really important point because we need to talk about the impact of what she alleges happened, but also for a civil suit, you have to have cognizable damages. You have to be able to prove in that court of law that you were damaged in a way that you need compensation for. Monetary loss, emotional distress, things like that. And that is exactly what she alleges. Emotional distress, PTSD. But I really wanted to ask her about the monetary loss. because this is a sticking point for a lot of people, a lot of claimants.

How has she actually been financially impacted by this? And she said, look, I was an aspiring actress. I am an actress now. I turn down roles, anything with romantic storylines. I turn down roles that involve physical intimacy on whatever level that is. I turn down roles when I even feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with what is about to happen because this is something that happened to me. She alleges in a place of work and that doesn't leave you.

And that was really her first foray into the industry by herself. and that's what she says happened. So she says it's had a lasting impact on her. So she didn't file her lawsuit until 2024. That was 14 years after the alleged incident. You asked her why she didn't go to the police at the time. Let's have a listen. I didn't consider going to the police because I was in a room full of people when it happened.

So I guess I felt like what recourse could there be and why would I put myself through that when nothing is going to happen to him? Why did you think nothing would happen to him? I guess it was 2010. Not enough people were concerned about protecting women and sexual assault and the accountability of those perpetrators. So, yeah, I didn't know what the point was.

I was in a room full of all these industry important people and nothing was happening. What were the cops going to do? Things have changed a lot in 14 years. I think it's fair to say. This particular case was brought because the rules have changed on the Statue of Limitations in New York

for a period of time. Can you explain that? Yeah, so Jen filed under the Gender-Motivated Violence Act in New York, which temporarily extends the Statue of Limitations for Sexual Assault Survivors. And that's a recognition of the fact that people who have been victimized who have survived sexual assault

oftentimes, A, maybe don't realize they were victims in the moment, and B, were too young or in a position of less power to be able to fight for justice for themselves. So New York has kind of led the way with those kind of statutes, with those kind of laws that they've put in place. And that's what Jen saw, and that's what she filed under, which she was entitled to do. And this is why she's able to bring a claim 14 years later. Can you West's lawyers do not deny that the physical encounter took place. but argue it was part of a deliberately provocative, artistic performance inspired by the film American Psycho. Can you explain that defence and why they say it's protected by the First Amendment?

Yeah, and it's multi-layered a legal argument here. So they're saying that because it was on a set, because it was in a place where art was happening, that Ye staged an intense and provocative theatrical performance with acts to emulate forced oral sex. They contend that Jen did not object during the action. She did not say no, she did not try and leave. And she was a consenting member of the creation of expressive art.

Now, your First Amendment rights, freedom of speech, artistic expression comes under that. So they're saying this is a constitutionally protected action. And they all agreed to it and he was expressing himself. And although you might not like the subject, you might find it taboo, it's still protected by the First Amendment. But the fact that they are arguing that Jennifer did. not object or try to leave or express a lack of consent, as you mentioned. And therefore, they would say a willing participant. How central is that to their case?

Oh, yeah, it's extremely central to the case. And it will be, if this makes its way to court, it will be on Jen to say, he didn't speak to me before, during or after. I had no idea what was going to happen. This is what she alleges. Therefore, I could not give informed consent even if I wanted to. But yes, that is one component to it. another component is going to be the judge weighing up, hold on a second, what kind of legal precedent does this set, which is why it's such an important case? Because if you make a ruling where you say, yeah, anywhere where art is happening, that means that anything that happens there is immediately protected by the First Amendment. The impacts of that are wide ranging.

His lawyers also say that Jennifer is filing the lawsuit now because of recent controversies around Kanye West's offensive remarks in recent years. Yeah, so they go somewhere in giving motive. You don't need to do that. They've thrown that in quite often if you're going to request a jury trial, it's important to include a motive for why somebody filed a lawsuit. And they're saying that some of the highly controversial anti-Semitic tweets he's made racist remarks he's made, things he said about the black community, African-American community

and tweets he's made, the highly misogynistic tweets he's made about women, is why she filed the lawsuit. And she's weaponising the Gender Motivated Violence Act to suppress his freedom of expression because she doesn't like the things that he's said. Now, that's because she has included some of those tweets in her civil complaint. And they're saying, well, these were made long after the incident. Why have you included these? You're just trying to skew the court against him any potential jury against him. But actually, when you look at these claims, you have to prove that he targeted Jen because she was a woman. That's what you have to do with the Gender Motivated Violence Act. There has to be gender animus. So she's saying she's included those tweets to show

that he is hostile towards women. He was and is now. This is a continuing pattern. So that's why she says those are in those civil complaint to show that this is nothing new and this is something he's still doing and I was targeted on the basis of my gender. We're talking about it as the case has not gone to trial yet and none of these allegations have been tested in court. But what can we expect next? So these arguments are going before a judge. So we've got Kanye's arguments there, the First Amendment argument, the motive, the consent argument. And we've got what Jen has filed with her lawyer, Jesse Weinstein, which is sworn affidavits from people who were on the set who say, I saw this, this was a

sexual assault and she was there targeted because she was a woman. She's got those screenshots of those text messages with Leroux along with her complaint. This will go before a judge and a judge will make a determination on whether this will go to trial. Then we'll start the discovery process where they look for all the evidence surrounding these claims. And that's a really important part here because Jessie and Jen believe that the footage still exists. Thank you very much. Anushka Mutanda Doherty. Anushka's podcast, Fame Under Fire, is available on BBC Sounds Now.

on this and other stories. And if you have been impacted by anything we've been discussing, support can be found via the BBC Action Line. 844, if you'd like to get in touch with us this morning on anything you're hearing on the programme. I want to turn next to a British woman who has become the first ever to cross the Atlantic in a hydrogen gas balloon.

Alicia Hempelman Adams, she's from near Bath. She set off from Maine in the States, late on Wednesday, landed in Luxembourg on Sunday, with her teammates, that's Bert Paddelt and Peter Cunio. Alicia took the spot on the crew of her father, David. He's completed that flight twice before. And Alicia joins me now. A little bit sleep deprived, I hear, Alicia.

Yes, still catching up a little bit on the sleep. We didn't get much twice we're in the basket, so it's all just catching up now. Okay. Why did you want to cross the Atlantic Inno basket powered by a high hydrogen gas balloon? I think in ballooning, it's sort of one of those ultimate challenges. And when like this opportunity came up,

it was something that I just felt that I couldn't sort of turn down. It's a trip that hasn't been done a lot. And it's amazing to be part of. I mean, first tell me how hot air balloon differs from what you were in. So a hot air balloon is done by a burner. So you sort of warm the air to get your lift. Whereas the balloon we were in is sort of a gas cell where it's sort of pre-filled with the hydrogen gas. And then we use ballast, so like sand, to then control our up and down.

So you must have seen your dad doing it before. Was it something from when you were a little girl that you were into airships and the like? So as I was growing up, my dad flew a lot and he's done many of the records. I started off sort of flying the hot air balloons and then this is sort of, I've been learning with the gas balloons now.

So tell me a little bit about this journey. 70 hours I mentioned, quite an epic journey. Give us an idea what your day was. like? So it kind of was all a bit of a blur because we were changing time zones as we were going across. So it was a bit hard to sort of know what time it was. But we were kind of mainly going by the sun. So we kind of knew when the sun was supposed to go down. And we had a few hours of darkness and then we knew when the sun was going to come up. So we kind of, everything was sort of based around around that.

And we just kind of, you know, once a sun had come up and we'd balanced the balloon, we then sort of had breakfast and vice versa in the evening. You know, once the sun had gone down and the balloon was balanced, we sort of were able to sort of have a little bit of time to sort of relax and get a nap. Get a nap. Because I'm wondering, how long do you sleep for if you're in such a situation? Also we had sort of like a little bunk So one person could sleep on the floor

And one person could sleep on the bunk And then the other person would like to sit on the floor Or we had like a little deck chair before Before we had to put that away. I'm just thinking you must get on quite well with Bert and Peter It's quite an intense, I'm thinking A confined space with two other people for a number of days. Yes, I mean, it's, I mean, we're very lucky we all got on really well and we worked

like really well as a team. But it is a very sort of confined space to kind of be in for an amount of time. I suppose the weather is one of the biggest concerns. Yes, the weather like like always changes quickly. We were very lucky that we had and too amazing and meteorologists that were helping us and managed to get us on the track, on a fast track across the Atlantic. But even then, we kind of went into weather that we weren't expecting. And, you know, over the course of five days, weather can really change a lot. So as much as they pre-planned everything for us and made that plan of our crossing, you know, come to the end, things were changing quite quickly. How high are you?

So the first few days we were sort of 15 to 18,000 and the last day we were up to 25,000 foot. Wow. But I'm also hearing that you had, you did call for rescue to be on standby a number of times. Yes, we did have a few moments where we thought, you know, we weren't sure sort of how it was going to plan. So we did have rescue on standby just in case. You know, we were sort of crossing over into sort of the ocean section of the flight. And we hit some sort of bad weather. So we just wanted to precautionary sort of make sure that they were aware of what was going on. But I'm just wondering how that would be to have somebody to rescue you in the middle of the Atlantic.

How does that even work? So in terms of like the balloon, we had sort of procedures that we've practiced to sort of, we had like immersion suits and a life raft. And then depending on where you are and where you've had to ditch, they either send boats or a helicopter. It completely depends where you are in the ocean. But luckily you did not need it. No, thankfully. Thankfully, we kept our feet dry. Now you were the youngest person to reach the North Pole aged age.

you've other female airship world records. What's next? At the moment, nothing's planned. We're just sort of regrouping after this trip. This has sort of taken up the majority of time at the moment. And so once this is sort of finished, we'll have a look and see whether there is anything next or what will be next. In the meantime, back to the day job? Yes, in the meantime, back to the day job.

Which is? I work with small businesses with all their sort of like a business manager. Okay. Well, I love it. The double life of Alicia Hempelman Adams, who has become the first British woman to cross the Atlantic in a hydrogen gas balloon. Great to have you with us. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much. Now, Woman's Hour is leaving the studio and heading to the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival in Sheffield next month. I do hope you'll come and join us. We'll be broadcasting live from the Montgomery in Sheffield on Friday the 3rd of July. Then we'll also be recording an edition of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life on stage at 2pm later that day. And the best part, you can get free tickets for either or both. Just visit crosswires. Live forward slash fringe for information on getting your free ticket.

Also to see the full list of programs that Radio 4 and BBC Sounds are showcasing in Sheffield from Thursday, second right through to Sunday the 5th of July and it does include favourites like Lady Killers, What's Up, Docks and Uncanny so really really love to meet some of you and see some of you there. I hope you'll come and join myself and also Anisha.

She was the sister who went unnoticed. A daffodil might look plain next to a lily but on its own there is much to be admired. Now her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important the same, is to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's pride and prejudice, comes a new Britbox original drama.

Mary, you will flourish. Based on the best-selling novel, The Other Bennett Sister, now streaming only on Britbox. Watch for the free trial at Britbox.com. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture, and being honored by the Signal awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final

entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Right, let us have a quick recall back to February. When the government announced a long-awaited overhaul of services for children with special educational needs and disabilities, so send in England. Some of their proposals were subject to a consultation period. That's now closed and it will require legislation. One thing that will start sooner than that, however, they say is the process of making it quicker and easier to see the experts who can best judge your child. needs. So these are educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, specialist teachers, all vital cogs in the machine. But often there is a shortage

of staff or they can be overstretched and it can trigger huge delays in children getting vital support. We have spoken about that. Well, the government believes it can sort this out with the Experts at Hand Program, is the name of it. And it's just announced the rollout to local areas for September. So that's just a few months away. And joining me, in studio is the school's minister, George Gould. Welcome back to Women's Hour Minister. Wonderful to be here. Right. I gave a little summary there, but could you

flesh out what the experts at hand program is? Of course. So I've spoken to families around the country and as you said, one of the things I hear time and time again is that there's a massive battle for support, waiting lists. You feel like you have to go through

all these hoops and bureaucracy and meanwhile you're seeing your child fall further and further behind. And we want to shift that. We want to put support in much earlier. So the experts at hand service is a new service. We're putting 1.8 billion into building it up. And it is a service of all the kind of workforce that you talked about that will be working directly wrapped around schools. So supporting teachers, doing direct intervention with groups of children, building up the capacity of schools. And really critically, none of that will require a diagnosis or an external referral.

It will be a partnership between those services and schools. So faster in that respect. Now, at the top of the programme, I promise that I try and find out for parents when they would see it up and running. You mentioned the $1.8 billion for use from this September. But when do you think somebody might see an expert at hand at their school? So this year we're putting in $429 million. So that's the first big investment, tranche of investment.

And we expect to see it starting from September. It's a new service that will be building up. And part of that investment is more resource into training to bring new people into the system. But when I've been talking to speech and language therapists, educational psychologists around the country, I know they're very much gearing up. I'm in Rochdale tomorrow talking to their teams about the support they're pulling together. So I know they're kind of really working at the moment with schools to set up this new service and make sure that we're starting to see it from the new school year.

We've spoken many times on Send in the Spotlight, our podcast on these issues. And something that came up again and again was the issue of recruitment and retention. You talk about bringing in a raft of new people, but where are they coming from? Yeah, so we are putting 40 million into training. But training who? Training people who are coming forward. We're actually seeing a really good pipeline of people who want to, come forward from, you know, from the people in different, often coming from education backgrounds,

coming for, you know, people who are interested in supporting children. There hasn't been the investment in these kind of services to build it out. And I think one of the things that I'm really excited about is when I talk to, to, I know we've got a brilliant ed psych here, so we'll see, hopefully she'll corroborate this. But when I talk to people who are educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, They say that they got into the profession to really support children and spend time, you know, really kind of seeing that direct work in the classroom. And often the job has become a lot of form filling, a lot of paperwork. And, you know, what we have seen, sadly, is a lot of people moving out of the public sector into the private sector.

So I hope these jobs will be really engaging jobs that are kind of to the purpose of why people got into this work. But how do you stop that form filling? Because we definitely heard that. that there was so much bureaucracy for somebody who wanted to be hands-on and working with a child to help resolve their issues. And instead, there was just so many boxes to be ticked in the job. It was not what they expected it to be. And that leads really to the retention issue,

even if you do have the recruitment solved. And that's exactly what the service will be. So these teams will be working directly with schools. So teachers will say, actually, you know, there's a child in my classroom that's really struggling. What strategies could I use? Could you observe the child? Could you kind of give us some advice?

Or, you know, this child really is struggling with sensory processing or need some direct support with speech and language? Could you do some kind of group work to build up that support? None of that will need a referral. None of that will need a form. It will be a partnership with, you know, with that resource dedicated to direct intervention, which is just a massive shift in the system.

So less paperwork can be promised? Yeah, absolutely. And we are in the new system, which, as you say, we were consulting on and we're looking carefully at the consultation at the moment. But we are saying that we will retain EHCP's education health care plans. But that will be a simpler process. There'll be a digital plan. So at the moment, you know, often schools are having to manage lots of different plans from different local authorities. We want this to be a much, much simpler process. But critically, early intervention without all of. that bureaucracy, real partnerships with people who understand children. And I know the EHCPs are a contentious issue. We're not delving into that. This time we will continue speaking about it, of course, because some people have concerns about that.

Yeah, they're really keen to keep that engagement going. You know, we are really carefully looking at the thousands of people who respond to the consultation. So it's really important we work with families to get this right. Let me turn to Claire Jackson, principal educational psychologist for Salford in Greater Manchester. Welcome to the program. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. So glad to have you here. I'd be curious for your response to the Experts at Hand program of what you know so far. Yeah. Well, what we know so far is that it is an exciting opportunity

for us to get staff to be doing that preventative work. So one of the things that has a challenge for me as a principal educational psychologist is recruitment and retention of staff. So building up that range of work and making sure psychologists

are in the, position to make a difference is really helpful. Why do you think it's so hard to recruit and retain? I think it's so hard to recruit and retain because psychologists want to do a real range of work and in local authorities we've become quite narrow. Locally we've tried to build that up through other types of initiatives and through grant funding and traded work but this is a real opportunity for something. a bit more sustainable and long-lasting.

Do you think the fact children won't need a diagnosis, will that make a difference to your workload? A difference to the workload. I'm talking about kind of that paper, like that was what kind of came back to was a lot, the form filling, the admin, the bureaucracy. Yeah, yeah. I think the need is there.

You know, there are children that are struggling. There's lots of families that are struggling and the demand is there for service. So whether you need a diagnosis or not, there's a lot of stress in the system and a lot of work for educational psychology. So I'm not sure that particular point will make a difference to that. Yeah, interesting. Can you give an example of a technique that you would employ as Ed Psych as the shorthand is for educational psychologists that you'd be able to pass on to a teacher to support a child? Yeah, we're doing that kind of work all the time.

Yeah. One of my favourites is the use of tools. So schedules to help children to plan their work and to retain their attention throughout a task. It helps them to chunk that piece of work down. And it's also a tool that then they can use into adult life, you know, see people using their diaries and their, you know, their agendas for meetings and that sort of thing.

Children can adopt those sorts of strategies as well in the classroom. And it can help teachers to explain complicated things and get them through. Anything else you'd like to add? Any other techniques that might help, for example. I'm just thinking of what parents may encounter with their ed psychologist that might be able to help their child. Well, often they have issues with regulation in the classroom. So we talk quite a lot about co-regulation and supporting children, maybe with breathing techniques and all those sorts of things to help them to manage.

But often the advice isn't really about the child and teaching the child skills. It's about managing the school environment so that they don't become stressed in the first place. So explain that a little bit further. So, you know, if the class. The classroom is run in a predictable manner. Children know what's expected of them. They've got good relationships with their teachers and with other children in the classroom.

Those sorts of difficulties arise less. So we'd always be looking at that. We'd be trying to prevent things from escalating in the first place and making sure that the lesson meets their needs. Yeah, so it's interesting. It's that environment infrastructure as well as the actual child and their needs. What do you think, speaking of needs, what do educational psychologists, such as the ones you manage, need? What do they need?

They need to see them making a difference. They need kind of that, I suppose for many people, right? That's the rewarding bit. You need to see a tangible achievement. That's it. They want to see that they're using all the skills that they trained to use in the classroom and more broadly in education. and they want to see that actually for our children and families, we can see that there's a difference has happened.

And when do you think, I'm just wondering with a whole school approach, the minister is speaking about as well, what will it look like in practice? I mean, when would you be getting to the child? We're starting with the whole school approach. If the whole school have got, you know, themes and issues that we need to address. So ideally we'd be starting with a whole school approach

to address the needs of the children that have got commonly occurring conditions or there's something about that school environment that certain types of children are finding difficult. And then it'd be obvious which children we need to work with at a more bespoke level because they kind of wouldn't be part of that cohort. They might have multiple issues or they might not be part of that cohort. They might have different issues. Minister Gould, we know from our listeners

that many children wait months or even years for crucial assessments so they might feel this all sounds great to listen to on the radio but will it actually happen in practice? Yeah, and I think that's the thing I've heard more than anything, you know, sometimes years waiting for support

and like how powerless families have felt watching things get worse and I think what I'm really excited about this new service This is, you know, this is early intervention. The teams, these amazing people like Claire, will be in schools, spotting things early, supporting teachers, answering questions. And if it does need something kind of more specialist support, you know, they can refer that on to a needs,

a kind of formal needs assessment. But this is about, you know, meeting needs early and having a... How early? As soon as they emerge. I think that in the new system, as we kind of get to the full, you know, fully up and running, we expect it will be about 160 days of kind of specialist support for the average secondary, 40 days for the average primary school. And, you know, the experts at hands will be working with early years as well.

So it can, you know, that support can be available in nursery. But it, you know, as Claire was saying, you know, that work of like taking a whole school approach, doing a kind of audit of the buildings, kind of seeing the paths that children take, watching lessons, all of that work will start straight away. So I really, parents should start to see those improvements and be part of that conversation. And what about children that are in crisis now, not looking further down the road, but right now, which lots of people have already got in touch with me before, without leaving asking? Yeah, so the kind of existing legal structure is still there.

you know, children can still go through the education health care plan assessment process. There's still all the statutory duties in place. This is about adding something new that put support in earlier. So children don't get into crisis in the first place and really change the system. So we are really supporting children to stay in their local schools, in their community. But you will admit there are huge waiting lists at the moment. Oh, yeah, of course. And we are, you know, we're really working with local authorities.

to reduce those waiting lists where we've written to every local authority in the country, asking them to develop a reform plan, to really improve all of these areas, waiting lists, children out of school. So we recognise that there's huge change that needs to happen and that we have an important role, you know, both putting support in but also holding local authorities to account. But, you know, this new service, we expect to really, really shift how support is delivered and just take that battle out of a system for teachers and for families. Do you have a timeline of when people might expect a reduced waiting list?

So I think that we're all the time kind of putting pressure on our partners to try and move faster. You know, we do think that this early intervention will reduce waiting lists. We're going to be monitoring the system really, really carefully over the next year. don't have a kind of set timeline, but we are, you know, we are really determined to put the support in and do that quickly. The consultation period for the wider send reforms in England closed last month, as we mentioned. Was there a specific change you could mention as a result of that feedback? So at the moment, we're just, we're really looking through the consultation response. That's not finalised.

Yeah, yeah, we haven't, we haven't, you know, gone through it in detail. But we did, you know, over a year of engagement. And as a result of that engagement prior to the consultation, there are a number of changes that we put in place. So, for example, something that came out all the time from families was an issue of reasonable adjustments. I'm sure that's something, Claire, you hear about. And that, you know, things like school uniforms,

we were just discussing it. For some children, there could be a real sensory issue with school uniforms. Actually, a reasonable adjustment could be changing that. And we're creating new guidance for schools. on reasonable adjustments to give parents and schools that certainty. The Education for All Bill will speak about potential reforms. When will you table that? So it's in the King's speech.

So as part of this session, at the moment, we're really carefully going through the consultation. We need to kind of look at that consultation, the responses and changes we need to make to our proposals before we decide on the date to bring it forward. Another few weeks, months? Well, we don't know yet. So, you know, we need to respond to the consultation. But what I can say is we do want to bring it forward as quickly as we can because, you know, we've heard the urgency in the system.

You've talked about the waiting list and the stress. But we want to get it right. And we've said all along that we need to hear from families, young people, professionals like Claire. And so we want to take the time to really carefully consider the consultation, make any changes and bring forward the best possible bill. And before I let you go, Minister, there is speculation in the media that the Prime Minister is preparing to announce social media restrictions for children as early as next week. You cannot get ahead of that announcement, I'm sure. But can you tell us about the current thinking in government when it comes to that aspect?

Is it more a social media ban for under 16s or limitations? So as you say, I can't get ahead of the announcement. But I think as a government, we are really determined to protect children. Prime Minister has said, you know, an action has to happen, you know, not acting is, is not, you know, is not an option. So, you know, we will expect to see change to protect children. But also, I think, you know, alongside that really investment in, you know, the support we want for children, the kind of activities we want them to be doing, you know, in outdoor education, in nature, we just put a massive investment into sports partnerships to get children involved in competitive sports.

And your own personal view? Would you like to see a ban for under 16? Look, I'm not going to get ahead of the announcement. Oh, not speaking for the government in any way, shape, or form or your parking. As a minister, I'm always speaking for the government. But I do think we need to act. I think, you know, I go into schools all the time and I hear from young people and I hear the harms that are happening.

And so we're really clear that there needs to be action. I want to thank both of my guests for coming in. We shall continue this conversation. There's a lot more I know we can speak about as well. It is a thorny subject, but school's minister, Georgia Gould. Thank you so much for coming in. I also want to thank our educational, principal educational psychologist for Salford in Greater Manchester,

Claire Jackson also joining us this morning. Thank you both so much. Thank you for all your messages coming in as well. here's one, experts are too late for me and so many. We've now been forced to home educate, deal with children who have very real school trauma. They may never return to education to benefit from this, but they still deserve help. What about those of us who have been failed? Are we going to be forgotten?

Says Carmen. And another would love to know if experts at hand will be restricted to children with behavioral issues like all other school services. High masking children are currently excluded. Thank you for your points. Now, for our recent bank holiday program, on Women and Wonder, we asked you, where do you find wonder? And one anonymous listener said, I'm compelled by abandoned historical places

because they create a sense of mystery where you imagine the lives and stories that once fill those spaces. Well, that message may resonate with my next guest, the award-winning writer and poet, Darren Negreifa, who devoted three years of her life to researching and imagining the lives of women who once inhabited a Victorian asylum in Cork.

She has an immersive work of creative non-fiction, said the dead, very beautiful. And we meet some of the women who lived and worked in that institution between the 1890s and the 1920s. And Duren is here with me. Hello. Good morning. Great to have you with us.

It's great to be here. Lovely to hear your voice because I've been listening to some of it as I was reading slash listening to your beautiful book. What led you down the road to the history of this asylum? Well, very much like your listener

who wrote it. in there. I was really struck by this building and this building, the old asylum in Quark City, was constructed on a slope so it literally looms over the city. I looked at pictures off it after you mentioned it. Yeah, yeah, and the pictures are so moving. We have some very old photographs from archives of this building and I suppose one thing about when you consider the history of a building

like this is that it has many, many, many different pasts. So when we look towards a building like this, in the 1890s say, it's a very different history from when we looked at in the 1950s. And as you said, I was looking with Set the Dead at a very particular point

in this building's history from the 1890s to the 1920s. And it was a fascinating process of research. I learned so much about the people who were within that building at that time. I mean, there's research and there's intensive research. And I'm going to,

I don't know what I'd call yours. Painstaking research. You, there's the character of the reader as I read the book, which is you in a way. And she time travels through the asylum. She flits between documents, derelict buildings, even goes on horseback at one point to try and figure out where certain buildings are before dashing off on the in real life school run. You are the reader? Are you the reader? Well, the book follows a reader on a quest and I once was that reader. That's the way I think

of it. Oh, interesting. Because I suppose I would never pretend to be historian in any way. Like I don't have any education in this kind of research. Like a lot of other people who are amateur historians, driven by passion is how I would look at that.

I used every tool I could imagine and I learned a lot as I was approaching this research too. Again, like a lot of people, for example, who were researching their own family history will begin to know how to navigate, say, births, deaths and marriages records are the census. So it was a real education to me. So yeah, I once was that reader. And the sense of the

quest that this book follows began when I heard that the case books from this old hospital had been saved and were available and opened to the public in our local city archive. And then I made an appointment to go and see them. You know, you talk about not being. educated in that way. But I had the privilege of meeting Catherine Corliss who uncovered the tune baby scandal in Ireland who, as an amateur historian.

So what can be done by amateur historians is not to be understated. I love this line that was in your book. The Other World was alive and true and trembling and very close to her own. So says Duren. You're going to share a passage from the book? I will.

Okay. And there really was that sense as I was reading the case books that on the other side of each individual handwritten page that this vast world of the past was right there and all that was between me and this other world was the single page with handwritten page, it was so moving. So I'll read a little from the book.

The reader recoiled reading the doctor's scrawl, very dull and stupid, a feeble little woman, dirty and mischievous, very self-pitying and hypochondriacal. Months might pass between entries or sometimes decades as their observations began to echo those that had come before.

Years and years of a person's existence reduced to no change, no change, no change, no change. And no, the reader thought, change, change, She knew she couldn't make her will felt in this text. She couldn't change anything, neither the difficult handwriting nor the doctor's remarks,

which from her distance felt so cold. She also knew that she could have closed the book in disgust and left. But she didn't. She let the book lead her onwards through crowds of Ellen's and Catharines and Mary's and Kate's, each with her own distinct troubles and desires, longings and distresses. She read

and read. And as she read, those lives were spinning from the text into her mind where they were alive. I know what a treat to listen to Duren as well. As I mentioned, I had the audiobook as well as the hardcover to delve into and go

into this different world. But that no change refrain. There were so many of these women that were essentially written off by some of the male doctors off the institution. You made it your mission to read about these women and write them back into life. How did you do that? Well, one element that really struck me from the beginning, Nula, was the sense that there was a real woman on the other side of the page. And yet this doctor who was writing and initialing their entries in the case book almost stood between us. I could only see this woman through the doctor's eyes.

And that could be quite frustrating. But there was one key word that helped me to look past the doctor or to sidestep the doctor in some way. And that word was said. Anytime the doctor wrote said or says, I felt as though the doctor between me and the woman almost faded. And suddenly I could hear her voice. coming through and it was so incredibly moving.

A lot of these women were suffering from severe mental distress and had been through such difficulties in their lives. But then they would say something and I was there. They were saying it in the 19th century and I was listening in the 21st century and I was so struck by that that the word said almost came to feel like a spell to me. Like there was one woman, Mary and she, the doctor would write, said, she sees her mother on the stairs and that she at times is mesmerized. And I felt that too. In that word mesmerized, I felt mesmerized by her, by her being and her seeing her mother there and the

wonderer of that moment. I do and I remember reading that. But with the said, isn't it interesting because it's giving voice to voiceless women. So it is making them come into being or be alive away in a way. There was descriptions you had that stayed with me. There was one about a woman who would decorate herself with gaudy scraps, choosing a life of beauty and defiance despite the awful circumstances.

So you have a doctor saying decorates herself with gaudy scraps or something along those lines. And a lot of women did have that kind of behaviour that's documented in the casebook. But really what I saw is here's a place for creativity and fun and enjoyment. and something different.

And so I really enjoyed those moments. But also sometimes the way that the patients were documented on the page gave me clues. It was like these real women were speaking to me from the past, giving me clues. So for example, once one woman called Catherine, the doctor who was documenting her time there wrote, says my name is Miss Justice. And that really gave me pause because I suddenly thought, oh, maybe these doctors initialing these entries aren't all men. Miss Justice, is this patient looking at another woman?

Is there a female doctor here? And it turns out there was. There was. There really was. So this is the initials L.S. This is Lucia Strangman, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, who was a pioneer. I was so surprised that there was this woman who was a doctor or woman doctor, as they would have called her at the time, entering into the asylum service of Ireland, the very first one.

Yeah, well, definitely one of the first women to enter the asylum service. And here she was. I mean, I had to teach myself to navigate different archives at that point to begin to piece together. Okay, who is this woman? Where did she come from? What was her background? How on earth did she navigate the times in which she lived in order to qualify fully as a doctor in 1896? In Ireland.

Exactly. It was astonishing to me. And maybe that says more about my preconceptions about the past. But here she was this young woman walking up the slope I knew so well to the building that I also knew so well at this point. And I felt that this young idealistic doctor was approaching this building with determination in her heart, like a lot of young doctors today, that she wanted to make a change in her patient's lives that she wanted to help people.

And through reading the case books and coming back again and again to the city archives, which takes such good care of these books in Cork and we're so fortunate to have those case books through coming back to those books. And through the simple act of reading, I was able to track Dr. Lucia from when she appeared, opened up the casebook, picked up her pen and started to write. At the time, it felt as though she was writing to me, you know. And then in the act of beginning to write this book, said the dead, I felt as though I was doing the same thing.

I was picking up my pen and writing about the astonishments of Dr. Lucia's life within this hospital in service to her patients and then sending this book into the world to new readers. Well, I got great comfort from it in the sense that I am so used to as you probably are as well, covering stories of trauma, of isolation, of silencing, women in Irish women in institutions up until just a few decades ago. And nobody ever seemed to be on those women's sides at the time they were going through it. And I felt with Dr. Lucia, finally there was a woman there that was trying to help them

and that was perhaps a beacon in some ways of kindness in a potentially very harsh environment. That was certainly how she felt to me. And I was really struck by the fact that her life was unfolding within the very same. building as all of the women that she was caring for. So she lived there amongst them. That was where her rooms were. She fell in love with one of the other doctors there, got married. And her husband, Dr. John, was looking after the men on the male side of the hospital.

And she gave birth to her children there, which I was so struck by. And several, in fact, many times she helped the women who were there give birth to theirs. Because doctors at this point, in the history of society, They weren't just dealing with the form of psychiatry that was available to practice them at the time. They were also surgeons. They were obstetricians. They were dentists. They were pharmacists. And they were educating the nurses that they were working with. So this was a very, very capable woman. And to trace her time within the hospital and also the radical ways that her practice changed over the scope of her career was fascinating. because she opened one of the first outpatient clinics in Ireland

and it was focused on using things like mesmerism and an early form of talk therapy to help patients in a very different way. It's familiar to us. Yes, I loved reading about it. To me, I was like, this is nonfiction, or is it fiction, or is it a ghost story? I need to be Dyrin.

And so I have. Duren is a ghost story more than anything. Yeah. Your book is beautiful. Said the Dead is available now. I need to let people know. That'll give you a snapshot of it. But a very, very moving story. Thank you very much for bringing it to us. I want to let people know tomorrow. Join Anita. She'll be talking to the author, Catherine Stockett. 17 years since Catherine's hugely successful novel, The Help was published. It sold 15 million copies worldwide, translated into 38 languages. And of course, you might know the film as well. Now she's written a series. second book, The Calamity Club. Do join Anita right here 10 a.m. tomorrow and thanks so much for your company today and for all your messages. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. I'm Gemma Gander and for BBC Radio 4 and Shadow World, this is stolen years. More than two decades ago, Andrew Malkinson was found guilty of a crime he didn't commit.

There's a massive hole in your life and it's been filled in with suffering. Now in 2020, Another man has faced a jury of his peers. On trial for the very same crime, Andrew spent years of his life imprisoned for. I'm 55. I was 37 when I went in. It's damaging. Driven by Andy's passion to see the system held to account. We follow him as he tries to build back a life. And we discover how Paul Quinn came to finally be convicted. Subscribe to Shadow World, Stolen Years on BBC Sounds.

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