Woman's Hour - Obesity and children, How carers are coping, Lucy Edwards' new book

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

A third of children and young people worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050, according to a new worldwide study, while rates of obesity in children, younger teenagers and younger adults more than doubled between 1990 and 2021. But if you're worried that your child is overweight or obese, how can you help them? What is the best way to approach this tricky topic without making things worse? Krupa Padhy is joined by nutritionist and child feeding expert Julia Wolman and child psychologist Laverne Antrobus. In 2023, Eleanor Williams was found guilty of making up an Asian grooming gang in her hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. Her case was turned into the podcast series, Unreliable Witness, and we hear from producer Liz Lane about a new twist to the story. The vast majority of the UK's 5.8 million unpaid carers are female and more than half of them feel overwhelmed, according to the latest State of Caring survey by the charity Carers UK. Their report found an increasing number of people who are looking after a disabled, older or ill relative are experiencing poor mental health because they cannot take a break from caring. Krupa talks to Helen Walker, CEO of Carers UK, and Laura Barnes, who cares full time for her 100-year-old grandmother Joan. The body that governs the football Women's Super League is now considering the idea of suspending relegation – meaning no team would be demoted - in order to give time for the league to expand from 12 to 16 teams. Suzy Wrack, football writer at the Guardian and author of A Woman's Game, explains what this means for the game. Journalist and disability activist Lucy Edwards has just published her debut fiction book, Ella Jones vs the Sun Stealer, a mystery aimed at younger readers. It tells the story of 12-year-old Ella Jones who has been blind for two years and is navigating her new world with the help of her guide dog Maisie, her sister Poppy and her best friend Finn. She joins Krupa to talk about the book and her experiences sharing her own story online. Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Sarah Jane Griffiths

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petruzzella, 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 it will 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, this is Krupal Patti and you're listening to the Women's Hour podcast. Good morning and thank you for being with us. Unpaid carers are overwhelmed and under immense pressure. That is the key finding from the latest state of caring survey from the charity Carers UK in which 81% of respondents were female. As a result, carers themselves are facing long-term physical

and mental health conditions. And we want to talk about that overwhelm. Laura Barnes, who looks after her 100-year-old grandma Joan will tell us about her experience, but what about yours? If you care for an adult, how do you manage that feeling of being submerged by the needs of someone else, which often leads to the neglect of your own health? What would help you? What do you need? And if you've managed to find reprieve in some form, what worked for you? Do share it with us. You can

text the programme, our number is 84844, all texts will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media we are at BBC Women's Hour. You can of course email us through our website or send us a WhatsApp audio note using the number 03 700 100 444. All of our terms and conditions can be found on our website. And in a minute or so we'll turn our attention to this morning's news that more than half of all adults and a third of children, teenagers and young adults around the world are predicted to be overweight or obese by 2050. Now we know it can be tricky to get children and young people to eat the right foods or

take on more exercise and there may be many reasons for that, some more complex than others. You may feel that you are at a loss about what to do. If you're a parent or carer that feels blamed and shamed for the weight of the young people in your lives or simply helpless about bringing about any kind of change, our conversation will try and guide you through what to do. Also on the show,

a possible development in the case of Eleanor Williams who was gelled in January 2023 for fabricating evidence of a grooming gang in her hometown of Barrow and the presenter and campaigner Lucy Edwards on her new children's book all about Ella, a curious bubbly 12 year old who has been blind for two years and is adjusting to life with the help of her guide dog Macy. And when the world plunges into darkness, it's up to Ella to save the world. Do stay with us for that. But let us start with that headline that a third of children and young people worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050. That's according to a new worldwide study reported in the medical journal The

Lancet, rates of obesity in children and younger teenagers and young adults more than doubled between 1990 and 2021. So if you are worried that your child is overweight or obese, how can you help them? What is the best way to approach this tricky topic without making things worse? Joining me now to talk through all of this are nutritionist and child feeding expert Julia Woolman and child feeding expert and child psychologist Laverne Andropos. Welcome to you both. Hello, good morning. Good morning. Julia, I'll start with you. Now, this report is really presented as a societal issue but often comes down to individuals. How do you know when a child

has a problem with their weight? Well, firstly, thank you for having me on this morning. It's a pleasure to be here. And I think, as you said, it is a huge, complicated issue and there's no one reason or you know one causative factor for a child being overweight. I think we are seeing, well I'm certainly seeing so many more parents coming forward who are really worried about their children's weight. Headlines like this today is going to fuel that but at the same time, they're really conscious about not creating issues and not creating obsessions and potentially, you know, a lot of parents are very worried about, you know,

possibly contributing to disordered eating and eating disorders. So parents are at a real loss with what to do and it's very confusing. And what I tend to see is that parents are saying their children are looking bigger than all their friends so that tends to be something that fuels the concern is just comparing children and of course that's really dangerous in itself on so many levels because all

children are very different and some grow faster than others, especially around the sort of pre-adolescent years. And so that's really dangerous and that tends to be what fuels it for parents. It might be that their children, they're having to buy their children, you know, their 11 year old, a size 14, 15 year old school uniform, and that causes the worry when they're buying clothes that are too so much bigger. So there's lots of things that can propeller a parent's worry and make them think oh my child's overweight I need to do something about it. Yeah you rightly point out it is such a delicate balance. Let's bring in child psychologist Laverne Andropis now. Laverne given all, give us now, given all the feedback we're getting from various angles,

adverts, schools, medical professionals, all about the images that we should have of our bodies. When it comes to knowing what is right for your child, are parents best placed to judge? Absolutely. I think that, you know, that is exactly the job of a parent to know what's best for their child. And I think also to be trying to sort of filter some of these messages for themselves first so that they've got themselves in a state to be able to talk to their children. I think that, you know, the headlines this morning are alarming, but rightly so because we want to make sure that we have a generation of young people who are eating well and feeling good about themselves. And I think, as Julia says, you know, there's this sense of, you know, what I'm going to use the word perfection looks like, you know, what's the right way to look. And it's very hard, you the landscapes quite difficult standing in the playground as a parent and you know you're looking around and you're sort of always sort of in a sort of judgmental mode almost but I think

that the starting point is what does your child say about how they feel how they look and what they're eating and I think that's the best place to start. And if that's our starting point Julia because there are health conversations and then there are weight conversations and again it's a tricky balance isn't it? Julia how do parents navigate that? It's so tricky, certainly some of the things that parents come to me saying is I'm reaching out for help because my child is now coming home from school saying that they're fat

and someone else, you know, other children are calling them fat and what do I do about it? And we've got, and it's really hard. I'm a parent myself and I've been through it myself. It's really hard and when you're put on the spot, you think, no darling, you're not fat. It's, you're beautiful and you don't need to worry about it. And so that's sort of one way that parents might approach it

by sort of just sort of brushing it under the carpet and almost complying with the word fat as being a negative thing. When actually, fat is actually just a descriptor, just like tall or short, and we all carry fat on our bodies. So partly there's work for parents to do I think around trying to neutralize the word fat as a bad thing because it's just a descriptor but when it's used in an unhelpful way, when it's used in a bullying way

or a negative way, that's when the problems start for children. So, of course, we can't control what happens outside of the home and in the school playground, but in terms of how we use the word fat at home, we can perhaps neutralise it. So we might acknowledge that, you know, we have to acknowledge how a child's feeling and perhaps question, you know, what's made you say that? What's going on? How does that make you feel? The other thing that parents might do, the other end of it is, okay, so you're feeling fat, let's fix it together and let's start eating healthier and let's cut out your snacks and let's eat a bit less at meal times and that kind of...

So it's acknowledging that there might be a weight concern there really, not just brushing it under the carpet and say no you're absolutely fine, which can often be the kind of safe place to head to. Yeah, exactly. Related to that, Laverne, because Julia raises the subject of labels there and, you know, using caution when using labels like fat. Similarly, food, labelling foods as good and bad. How do parents navigate that?

This is a very complicated area, isn't it? Because I think until you're confronted by this, you sort of just get on with it. But I think that it's back to, you know, having conversations about what are we going to eat rather than, you know, getting into the detail. You do three meals a day. You know, when I've worked with colleagues who, you know, been working with young people who, you know, have fallen into the more difficult side of eating, they stress the importance of having three meals a day and having snacks available and that they're healthy snacks.

And how do we get that into the sort of repertoire of what a child feels confident about? Because actually it's about confidence as well. You know, the landscape of eating is so complicated because, you know, I've seen patients who will say well you know my friends can eat absolutely everything and you once you get into those sorts of comparisons you're into a minefield of never quite feeling you're on top of things so I think it starts at home I think parents are more than qualified to sort of have a think about you know what they're noticing about their child's confidence in relation to eating and the way they look and to tackle it from that point of view.

What are we going to do together? How are we as a family going to really think about how we stay on a sort of steady path? And these are conversations for the parent. This is not what we want to be talking to children about. And, you know, when we have those slip-ups, that they are just that, they're not to be agonized over. I think the other thing is that we don't want parents to overly sort of commit to this idea of the ideal, what their children should be doing

and should be looking like. This is an individual project really, for you and your child as to what works well for you and what you're noticing about your child's eating habits. We don't want children slipping into the sort of comfort eating, suppressing emotions and anxieties through those sorts of avenues and parents are as I've always believed best place to notice these things and to put in sort of remedies. There are two areas that I want to get into

whilst we have you both. One is exercise and the other is judgment because it's hard to talk about a child's weight without mentioning exercise. It goes hand in hand with diet. And Julia, we know that for some kids, it's not that exercise doesn't come naturally to all children or they haven't found their sport yet. It's, I mean what do you do as a parent in

that situation where you've you know tried Saturday karate, you've tried football club, you've tried everything but you just can't find their happy place. Yeah absolutely not all children are destined for sports and team sports and and yeah it's not all about that, absolutely. And in fact, you know, sort of national guidelines are not exercise guidelines, they're physical activity guidelines. So it is just about being active.

And what would be ideal is for parents to find something that the family enjoys doing together. It might be you know going to the local park on the weekend or you know with lighter evenings going for a little walk together but what I'm really really keen for parents to kind of take away is not to be doing this kind of physical activity with their child to lose weight, not to burn up calories, not to make them less fat, just because it's an enjoyable thing to do and I think we have to kind of build this kind of physical activity into family life, especially if a child isn't a sporty child. You know, as I said,

finding activities, finding something that everybody enjoys doing together, or even just one adult with the child going for a walk or whatever, but just because it's a nice way to spend time together. So I'm really conscious that we're not encouraging children to be active, to do exercise, to lose weight, because that starts the whole kind of disordered way of thinking around food and bodies

and making ourselves bigger and smaller through exercise and what we eat. And Julie, just staying with you on the subject of diet, what are the foods that should absolutely be on the menu? Oh, well, if only it was that simple. I don't come from a school of thought of good and bad foods and and foods that we must eat and foods that we mustn't eat. So rather than highlight specific foods I'm going to just say variety. Variety of all the across all the food groups is what we have to aim

for. So that means including your starchy carbohydrate foods every day and every meal. Those are what gives us, especially children, energy. Bread, cereals, pasta, rice, grains, those sorts of foods. Of course, we've got fruit and vegetables and those come in a food group together. And then we've got our sort of meat and fish and eggs

and sort of largely known as protein foods, but really those sorts of foods. And then we've got our milk and dairy foods, you know, yogurts, cheese, milk. So we've got sort of four main food groups there. And really we want to see those all incorporated into a child's daily eating patterns if possible. Some children are quite picky eaters so rather than again focus on the perfect eating plan

per day, thinking about it across a week can also be helpful. So yeah, it's not as easy as just sort of saying this food and that food. Yeah, that's clear. Good to get that advice. And Laverne, just before I let you go as well, the subject of judgment, because sometimes parents, carers, we might be saying the right things to our children, but it might be the uncle, the aunt, the grandma, the neighbour who comes in and says something that can be quite damaging. I mean, what do you do in that situation? I think you have to be very, very clear minded about this. I mean, we are really challenged by wanting

to get the right messages across. And actually, these judgments come from so many different places and are so unpredictable. I would be saying it's not helpful. It's really not helpful to be speaking in this way. Growing children need to feel appreciated for just that fact that they're growing up in a context where food, exercise,

all of the elements of being a young person are contributing to their wellbeing. And I think by focusing on just one area really skews the picture in terms of appearance. So I think it comes on just one area really skews the picture you know in terms of appearance so I think it comes from you as a parent I think there are lots of parental traps to thinking your child has got to look a certain way and actually I think you have to sort of almost reset and think what's good for me and my family and I'm absolutely with Julia about the we this

is a we it's not about putting all of the attention on a young person because they can't do it on their own. They're not in charge of these really important features of family life of making meals. It's a parent who really is at the helm and it's for that person or two parents to really focus on what's good for our child and what can we provide and to do the best job they can. Really good to get the advice from both of you Julia Woolman and Laverne Androbus. Thank you both for your time and if you'd like to read more about that report from The Lancet do pop along to BBC News online that's over on our health pages.

In 2023 Eleanor Williams age 22 was jailelled for eight and a half years after being found guilty of lying about being raped and trafficked by an Asian grooming gang and for fabricating evidence against them. It was in relation to her now infamous Facebook post showing bruising, later found to be injuries she inflicted on herself. At the time, the photos went viral, leading to a solidarity campaign Justice for Ellie and also to a backlash with crimes committed against Asian men in Barrow and Furness where she lived. She was subsequently convicted of perverting the course of justice and now in an unrelated case three brothers have

been convicted of abusing girls in the Barrow and Leeds area. One of the men is mentioned frequently in Eleanor's diary. This story has always been very complex and to explain these new developments here with me is Liz Lane, a specialist producer from Sky News who's been closely following the story. Welcome. Hi. Now before we get into the latest developments I did touch on it there in my introduction but please do take us back and explain the background to this case for those who haven't been following it. Yeah, so Eleanor Williams is a young girl, well, she was a young girl, age 19,

when in May 2020 she posted on Facebook saying that she had been the victim of an Asian grooming gang, and she posted some photos of horrific injuries that she said she'd sustained at the hands of these men. And within an hour of her putting that post up she was arrested because actually behind the scenes for a while, in fact for about almost a year, the police had been investigating her because they suspected she was making false

claims and actually fabricating evidence to back up these claims. So she was arrested and as you say in early 2023 she was actually she was jailed for eight and a half years for reverting the course of justice in relation to allegations against five men which were turned you know which were proven to have been lies and that she'd faked evidence to back them up and quite you know went to quite extreme lengths and including they said and was found by the jury to be correct, that she'd inflicted severe injuries upon herself. But as you say, very recently now, there has been a development in the case in that these three brothers who were convicted at Preston Crown Court just over a week ago, two of those brothers were actually also accused by Eleanor Williams

of being her alleged abusers. They were names that came up during her trial as other men, and she was never actually charged with lying about them. And these brothers are brothers originally from Leeds, and they're called Shah Joman Mir, known as Sarge, Shahar Amran Mir, known as Jay, and Shahar Alman Mir. And Sarge and Jay are the two brothers that she had also accused of abuse. And just to be clear, do these convictions have any bearing on Eleanor Williams' story specifically? Well, no, they're totally separate in that. I mean, so these brothers, what they've been convicted of are historical offences, so between 1996 and 2010 in Leeds and in Barrow, and some of their

victims were as young as seven, really horrific crimes, the two brothers were given life sentences, but the police say their offending then stopped in 2010. Eleanor Williams allegations in Barrow began from 2012. So they're not connected in that way, no. But you highlight that one of the individuals was named in her diary. How can we be sure that Eleanor didn't fabricate her diary? Well we can't. You know, we do know that she fabricated evidence and in fact the judge said during her trial that diaries were, you know, part of the evidence that she had fabricated. We do know these particular extracts we have,

they were contemporaneous, they were written at the time they're dated because we've got the metadata so we know that. And Sarge isn't the only person that she's named in this diary that has gone on to be convicted of sexual crimes is actually another man who two years after she wrote that and after her mum had actually been emailing the police about concerns about both this man and Sarge broke into a woman's house in another town and sexually assaulted her and he was jailed for that. So it does raise some questions as how she was naming these men who at that point, so at the point of her writing this diary, neither she nor the brothers nor this other man had

been charged with anything. So you know, she had their names on her radar though. Sure, but as you say, it does raise questions, but it's important to stress, isn't it, that this doesn't change anything regarding her conviction for perverting the course of justice in those faked Facebook photos? No, absolutely not and in fact you know that her convictions were against five, you know, telling lies about five other men and we're not in any way suggesting that you know she didn't do that, she did, you know, she's found guilty of that. These are other men and in fact during,

at her trial, the prosecution barrister said, even if you believe she may have been the victim of something, it's not a defence for her having told lies. In terms of kind of gathering the information that you've managed to get so far, we know that Eleanor was released from prison last October under the early release scheme, having served 40% of her sentence. And we know that speaking to the press would have breached the% of her sentence. And we know that speaking to the press would have breached the conditions of her release. So how have you been able to gather this information? Well we've worked on this story now, I mean I've

been on this story since 2021 and I've known about this man, Sarge, since then actually through another case of another allegation in a different town in Hull. So we've been gathering evidence for a long time and obviously we weren't able to report on his case until his conviction. We haven't been in contact with Ellie, we can't because that would be in breach of her licence conditions and in fact she didn't even know that we were going to be doing this latest episode which we put out of our podcast Unreliable Witness. So we can't contact her because that's that would be in breach of her license conditions but you know we've spoken to very many people in Barrow, previously spoken to her family, colleagues, friends and you

know very much to the men she falsely accused as well. We've spoken to the police, we've tried to speak to all sides to give her as balanced and you know truer picture as we can possibly tell. And specifically you have spoken to Eleanor's mum? Yes, on a number of occasions before we have, yes. You mentioned victims there, because I do want to talk about the consequences this case has had for those who were victims as a result of her lies. At her trial, the judge concluded that the consequences of her lies. At her trial the judge

concluded that the consequences of her lies for the criminal justice system were far-reaching, adding there is a risk that genuine victims will be reluctant as a result of this to come forward. I mean what can you tell us about this? Has there been any evidence of this so far? Yeah I'd say even in this historical case we interviewed one of the witnesses and she was also found to be a victim of intimidation by the three brothers or one of the brothers and she spoke of how when the whole Ellen Williams case became public and they started to hear about what had

happened, in fact one of the victims in that trial almost pulled out because they felt we're going to be thought of as liars now. So it actually had a very significant impact on how they were feeling. But this witness, Elizabeth, says, you know, Barrow was branded to be a town of liars and we're not all liars, you know, grooming what's happening here. And we know more widely because we've, my colleague Jason Fowler and I, who I did this podcast with, we've spoken to victims of these kind of sexual exploitation around the country and you know after the Eleanor Williams verdict they were very concerned about you know

how it might impact on them because we know trying to get a result in these kind of cases or any kind of convictions, extremely difficult as it is. In the same vein, as a result of Eleanor's Facebook posts, crimes were committed against Asian men, some of whom were assaulted, their businesses and their reputations were harmed, some even had to go into hiding. Do you fear another backlash from your investigations? Well, as I say, we've tried to speak to all sides at all times. And in fact, for this latest episode of the podcast, we went back to Mo Rami, who's the guy who was centrally at the centre of her false allegations. So he was one of her victims. And we've spoken to him about this to get his reaction. In fact, he knew this guy, Sarge, because he

worked for him and lived in one of his flats. And says he's you know shocked and horrified as anyone else and also in terms of a potential backlash the people that we're saying that she named are actually all in prison so we're not suggesting that there's anyone else kind of out there that you know which it's very specific about these three individuals. Liz Lane thank you for joining us. Liz Lane and her colleague Jason Farrell's Hi I'm Namulanta Kombo here to tell you that my podcast Dear Daughter is back and this time I'm joined by an all-star lineup of guests each with some sage life advice and a letter for their daughter.

Every mother has a letter in her head for their daughter. So it's really nice that that's being expressed out loud. That's Dear Daughter Stars from the BBC World Service. Listen now by searching for Dear Daughter wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Dear Daughter. wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Dear daughter. As recent update on this story can be found in the podcast series,

Unreliable Witness from Sky News. Thank you for joining us here on Women's Hour. There are currently 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK according to census data and the vast majority of them are female. The latest state of caring survey from the charity Carers UK has found that more than half of them feel overwhelmed with an increasing number of experiencing poor mental health because they cannot take a break from caring for either a disabled, older or ill relative. As life expectancy increases and people are living longer, the number of hours of a break from caring for either a disabled, older or ill relative. As life expectancy

increases and people are living longer, the number of hours of unpaid care has increased over the past 10 years. To discuss this, I am joined now by Helen Walker, CEO of Carers UK, and Laura Barnes, who at 37, alongside a full-time job, also cares full-time for her 100-year year old grandmother Joan in Rochdale. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Laura I'm going to start with you. You have been Grandma Joan's full-time unpaid carer for five years now. Just tell us a bit about her. She turned 100 recently didn't she? Yes, hi thanks for having me. Yes she turned 100 in February so she's just getting over the first, she's all right.

A milestone indeed. Yeah. And how did you end up becoming her carer? It was a complete accident. So I was working in London, like most 37 things, and we were working from home just before the start of the pandemic, when you weren't too sure what it was.

And I was asked by my father to go up to help look after my grandmother and so I wheeled my little suitcase out of my flat and I said to my flatmate, don't worry you'll just be for two weeks and that was five years ago. Goodness me, so from a little suitcase you've moved in? Completely because it became apparent, I mean it was just before the national lockdown so after lockdown it sort of became apparent that she couldn't live on her own she was I think I don't know a mere 97 at that point or a main 96 and It was just apparent that she couldn't live on her own. And so it sort of

dawned on me that We were gonna have to do something and and then that's sort of the long discovery that I Sort of became an unpaid carer. And Laura, I know she's strong in mind, which is wonderful to hear, but there are physical challenges. Of course. Just talk us through those. So she has macular degeneration, which basically means she's blind and she's in heart failure

as well. So there's, you know, the care is quite intense in terms of personal care, intimate care, medication, and sort of mobility in general. What that means for me is that I sort of can't really leave the house for more than a few hours at a time, but we manage, we manage as best we can. Now you sound incredibly positive, but this has always happened for you in your 30s,

when you should be focusing attention on career and still socializing as we all should but you know it's it's it's an interesting time for you and here you are housebound in many ways looking after your grandma it's important for you to highlight to us just what those challenges have been for you personally and professionally. Yeah I think that's that sort of part of the main point. I mean caring has taken everything from me apart from my job and I'm very grateful that I have a job that I can work remotely from. I'm a comms person for a tech company, I can do that remotely and I work you know 14 hours a day and I care and that is it really. There's no life. I guess I have an existence.

There's no joy. There's no hobbies. There's no going out. There's no friends. There's no relationships. And yeah, I'm 37. So I think that timeline probably doesn't help me in terms of having a family of my own.

And I think as a woman, it's particularly important to highlight because career-wise, the fact that I have to be remote does limit my employability, and it's remote not by choice, by obligation. And the majority of carers in the UK are women, and so you are expected almost societally to, oh, well, you'll provide the care, especially if you are in a traditional family setup. Who looks after the in-laws when they get older?

It's the wife usually, both sets. And there's that societal bias against women who will just sort of, oh yeah, you'll just provide unpaid care and you will suffer effectively in your own life. Well, thank you for sharing your story. We will return to some of the points that you've made. Do stay with us. I want to bring Helen into this conversation. A couple of lines there from Laura that I've just picked out there Caring has taken everything from me and I have simply an existence. You must hear these things all the time. I imagine

Unfortunately, yes, it's a very it's a very familiar story people get completely consumed by by caring and and I think Laura's quite quite You know lucky in that she said she's able to juggle work and care. Many people aren't able to do that, in fact 600 people a day give up work in order to care and so the pressure on them and the pressure on their mental health is huge because as she says you just you care and you work and that's it. Talk us through the latest numbers, this latest research. Well the latest research is that the number of carers who are presenting with serious mental health

issues has gone up so from from 27% to 35% presenting with bad or very bad mental health problems and that we believe is because mostly because of the lack of breaks so so you should be entitled to a carers assessment, well you are entitled to a carers assessment, you should be entitled. Which is what exactly? Which is you can go to your local authority and ask to be assessed in terms of the amount of care that you provide and whether or not you're allowed to have some support, some social care coming in to provide that break for you.

Should be entitled to a break. And so many people are not getting breaks. Now there's lots of reasons for that. We all know the pressure that local authorities are under. We know the financial pressure that they're under. We all know the challenges with social care. So social care at the moment is underfunded, it's crumbling, many respite centres didn't reopen post-Covid and if they did they didn't reopen at the same levels. So often it's just simply not available. So people are telling us that they haven't had a break for several years,

they haven't been able to go out and do their own thing for a long time and that then has a massive impact on their mental health. They're also worrying about their finances and again another impact. If you're juggling you know can I afford to eat, can I keep the property heated at the same level that it needs to be for the person that I care for and we're all I mean this last couple of weeks you know I don't know we've all had you know your utility bills will be going up by X percent on the 1st of April all of us have those, carers allowance the lowest benefit of its. All of us have those. Carers allowance, the lowest benefit of

its type is £81.90. That is going up by less than the cost of a first-class stamp. It's going up to £83.29. That's not going to cover those bills that are increasing. And so that then has a further impact on people's mental well-being, their anxieties about how they're going to cope, how they're going to be able to keep on caring for this person. So it's it's a huge issue. It's an absolute maze. Let me put that back to you Laura. So we talked about carers assessments there. Have you had one at all? No I haven't had one for the simple reason that it would take a very long time and when you're

100 you don't really have a huge amount of time and I would quote unquote earn too much I think to be entitled to anything because I work and so they will probably just tell me well you know you're fine get on with it we don't you know we can't help you and to Helen's point they're underfunded so even if they wanted to provide help a lot of the times they can't they simply do not have the funding because it's just not a priority for government. That's very true and I mean this government has announced a review of social care by Baroness Louise Casey. I think what we would say is whilst we welcome that and it's needed, I

mean there's no shadow of a doubt that it is needed, the first report, it won't start until April this year, the first report will be in 2026 as an interim report, the final report won't be until 2028. So we won't see any fundamental change in social care during that time and we saw, was it last week, the paid carers coming onto Westminster and marching to say the impact that the increase in national insurance has had on providers of social care is really tipping them over the edge. So we all know local authorities are going bust. So it is an absolute minefield in terms of the finances, in terms of the support that is out there and available to you even if you're entitled to it. You mentioned the government response, let me just expand on that. A government spokesperson said we want to ensure families receive the support they need which is why we are increasing the carers allowance

earnings threshold by around an additional £2,000 a year, the biggest rise since it was introduced back in 1976. The Better Care Fund backed by £9 million includes funding that can be used for unpaid carer support such as short breaks and respite services. We're also making available up to 3.7 billion pounds extra for local authorities with social care responsibility in 2025 to 2026. So lots of commitments, lots of money coming their way but as you said it takes time for that all to trickle down and make a practical difference. Let me bring in a few comments that we've had from our listeners. Linda in Newark says I am a full-time carer for my physically

disabled husband post spinal surgery and hip replacement. What would help me is for my husband to have residential physio for one to two weeks so I could have a welcome holiday. Don't get me wrong, church, family, volunteering, interacting with those friends once a month and meeting old school friends intermittently is a great help. Thank you for your message, Linda. And this one from R in Birmingham says, I'm a full-time carer to my son who has learning disabilities. I've never had a carer's assessment.

No respite from the local authority. I've managed with the support of local charities. Financially, I have no savings as I can't work, no pension. And I worry that I've let down my other children as I spend all my time caring for their brother. Carers are not valued and there needs to be a societal shift in attitudes towards us. Thank you both for your messages. Now, you know what I'm hearing from both of those messages, and I'll put this to you both, is guilt. I mean, Laura, I'll put this to you. You are clearly doing so much for your grandmother, but do you have

to navigate those feelings of guilt? Yes, I mean I think you navigate them and I would say specifically in the UK because if it relates to social care it's underpinned by guilt and shame and I'm half French and I think in the French social care system which is light years ahead, it's not perfect but it is light years ahead of the UK, it's not underpinned by the economic value you bring to society that dictates your value as a human, which I think in the UK there is that level. And it depends what you read, we're either benefits crowned just who get prosecuted by the DWP or we're heroes.

I'm neither. I'm just an exhausted version of everybody in the UK who will become unpaid carers at some point in their life. The feelings I have, guilt, am I doing enough? And mainly stress actually of sort of I need to be on this call but I have to give grandma lunch but I've got to give her a shower. Has this prescription come? Why can't I get a visit from the GP? It's sort of mainly stress, if I'm honest, and guilt that I'm not a doctor and so when there's a symptom flare-up of heart failure, I don't know what's going on. Even though

I've had five years of on-the-job training, as it were, I still don't, you know, I'm still guessing. Can I ask you a question, Laura? When was the last time you had a break and what did you do in it? Oh, God. I can't remember. I don't know. Okay, I went to the hairdresser maybe like a year ago. I can't remember. I don't know. There you have it. Helen, what do you say to people who are desperate for more help?

Can't wait for these funds to trickle down for that to even happen. What do you say to them? What can they do to help themselves or seek help now? Well they are entitled to a carers assessment so their local authority has to provide that. And if they're looking for help, if they're looking for advice, I'd advise them to go to the Carers UK website because there is a wealth of advice of what their entitlements are. They can email in to our advice line or telephone our advice line as well and get bespoke advice as to what they're entitled to. But just to Laura's

point, you know, the value of care, unpaid care in this country is £184 billion. That's the equivalent to a second NHS. If carers stopped caring tomorrow, the health and social care system would crumble. So the NHS 10-year plan and the new social care review by Baroness Casey have to have carers through them like a stick of rock or they will fail. Thank you so much both for your time Helen Walker, their CEO of Carers UK and Laura Barnes who cares for her grandmother Joan. We wish you all the very best and if you've been impacted by anything you've heard in this discussion you can go to the BBC Action Line where you'll find links to support there. Thank you both for joining us here on Woman's Hour. I was talking a moment ago about the case of Eleanor

Williams back in 2023 who was jailed for eight and a half years after being found guilty of lying about being raped and trafficked by an Asian grooming gang and speaking to Liz Lane from trafficked by an Asian grooming gang and speaking to Liz Lane from Sky News podcasts about a development in that case. In relation to that we've had these statements from the Cumbria police who say all of Eleanor's allegations including those emailed by her mother were investigated thoroughly and there was no evidence of any involvement by the Meir brothers. And regarding the previous allegations they also said this is not a case where there has not been enough evidence to pursue what she was reporting, but a case where allegations would prove to be lies with evidence fabricated in an attempt to support

those lies, resulting in convictions for multiple offences of perverting the course of justice. So those statements that we've had in from the Cumbria police on that story. The football, the body that governs the football women's super league is now considering the idea of suspending relegation. Now that means no team would be demoted and this is in order to give time for the league to expand from 12 to 16 teams. Lots to talk through now with Susie Rack, a football writer at the Guardian and author of A Woman's Game. Welcome Susie. Hi, thanks for having me. Tell us more about how the league works currently. So at the moment it's very similar to the men's Premier League in

that you know you have relegation and promotion, that there are three or four teams that dominate at the top of the table with the biggest investment. It's quite difficult for teams coming into the league because of the sort of, you know, how few professional teams there are and how little investment there is across the entire pyramid for teams to come up and compete in the Women's Super League and stay in it in the same way that you might get teams in the Premier League staying up because the gap between them is far, far bigger in the women's game. But yeah, at the moment it operates on sort of that fundamental principle of English football, that you have relegation and promotion, that anyone in theory, in theory,

can progress up the table and could win the Women's Super League. Okay, so what's been put on the table now potentially? So basically the WPOL, which is the body that was running the Women's Super League and Women's Championship split off from the FA in the summer, set up as an independent company because the FA couldn't really kind of run it anymore, taking it as far as it could go, couldn't invest enough compared to all the other commitments it has into disability football and things like that. So basically, which represent all the clubs in the league, met on Friday to discuss proposals to basically scrap relegation for four seasons at least, there's no guarantee

it would be returned after that, in a view of expanding the league, which is only 12 teams at the moment, up to 16 teams. So the idea is over a four-year period, you would add one team promoted from the championship into the top flight, and you wouldn't have relegation so that that league was expanded to 16 teams. Now obviously that's controversial because scrapping relegation, a fundamental principle of the game, is a huge move to make and there's a lot of let-off in there for clubs that don't invest, they've got a safety net there, they're guaranteed to stay in the league, you know, there's no incentive to invest to stay competitive and ensure you keep you kind of keep yourself in the division. So yeah,

hugely controversial plan and only come out sort of through leaks and, you know, sources in the meetings and things like that. Nothing said publicly about this proposal that's on the table yet. And what do those who support the deal say? So the argument is that it will encourage investment, right? So you close off relegation, the teams are guaranteed their safety, and so that they feel capable of investing in the game

without fear of going down and being impacted financially and then, you know, kind of having to claw their way back up again. But I mean, I think we've seen a lot of evidence to suggest that that doesn't necessarily work. Manchester United were sort of allowed to apply for a license and join in from the championship and skip the rest of the pyramids in 2019 and West Ham similarly were able to jump into the Women's Super League and not sort of earn promotion through it and that hasn't prompted them to invest significantly if anything they're chronically under invested in

teams relative to the size of the club you've got. So that argument doesn't really hold much weight and instead you're really kind of putting a big barrier on teams coming up. You could go for quite feasibly if you're trying to grow the size of the league, two promoted, one relegated and grow it that way and then you've still got that competitive element and you maintain the threat of relegation as a real prospect that holds that position. The feeling is that they look at the NWSL in America, which is a closed league, and think that that is a way to go and a potential set up. But the whole structure of football in America is so different to the sort of pyramid structure we've got here. So it doesn't really fit and yeah it is very worrying for I think for a number

of fans and stakeholders like invested in development and growth of women's football. Thank you so much Suzie that's really helpful just to get that summary from you about that development that potential development in women's football in the Women's Super League. Thanks for joining us a football writer from The Guardian. Suzie right there good to have you with us here on Woman's Hour. Next, Ella Jones versus the Sunstealer is the first children's book by the presenter and campaigner Lucy Edwards. You may be familiar with Lucy from her social media accounts where she's built up a huge following sharing her life as a blind woman online. Lucy's lustrous red locks also feature on

the Pantene shampoo advert and she's recently been announced as an ambassador for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and her new book follows 12-year-old Ella whose lack of sight gives her the upper hand when the world goes dark after revengeful God wrecks havoc on the world. I'm delighted to say Lucy is with me here in the studio now. Hi Lucy! Hello, thank you so much for having me. No, it's wonderful to have you with us. Now you have had this idea in your head for many years. Tell us where it all started. Yes, so for me, apologies, for me I absolutely had no representation of blindness, like authentic

representation when I was a little girl. Going blind when I was 17 but also having a visual impairment basically all my childhood, you know, I would look to different books and stories and on telly, online and there'd be nothing. So I was kind of scared to be blind when I eventually lost my eyesight. So for me, Ella Jones is just you know the quote unquote normal. I don't really like using the word normal but she's just an amazing kid that is resilient and all of these different things. She doesn't have any superpowers so you know the trope of I guess you know we've got lovely Daredevil.

I absolutely adore Daredevil as like a franchising series but I think you know it becomes problematic when that is the only representation and for me it's not authentic you know to my experience because I don't have supersonic hearing but so when we follow Ella you know she is a 12 year old girl who's lost her vision but the world around her is the thing that needs fixing and that's what I always say because I believe in the social model of disability and she's so confident like I wish I had Ella's confidence. Well I feel like you do. How much is Ella's character based on you? So much. I've got all of my like 29 year old wisdom and shoved it into her really.

Like I would have wanted to be her when I was younger. And you know, through her friendship with her sister Poppy, which is very much based on me and my sister, there's only 15 months between us. And she got me through so much of my sight loss journey. We're so close. And that's why I always say I love blindness because you know, it's given me wings

and given me my voice and a purpose And that's you know what we want in life Isn't it as humans is to have a purpose to push us forward and you know we see her best friend Finn And also her guide dog miss Maisie who's based on my gorgeous guide dog who's at my feet now miss Molly So yeah, it's very lovely as you say there are so many layers to Ella as a character. She also teaches us both young and old a great deal throughout the book. And you do hear about how she's adapted to life living with her blindness. I love, for example, how she chooses her outfits each day.

Can you just explain this? Yeah, of course. So she, like me, labels her outfits. And I just wanted this to just be a very, again, normal part of her life because it is just every day. For me, blindness isn't scary. It's not something that I want fixing. It's just something that is just my day to day.

I've lived it for 12 years now. So for her, she labels her clothes and she has this pen that she hovers over on her hanger and it details what outfit she's wearing. She uses also a colour detector which is what I do. Tools and technology is amazing when you have a disability. The other thing that stood out for me about Ella the character, and I wonder how much again this relates to your personality, is how she chooses to respond to people who might say or do the wrong things when it comes to visually impaired people or their guide dogs.

She chooses to respond calmly and in a constructive way to what she calls their ignorance. Yeah, I think that for me was something that I've really had to work on. I remember, you know, even now I get guide dog refusals, taxi refusals and it's a massive thing if you speak to any guide dog user, you know, we have to face this. And I remember when I used to get in a taxi when I was 19, I would feel distraught and it would wreck my whole week, you know, having refusals like that. And quite rightly,

you know, I was only just going through it and I would be like, oh, you know, that person only sees my guide dog and not me. However, you know, I was only just going through it and I would be like, oh, you know, that person only sees my guide dog and not me. However, you know, through going through this and being able to, I always say I don't give people the key to my mind anymore. And it's, you know, I've had to work in therapy with that, but you know, that's what I wanted to come across with Ella. Like she is so resilient and kind of takes it on the chin and that's something special.

That give people the key to your mind. I absolutely love that. Empowering people is something that you are so passionate about and you often do this through the videos that you share online about your activism, your broader work and you've also shared videos of yourself doing beauty for years and it's something that people might not expect when it comes to a blind content creator. Why is that important to you? So important because beauty isn't just what we see it's what is within. I always preach that and you know beauty for me was rehabilitation. When I lost my eyesight I couldn't look in the mirror and I was distraught. I always loved makeup and that was my sense

of self. I didn't want to lose myself and I thought, oh well, you know, the world has kind of shut me out. Like I'd walk into supermarkets and still do and every bottle, every product feels the same. And I think that's why like displaying Ella's world, you know, making the world dark for everybody else really just show that her friends and family have to rely on her and how resilient she is. And I've done the same with my own family in real life, and it really shocked them that I do just navigate this life with grace eventually. Obviously, I've had my hurdles, but I think beauty is just so important to me.

I think doing my makeup is just the routine that I needed to kind of tell myself that I am enough just the way I am and I don't need to be fixed and I'm not a burden and all of these different words that I used to feel about myself, it was like the ritual of like feeling okay again. Yeah, so I just developed that and I love beauty. But you don't just share the day-to-day things.

You also share kind of more complex, multi-layered things, profound personal matters like your IVF journey online. Why was it important for you to be so open about that? Because we don't see blind moms at all, you know? And also for years I've shared, well, probably like six months to a year now, I've shared that I'm losing weight for IVF and having that journey. I haven't seen that represented, but also the comments that I would get underneath that that would then be filtered by the social

media platforms would say, you're not going to be a good mother, you will choke your baby and all of these different things that I won't repeat because they're probably too bad to repeat. I just block them. I move on and I don't want that to be someone else's reality in 10, 15 years when they're having a baby and they happen to have sight loss. This is what drives me forward. I can take these comments.

I've been blind for 12 years. I know what social media is like and this is not going to stop me being a mom, an amazing mom, a mom that's independent. We're going to be learning skills on how to get Miss Molly up the road with a lovely pram and a sling and all of these different things that's to come this year. pram and a sling and all of these different things that's to come this year and I know I've got to do some training on it but you know we've we've got to make these things more publicly available if we're gonna see the representation that we need there's so many amazing blind mothers out there that are thriving and that are amazing and we just need to keep shouting about

it. Lucy your energy is so contagious I have to say. Thank you. Look, there's a favourite video of mine that I do want to highlight. It's from your wedding day. Yes. And on your wedding day you asked that all of your guests and your husband be blindfolded when you entered. Why was that important to you? Super important.

I think I always dreaded walking down the aisle on my wedding day as a blind person and I didn't want to dread it anymore. I actually walked down the aisle to the song Arrival of the Birds by the Cinematic Orchestra and it was a song featured on The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking, it's my favourite film, where it's this montage of his life as he acquires his disability. And this is what disability is for me. It was the worst moment of my life, but the best moment of my life. And I wanted to reflect everything that I've been through when walking down the aisle. And I think just blindfolding someone, yes, you know, people would say possibly, you know, oh my gosh, it's only giving them a snapshot.

But it allows someone who's never been through blindness to draw from that personal experience they have from that moment. And yes, maybe, you know, it kind of makes people scared possibly. That's how I felt on the first moments of my blindness. Obviously, now I'm not scared of blindness, but it allowed people to really get inside my mind. And also it allowed my husband to just say you know it's okay to be blind and I love Lucy's reality and we live this together and I don't place you know a lot of emphasis on visuals like my husband is a visual effects artist like he runs my companies with me but he wanted to experience my

dress for the first time as I did you know because he values that more than anything my experience. It's so refreshing having that perspective. I think that's what's made me feel so independent and people coming away from it is just amazing. We also had NaviLens codes all around my wedding, which is also on the front of my book. A NaviLens code is something that you can triangulate to. It's a code that you can print on anything. You've probably seen them in Houston, Station. They They're on so many products these days as well as the

front of my book and it's like a different type of QR code that blind people can scan that is full of geometric shapes and your phone can just triangulate and find it easier because I struggle to find barcodes and yeah you can you can find it with 3D audio, which allows me to navigate to things, including my book, which we had all around my wedding as well. What do you want people to take away from this? Because I know it's aimed at kind of nine to 12 year olds, and I will be putting it on my daughter's bedside table as well. But adults can read this too. There's so much to take away. What do you want people to take away from this? That disability is just a part of life for all big blobs that just live on this planet. And you know, I happened to lose my vision through no fault of my own. I didn't know necessarily it was going to happen when it did. And I'm still Lucy. Ella Jones is still

Ella. She's an amazing girl. What I'm really excited about is that, you know, this is also in Braille. The RNIB have been paramount in this journey with Ella Jones, like they've really supported us and I think, you know, my why, the reason that I get up every morning is to say to all of those little Lucy's out there, you are amazing. And we'll have to leave it there. You are amazing is a note we will end on. Thank you for listening to Woman's Hour. Thank you. Thanks for listening, there's plenty more from Woman's Hour over at BBC Sounds.

This is Danny Robbins here, host of Uncanny with some exciting news to share. The Uncannyverse is getting even bigger with a brand new Uncanny TV series on BBC Two and iPlayer, featuring some frankly terrifying cases that will make your hair stand on end. But then we will be taking an even deeper dive into these stories with Uncanny Post Mortem, a new visualized podcast, straight afterwards on BBC Two, iPlayer,

and right here as audio on BBC Sounds. Expect spine tingling new twists and some chilling revelations. That is uncanny post-mortem. Join me if you dare. Hi, I'm Namulanta Combo. Here to tell you that my podcast, Dear Daughter, is back. And this time I'm joined by an all-star lineup of guests,

each with some sage life advice and a letter for their daughter. Every mother has a letter in her head for their daughter. So it's really nice that that's being expressed out loud. That's Dear Daughter's stars from the BBC World Service. Listen now by searching for Dear Daughter wherever from the BBC World Service. Listen now by searching for Dear Daughter wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Dear Daughter.

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