Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Alleged systemic racism in NHS maternity, Care homes, It's a Sin

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

We hear from Sandra Igwe, co-chair of an urgent inquiry set up to investigate how alleged systemic racism in the NHS manifests itself in maternity care and Dr Karen Joash, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Imperial College.After the Topshop buyout by online fashion retailer Asos, Topshop worker, and a lifestyle fashion blogger Kirsty Mead tells us what it’s like to pack up one of the shops in Leed for the final time.Some women in the ultra orthodox Jewish community believe the laws on forced marriage are not serving them adequately and action needs to be taken. We hear from Yehudis Fletcher, the founder of think tank Nahamu and Chaya Spitz, chief executive of the Interlink Foundation, which represents Orthodox organisations.Nearly a year into the pandemic, all over the UK there has been a push to pass legislation to allow better access to relatives and loved ones in care homes. 23 year old, university student, Lucy Challenor talks During the pandemic her mother and her grandmother have been in care homes with very little access. Dating expert Charly Lester and film director Richard Kurti talk about Mary Oliver who with her friend Heather Jenner set up the UK's first ever Marriage Bureau in 1939. The book she wrote nearly 80 years ago, the Marriage Bureau, about the successes and failures of her matchmaking business, has just been republished. LGBT campaigner and co-founder of Stonewall Lisa Power, actor Lydia West and Russell T Davies’ long time friend Jill Nadler discuss his new Channel 4 series It's a Sin and discuss the role women played in the AIDs crisis.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Paula McFarlane Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

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

Hello and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour, a selection of the finest bits from the week just gone. On the programme today, we hear from three women about forced marriages in the Orthodox Jewish community. Then the telly everyone's talking about, the Channel 4 series It's a Sin, LGBT campaigner and co-founder of Stonewall, Lisa Power, actor Lydia West,

and Russell T Davies' longtime friend Jill Nadler discuss his new show and the role women played in the AIDS crisis. Actually telling people not to go out and, you know, meet people and have sex and stuff like that. There was no way I could stop people doing anything like that. We hear from a campaigner calling on the government in Scotland, public health teams and care homes to let residents have access to their families and from a Topshop worker who's packed up the shop in Leeds for the last time. People don't realise that actually we're not going to be having a closing down sale. Topshop is going to be no

longer when we come out of lockdown and I think where where our store is based, just opposite, is Debenhams as well, which obviously will also be gone. So I think the High Street Brigate in Leeds, it's just going to look very sad. Toshow no more. It's the end of an era. Now, an urgent inquiry to investigate how alleged systemic racism in the NHS manifests itself in maternity care was launched this week. Sandra Igwe is co-chair of the inquiry and set up the Motherhood Group to support black mothers

after her experiences of giving birth. Dr Karen Joash is consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Imperial College and spokesperson for race equality at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I asked Sandra why the inquiry into racial injustice in maternity care has been set up. Black women are not listened to as a whole. We don't believe like our basic human rights have actually been met. We don't feel like our words and our concerns are taken seriously in this country.

And I do believe that we are not a priority here. And it's time for our voices to finally be heard, amplified and for change and action to now come. And there's some very worrying statistics that have come out, haven't they? Absolutely. Yep. So black mothers are four times more likely to die and have complications in pregnancy. A 2013 study also found that Black and Asians were less likely to receive pain relief than our white counterparts. And we're also less likely to, you know, have a child where we actually give birth. And we're less likely to feel like we're treated with kindness. And that resonates so much with me, because that's exactly how I felt when it came to my pregnancy and birthing experiences as well. And what are you hoping to do with the inquiry? How long is it going to go on for? Well it will go on for one year so this time next year

we would hopefully complete the inquiry and we're hoping that the you know we find actions and concrete recommendations to bring essentially bring the death rates down for black and brown women. And hopefully for us to have our dignity and our respect intact when we are pregnant and giving birth. And also we want to actually hold decision makers accountable

so that they understand what racism actually looks like. And also to finally, finally listen to black women like myself, Asians as well, and to take our words seriously, to stop stereotyping us in our birthing experiences. And also for us to know our rights. I had no idea of my rights when I was pregnant, when I gave birth. And I'm hoping that more black women and brown women like me know our rights during our pregnancy so that we have more authority. I'm going to bring Karen in. Karen, these figures are shocking, disturbing and totally unacceptable. Black women four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women.

Asian women twice as likely. Why is this happening? Do you believe there is systemic racism within the NHS? First of all, go back to in terms of what you discussed about the statistics and really ponder why nothing has been done to date. I do think there had been a little bit of a narrative amongst us as a medical profession and I had also bought into the narrative that a lot of these excess statistics were due to women coming from abroad or women being poor and those were the issues that led to their healthcare outcomes. Some of the analysis that was being done in the last two years actually revealed that that was not the case. It's not because of a social

economic difference. And I really want to lay that on the table. So I myself, if I go into hospital with my best friend who's white, I'm more likely to die. And actually, although we're talking about this in the context of maternity, this transcends all specialties. It transcends into medicines. It transcends into neonatal outcome. So the RCOG has picked up on this and has been brilliant in setting up a task force, which was commenced in 2020. And essentially looking at three different areas, looking at what you described, looking at the system in which we deliver care, looking at us, the caregivers, and looking at the women as well. We very much know that there will be some elements of structural racism, which will be unavoidable because the NHS was created for a white British population. But unfortunately, as it stands, it doesn't necessarily meet the needs of those that it intends to give health to. And that's if we look at the different systems, we're looking at differential attainment.

I'll mention a publication, Snowy White Peaks, which looks at the people who commission services. So for example, even I as a woman, if all my services for women's health are commissioned by a man and they're the people who sit on the board, we will not get it right. So we need to get the right diversity in.

Everybody from all backgrounds, all together working out the best healthcare system that meets the needs of everyone. So do we need more research into this or do what we sounds like what we need is action? We do need some research but we need action as well totally agree so rather than just simply sitting and and saying that these statistics are, that's what the race task force is about, is really to start to take action. So we're looking at ways in which we can arm women with education, to know their rights, to know about different conditions that affect them. On the RCU website, we already have a lot of stuff about patient information, but I'm very much a believer that education is power, and education is power in all elements of life. So if you understand your health, you can optimise your health.

It's all well and good educating the women who need to access the services. But what about the people they're meeting at the other end when they walk into the hospital and the doctors and nurses? Very well said. Fantastic for raising that. So, again, we need to think about a term, a bus term called cultural competency. What is it about? I mean, I had bad I had bad experiences my son unfortunately nearly died from pneumonia and we went to A&E three times and on reflection at the time when I sat back and I felt why did they not listen to me why did they not believe that I was lying on the bed with my son in the middle of the night hoping he wasn't going to die when I could see him having rigors because they couldn't see the blue in his lips so it's really looking back to our textbooks and how we train ourselves you are absolutely correct to recognize those signs and symptoms why is it that more black and brown

babies die in the neonatal period is it because we're not very good at picking up jaundice because we don't see it on the color of the skin because it's not in the textbooks it's not well taught and there's so many elements of that that we need to really get right and work on and that's what we're doing. And Sandra, your experience of giving birth to your daughters led you to set up the motherhood group, why was that? Yeah, so when I, in my birthing experience, it was extremely traumatic for me, both on both occasions, I do have two daughters and I was sent back five times when I was you know in labor and I was told you know that I was fine when I asked for pain relief with my second daughter after begging and after screaming for hours on end I still was refused

pain relief and with my first daughter I did beg and after 37 hours I was given epidural which failed and it really really confused me at the time as to why they weren't believing me why they kept saying I'll be fine I don't need it I don't need it I was so confused and angry at the same time that I was being treated I felt differently because of the color of my skin and also I told them that I felt my baby's head starting to crown they didn't believe me. I felt her head. And once they could see that her head was actually there, then they, you know, brought some more staff into the room and quickly,

you know, got her out, which she passed meconium stool on the way out to show how stressed she and I both were. And immediately I knew that something wasn't right. And that, you know know black women as a whole I don't feel like our words are taken really seriously and I do believe there's an element of you know the angry black woman stereotype that a lot of healthcare professionals do have in that vulnerable period and I was told that I was being rude and having an attitude when I was just in excruciating pain.

And that's what essentially led me to start my organisation, the Motherhood Group. Karen, Sandra just said something really interesting there about she didn't feel she could trust the services. Do you think this is not just about maternity? This is about the NHS general and how people from black and Asian communities access healthcare services and how they feel about that. That is absolutely key because always sit back and look that when we're looking at mortality, we are looking at the tip of the iceberg because you will look at mortalities at the top.

But what about all those near misses, all the people that don't get the correct healthcare that they are supposed to get, but they somehow survive? They therefore are scarred by that psychologically. They themselves, their families, they don't trust the healthcare system or the services. to get but they somehow survive they therefore are scarred by that psychologically they themselves their families they don't trust the health care system or the services what about those people we don't even have the analysis of those people at present we don't have the research into the new misses and that is a really vital key a part of information that will help us to make

our services better and safer when we now look at that we then look at the fallout of all of that is it affecting you is it affecting me it is It affects all of us because we then come back to the situation where we are with COVID-19 in the pandemic. And we look at the increasing number of people from black and brown that have been affected and ultimately it's affected all of us. So what needs to be done? What change needs to be implemented? So for us, we're asking the government to commit to reducing this statistic by 50% within the next five years. And really, we want to really work with the government to ensure that targets are set rather than people just, you know,

keep talking about it. Let's do something about it. Let's really work together and really tackle this problem, which I know that we can do. There are solutions there and we can work together to sort it out. Remember, if you'd like to share your experiences, you can get in touch with the programme by going to our website. Now, Kirsty Mead is a Topshop worker and a lifestyle fashion blogger. She posted a video on TikTok that's gone viral of her packing up one of the shops in Leeds that's not going to reopen. Online fashion giant ASOS has bought out Topshop and Topman

following its purchase of Debenhams. Emma asked Kirsty how long she'd been working at Topshop. For seven years. I did leave for a year, but all in all, it's been seven years. And this video, just describe it to us that people seem to have connected with. So it seems to have gone absolutely viral and I don't really know quite how, but it's basically just a video of us all packing up the store you know just having a really great time together just making the most of us having the last few days together. I've done one like every single day since we've been packing up so it's just like the gradual taking everything

out of the store and the store just basically being empty now at this point we're just loading up the vans. How do you feel? It's really emotional. I think because we were in lockdown for so long and we've not been in work, it just feels, it doesn't feel any different. But now we've come straight back into work and we're packing it all up.

It's just very, very surreal that actually after lockdown we're not going to have a job to come back to and that there is not going to be any Topshop. Not just the fact that we're not going to have jobs, the fact that Topshop stores are never going to be open again. Your Topshop is in Leeds? Yeah, correct. And I'm sure what you've just said will maybe make people stop and think about the shops that will not reopen after this pandemic. It's one thing, isn't it, when a shop shuts down when they're all open and you can kind of go and do that last purchase in store or see if there's a bargain.

But there's something quite eerie about not seeing a shop again. Yeah, I think people don't realise that actually we're not going to be having a closing down sale. Top Shop is going to be no longer when we come out of lockdown. Actually, you never are going to be able to go into a Top Shop store again. And I think where our store is based as well, just opposite is Debenhams as well which obviously will also be gone so I think the High Street Brigate in Leeds it's just going to look

very sad really because it's just going to be a lot of empty units. How old are you? I'm 25. You're 25 there's this whole thing and it might be you know older journalists getting it wrong but it's often written people your age and younger you know it's all about shopping online and I wonder what you make of that because you do sound sad about not just because it's your job but you do sound sad that you have the shop to go into yeah like I think like everyone I do shop online from time to time but for me personally I like to go into the store I like to try things on I like the experience of shopping in stores and I think a lot of people are the same as well I mean I did a fashion design degree at university as well and I think with that I like to feel the products and try it on

and see the quality of it as well because I think online a lot of the time something will arrive and actually it's it's not the quality you want and I know I'm probably not the only one that then you just don't end up taking it back you know you just have these things and that's the whole problem with fast fashion and things like that as well. Like with everything going to online, it's just encouraging all of these really fast fashion brands that are a lot less quality. What about your stock?

Do you know what's happening to that? Because in the video, you're kind of, you're bagging stuff up, you're putting stuff away. So all of the stock at the moment, as far as we know, is going back to all of our DCs. So all of our Topshop Arcadia warehouses so we actually have like a Miss Selfridge insert in our store as well but it's all just going back to the to the DCs to our our warehouses which will then I assume will go on to just onto ASOS

and they will put it all online. What are you going to do for work because the thing I don't know if you were just listening but we were talking there to an MP about the fact that your job and jobs like yours are now typically not going to be there and are going to men who are going to be working in the distribution centres. That's not to say women can't, but just to talk about trends. What are you going to do next? For me, since the first lockdown, I've actually started trying to progress on my social media channels. I think that's the way the world is going at the moment is a lot online and social media. So from the first lockdown, I started to try and push my social media channels through YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. So I'm going to try and take that full time as much as I can and hope that it's a big risk, but hope that it will work out by taking

everything onto my social media channels and I think maybe see how that goes and I might potentially have to get a part-time job somewhere so that I've still got the time to concentrate on pushing my social media as well and what would that part-time job look like to be honest with what's out there at the moment it'd probably be a supermarket, which is not the end of the world. But probably in a supermarket or somewhere like that. I think definitely not retail for me anymore. Not fashion retail anyway. It's the second time I've been made redundant in 18 months in retail. So I don't think that's for me anymore. Wow. Yeah, that's that's a lot in 18 months. Yeah, I worked at French Connection, so I left Topshop because there was no vacancies for me to come back to this store after I finished university. So I went to French Connection and

they closed that store down, so then I came back to Topshop. On Monday, a document arrived at the desk of the Home Office and Government's forced marriage unit. It told those working there, when it comes to forced marriages, in one community in particular, they're going undetected, leaving women and men too trapped in a life they often see no escape from. The document was co-authored by a woman from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, a community which is strictly observant of traditional Jewish law and is often quite insular. The document is based on the testimony of dozens of women and some men. One of those women, Beatrice Weber, was married for 23 years. We should say some in this community are very unwilling to talk about their experience,

but Beatrice did. She's now divorced. She went to school in Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, but married in the US. She told our reporter Melanie Abbott about her experience, which she says reflects the same practices in the US. She told our reporter Melanie Abbott about her experience, which she says reflects the same practices in the UK. I met my husband three times. I was considered highly desirable, both because of the lineage. We can say we come from certain rabbis and because my father had gotten wealthy over the years. And what were those meetings like? You know, it's really challenging because the way we're raised is completely segregated for boys. Like from wealthy over the years. And what were those meetings like? You know, it's really challenging because the way we're raised is completely segregated for boys. Like from when you start

school at three, you're in completely different schools. You learn completely different things. Man I was meeting who became my husband, he barely spoke any English because he had gone to only, you know, Hasidic schools where the language of instruction wasn't Yiddish. So after those three meetings, were you asked if you wanted to get engaged to him? Oh, that's a good question. That the only way you can say no is if there's something absolutely hugely offensive or disturbing to you. So there was never, is this what you really want? We were engaged for five months. During the engagement, I spoke to him once every two weeks for about 10 minutes. He went back to Israel to study, which was very customary that he'd go back and then come back a week before the wedding. Did you in any way feel prepared for marriage or was there

any kind of thought of preparing you for marriage by your parents and those around you? There was actually a formal classes to attend. I remember it was a 12 week series. There was no sex education. So you have never been taught about sex at all. You know, it's a holy act. And it's in the context of all of these rules and rituals. You learned a lot about the rules and the rituals then. How much did you learn about the actual act, if you like? A lot of what we were told was he'll know what to do. You know, and he got annoyed when I didn't know everything I was supposed to do, like where to place the pillow or where to put a garbage bag and all that to set things up properly.

He just... A garbage bag and all that to set things up properly he just a garbage bag the idea was that um it can get messy and you want to protect the sheets he's like didn't you know you're supposed to lay down a pillow and then put it on top of garbage bag and then we lay on top of that obviously it would never have occurred to you at the time but looking back now do you think that the issue of consent arises here you know the issue of consent is almost non-existent and was non-existent for many, many years for me. So there's very little room for consent. It's not considered a priority. I've heard there can be financial arrangements involved. Was that the case with you?

Yeah. So there was, you know, a house where we received a house as part of kind of the dowry. And then there was, you know, monthly stipends that we got. At that point, my father committed for five years. And I remember that was a little bit of a sticking point. Eventually, it ended up being close to 15 years. How far do you think the financial arrangements make it difficult to say no or to back out during this lead up to getting married? I was not financially independent on any level or even thought of the possibility of going to college. That was not at all. So I was completely dependent at that point on my parents' money. What do you think would have happened if you had said, no, this isn't what I want?

It would never have crossed my mind. It couldn't just be that I changed my mind. You know, that was not a possibility. You were married for 23 years. Some would say it couldn't have been that bad. The way my marriage was, like the first 15 years, I was basically living in this bubble, shall I say, of I'm so lucky to have married such a scholar.

And then no matter what he does is okay. So I'd really push myself to do everything. And some things were like in retrospect, were really extending myself beyond what was right for myself and my children just to make my husband happy and thinking that my marriage will get better. How many children have you got? So I have 10 children. How quickly after the wedding did you get pregnant? A month later. And she was a premature baby. So she was born, I was married eight and a half months as she was born. I was a baby having a baby. I was just 19.

And then 11 months later, I had another one. And a year and a half later, I had another one. I loved my children. I loved having babies. I actually did not feel oppressed by it. It was just what I did. How much can you say that what you experienced and what other Jewish women say they're experiencing

is forced marriage or more of a cultural norm? From when you've been a baby, you've been conditioned that this is the only way, this is the right way, and there's no other choices. So that's all you know. That's your entire worldview. So by the time you're 18 and being told this is the person you're marrying, you're not starting to question it and thinking, maybe there's another option for me. You're just not thinking that way. From when you've been a baby, you've been conditioned that this is the only way, this is the right way, and there's no other choices. When you're pushed into a marriage like this at such a young age, it's almost like your development stops. You, you're beholden to a man, you have obligations. There's no space to, to really grow into yourself.

And at 18, people are still just starting to grow into themselves. But when you're just forced into something that's not necessarily your will or not necessarily something that you want, but you're just doing it because that's what's expected. It really stunts your growth and it can take years to kind of come back to that. Beatrice Weber talking to Melanie Abbott. The woman who helped write the document is Yehudis Fletcher, the founder of a think tank called Nahamu, which aims to counter what it sees as extremism in the Jewish community.

Yehudis explained what forced marriage means in ultra-Orthodox circles. I think it's helpful to take a step back. So what does the UK legislation define as forced marriage? And it's very clear that force does not necessarily entail putting a gun to someone's head or making threats of violence or indeed violence. The legislation itself defines coercion. And the guidance to that legislation includes emotional and psychological pressure. And I think whilst there can be a spectrum of different kinds of pressure when it comes to forced marriage, what we're talking about in the paper is primarily emotional um emotional and psychological pressure so you don't feel at

the moment that the the government is what taking account of the way that that is manifesting itself in particular in the ultra orthodox community which we should say you were a member of i said i'm a member of that community and does the government focus on our community i think there's just so little discussion of the different communities that it affects. A lot of the communications that the forced marriage unit uses, for example, are quite racialized images targeted at specific communities. And we think it would be better if we could take a step back from saying this is the type of person this is likely to happen to and take a step back and say actually these are the underlying factors that might cause

pressure that might result in forced marriage so looking at the indicators of forced marriage rather than looking at groups of people that it's likely to happen to but the reason i'm asking that and just to clarify when i said you you were a member of that community i totally take the point you're still a member of it but you have separated yourself from it in some noticeable ways as in you don't cover your hair anymore you don't necessarily follow the same dress codes as customers for the women in that community and you are now working to try and shine a light on what is a very insular community. Yeah absolutely it my community. I love it and I love the people in it. I've chosen to change the way in which I present to the world,

but I don't think that changes, I don't think I should have to reject my heritage or cease to belong to the community and family that I grew up in. But what about being able to leave that marriage? Forced marriage isn't just about on the way to marriage, it's also about having the freedom to leave. For women in the Jewish community, they can ask for a divorce, but they can't get a divorce without their husband's consent. So whilst men and women can physically leave the place of them,

you know, they could leave the marital home, they wouldn't actually be able to leave the marriage without having what's called a get. And that's also being addressed at the moment through the domestic abuse bill that's in the House of Lords at the moment. Let's bring in Chaya Spitz at that point. Chaya, this document's gone to the Home Office today. What is your response to it? I think that anyone within the community looking at this document will just balk and feel that it's very far removed from the lived reality of ordinary people. Forced marriage is a completely alien concept in Judaism. Consent and marrying of one's free choice are absolutely fundamental principles. Consent was required by Jewish law centuries before it became,

before the concept to force marriage and for that matter, marital rape or coercive control made their way into British law. And frankly, a marriage where one party has been pressurised into taking part is an invalid marriage. And if the officiating rabbi... Hang on a minute. Sorry, are you saying these people who've given their testimonies, which completely counter what you're saying, are they lying?

No, I'm not. And I was really sad to hear what Beatrice Weber had to say. Her marriage still went ahead, though. You're saying it's an invalid marriage. If you had asked her, do I want to marry, presumably she didn't recognise that. But looking back, she feels that she was pressurised into that. And that is clearly wrong. And I think that there are thousands of women listening to this programme and everyone would be hard pressed to say that they don't know of any woman who's been subject

to some sort of abuse or coercion and of course has been wrong. Hang on, sorry, sorry, sorry. You've come on as a representative. We're very grateful of the ultra-Orthodox here. And you're now trying to generalise that everybody will know somebody

who's been coerced or pressurised. But what's been described here by this document and in our broader discussion is a system, a system that will sound incredibly foreign to a lot of people listening, not foreign because it's not their religion, but foreign even perhaps to Jews. You know, I say that as someone who grew up Jewish. I mean, you know, we've just heard from Yehudis. Do you not recognise that description of your community? No, Emma, I don't. It is, what you are describing is absolutely abnormal. I come from a family of Hasidic people, Hasidic on both sides of my family. And that's how I was raised. After turned 18 I had discussions with my parents about my aspirations for marriage it wasn't about pressure um it was about I was an educated independent thinking young woman

it was about my social norm in my community it was what I wanted all of the perhaps you're very around but perhaps you're no no I think I'm sorry I'm sorry, this is, it's the converse to that. What Yehudis is describing and what Beatrice is describing is what shouldn't be happening and what isn't common. Tenimes, these ancient engagement contracts, they are not used. Young women are not taken to weddings. None of this is correct. May I put that to Yehudis?

I think it's really hard to sometimes see what you're used to or maybe have been socialised to accept written down in black and white. Now, nearly a year into the pandemic, all over the UK, there's been a push to pass legislation to allow better access to relatives and loved ones in care homes. There are 36,000 residents currently in Scottish care homes, with almost every elderly care home resident now vaccinated, and the three-week period to build immunity reached, relatives are calling on the government in Scotland, public health teams and care homes to let residents have more regular

and natural access to their families. The Broken Hearts campaign is led by Care Home Relatives Scotland, a Facebook group with 17,000 members, including 23-year-old university student Lucy Chaloner. During the pandemic, her mother and her grandmother have been in care homes with very little access. Lucy explained the situation with them both at the start of the pandemic. So my mum's been in care for the last four years and access was very limited. I wasn't able to see her for months and when I eventually was able to see her it was outdoor visits for just half an hour. So that was really difficult. I mean I was going from seeing my mum

every week, we would go out for walks, I would visit her at the care home and stay in her room for hours and chat to not seeing her at all for months on end. So it was extremely difficult for both of us. What was the impact on your mum? Her mental health definitely did decline. Family is everything to my mum. And visits really kept her going. They meant a lot to her so I think she almost

lost hope at the start it was kind of like oh maybe this will last a few weeks a couple months but as time went on it was like how long is this gonna last am I ever gonna see my kids again so um her mood was really low and it impacted my mood as well seeing your mum that way is heartbreaking. And your grandma? My grandma visits have been quite limited there as well I wasn't able to see her for a while and then it was the window visits and the outdoor visits which were just heartbreaking I mean my gran's going to be 99 in March and she's got dementia so window visits don't really work that well for people with additional sort of needs and there was quite a few window visits one of them she told me she'd rather be dead than in

a care home so hearing that from your grandma when you're through a window, it's just absolutely heartbreaking. But you actually decided to do what with your mum and your grandma in terms of where they were living? So my mum, she's back home with me now. She came back in December. So she's back home with me and my brother and we're just sort of both looking after her together. My gran, she's still in her care home and I've recently been given essential visiting status. This sadly means that someone's health has deteriorated quite a lot

or they may be at end of life. So I'm able to see my gran in her room now. I get tested, have the PPE and that's just made such a difference. And your mum being at home, that's a big move to make if she'd already been into a care home and you'd felt as a family that that had been the best place for her. Those decisions are not taken lightly. That's a big thing for anyone to take on. But I suppose you're studying, you're in your early 20s.

How are you finding it? It has been difficult. It has. I mean, I'm a university student as well. So with lockdown, my classes have been online. So I've not had face to face lectures. So that has helped quite a lot. The fact I'm in the house all the time. So I'm able to look after mum and keep an eye on her and stuff. But yeah, it's not a decision that's taken lightly. And I mean, so many families would love to do what I have done, but they're just not able to do so. So in a way, I'm quite lucky I've been able to get her home.

And I suppose that means just, you know, things that we took for granted before this very difficult and awful time, like giving her a cuddle is now OK. Yeah, I mean, that was actually one of the main things me and my mum were so close and every time we would give each other a cuddle when we go see each other and when we say goodbye so even things like sitting on the couch and watching tv together you just really appreciate those moments. This campaign and it's something that's going on right across the country why did you join it and what do you want to see change? So I joined the group because I was feeling quite alone and I didn't really have anyone to talk to about my situation

and I was just kind of looking for some support. In the campaign, it's based on a petition and they're asking for legislation for one designated visitor to have access to their care home resident at all times, regardless of lockdown situations, because so many people haven't even had the window visits or the outdoor visits. This is husbands, wives who, you know, haven't seen each other for months,

which must be extremely difficult. Or some care homes have installed pods for people with dementia or learning disabilities. I mean, this isn't just elderly people, it's people's kids who are in care homes, it's all over the lifespan. So I do understand the difficulties there, yeah, but that's why we're asking to be one designated visitor,

tested with PPE in the person's room so we can have meaningful contact again. And those are your requests. If I look at what the Scottish Government has provided to us as a statement, a Scottish Government spokesperson has said, we understand the severe impact this pandemic has had on people's lives across Scotland and the distress it's caused for people living in care homes and their loved ones. We're acutely aware of the importance of visits for the well-being of residents and their friends and family.

That's why the health secretary has met and will continue to meet relatives of residents in care homes, and the health secretary will meet those relatives groups again shortly. The health secretary has been clear throughout that essential visits should continue to be supported at all stages of the pandemic, in all areas, no matter the current level. There is a need to balance the safety of residents against the need for them to spend time with their families. In consultation with the relatives, care home providers and wider social care partners, we're working to finalise guidance to support increased contact between care home residents and their loved ones against a backdrop of level four restrictions in place across mainland Scotland.

Lucy, as a campaigner, that's what you've now become. Is that good enough? I mean, the problem is if it's only going to be guidance, not legislation, that doesn't mean that definitely every care home in Scotland will follow it. So that's why we've asked for legislation just to ensure that every care home resident does have access to at least one loved one, regardless of lockdown situation. So hopefully they'll publish the guidance soon. But what will happen if care homes don't follow the guidance? Because it is just guidance. And this item moved quite a few of you to get in touch with the show.

Heather emailed in to say, my mother's dementia has definitely deteriorated over the last six months. She doesn't understand why I can't visit. I wrote to my MP in December to press for action, but he never replied. It's not just the visiting, though. Chiropody, physio and hairdressing services haven't happened either,

and residents don't get their hair washed unless the hairdresser comes. I could cry letting mum down here. And Pamela says, whilst I've been very pleased with where my sister lives and the contact via WhatsApp, wearing PPE and lateral flow testing, I wonder whether now both my sister and I have had the first dose of vaccine, the government would consider relaxing the rules to enable visits to continue. Remember, you can also get in touch with the programme via Twitter or Instagram. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, girls sit at home waiting for Mr. Right, a nostalgic

fantasy invented by their parents. There has to be a better way. The words, well, they could have been my words, but this time they're the words of Mary Oliver, who with her friend Heather Jenner, set up the UK's first ever marriage bureau in 1939. The book she wrote nearly 80 years ago, The Marriage Bureau, about the successes and failures of her matchmaking business has just been republished, and it is so good. So who was Mary Oliver, and how relevant is her story and advice today? To discuss the book and Mary, I was joined by dating expert Charlie Lester and film director Richard Curti, who rediscovered Mary Oliver.

Well, she literally was a footnote in history. I was working on a script for Fox Searchlight about a royal chef, and I was doing some research about social history between the wars. And in a footnote on the chapter on relationships was this little line that said, in April 1939 two 25 year

old women set up the very first marriage bureau in the country and I was fascinated because I thought in April 1939 it was so obvious that Europe was sliding into a cataclysmic war why would anyone think about setting up a marriage bureau and I started googling and I found this battered old book that was published just once in 1942, written by Mary Oliver and a really talented journalist, Mary Benedetta. So I bought it and I sat down expecting it to be old fashioned and stiff and very brief encounter. But what leapt off the page to me was this incredible voice of Mary, young, rebellious, outspoken, not afraid of offending everyone prickly. But underneath it all, she had dedicated her life to helping people find happiness. And the Bureau was an amazing success.

Within a month, they had hundreds of people a week writing to them and it lasted for decades. It was matching people for decades. And who was she? What kind of family did she come from? She was the maverick. She was the misfit.

She came from a middle-class farming family just outside Cambridge, but she was the daughter that everyone in the family always worried about they kept trying to palm her off with people they sent her out to india to they arranged a marriage she hated the man he just kept writing lists for her about what she should do after their marriage so she cancelled the wedding sold the wedding presents and used the money from that to get her passage back and it was on the ship back from India that she had this idea. There's got to be a better way of men and women finding each other.

Something that empowers women. And you're right. She's and the book is so much fun to read. She's this thoroughly modern woman, empowered woman in 1939, isn't she? And she does empower her clients as well. Completely. It's all about she, the book is like the Haynes manual of love and marriage. You know, she says, this is how it all works. If you want to

succeed at this game, this is what you have to do. And she's aware that a lot of people have got themselves into ruts and they need help to get out of it. And she is that help. And it could be everything from going and buying them new clothes, buying them laundry, teaching them how to behave, teaching them about what each other wants. There was a great example, Mr. Dulap, who I really responded to, who was 57. And he had this, his only assets were like a little wayside garage with no electric light and no sanitation. But he had 20 acres of land, a pony and somebody else's cows. And Mary said to him, install a flush toilet. I said, but why?

The views are beautiful. She said, install a flush toilet. And I really related to that because when I was in my 20s, I was living in London and I thought I was in a good relationship. And one day the girlfriend said to me, she said, go and buy a washing machine. And I said, why? The laundrette's fine. She said, buy a washing machine, Richard. And I said, but it's a rented flat.

She said, when you move, you can take it with you. And I said, no, The laundrette's fine. She said, buy a washing machine, Richard. And I said, but it's a rented flat. She said, when you move, you can take it with you. And I said, no, no, it's fine. Two weeks later, she finished it. And I was like, why did she finish me over a washing machine? But I read Mr. Dulap and I thought, I get it now. I get it. It's like I failed the audition about do they have domestic ambition? And she went that space and she just explains it to everyone. Let me bring Charlie, our dating expert, into this. Are you still having to explain to people that they have to have domestic ambition,

Charlie. Not quite. I do have to explain about photos on dating apps a lot. I don't know if that's the new equivalent. Could you explain what the dating landscape is now? We've come so far since 1939, haven't we? I mean, this was the first ever marriage bureau set up in the UK. Do we still have marriage bure UK. Do we still have marriage bureaus? Do we still have matchmaking services? What's the distinction between apps and dating and matchmaking? I mean, I would say there's still quite a large distinction between the online technology and real life matchmaking. So that does still happen. And the main distinction really is the cost. So you can go and use the dating app for free. If you want the service of a matchmaker these days, you're looking at anything, I would say,

probably between two and thirty thousand pounds to have because you're essentially getting outsourcing your love life to someone else. Someone else is going to find that person for you. So, yeah, these agencies do definitely still exist. And the reason that the costs vary so much is, I guess, partly in the service that they're offering and also in the clientele that they deal with. I mean, there must be a huge difference between what you get for £2 and what you get for £30,000. Yes, I know. I mean, this is the interesting thing. I know, you know, I've worked in this industry a long time. I know a lot of the matchmakers. And to be completely honest, in the UK, most of the paying members are women. And it's the men that the agencies have to find. And I know a lot of the agencies will actually look for the men on the dating apps. So I kind of think if you've got the time, you may as well start by not paying anything and doing the search yourself, at least initially. Well, because I'm quite nosy, I couldn't resist asking

all of you how you met your partners. And of course, it's Valentine's tomorrow, so why not? Roz emailed in to say, I met my partner as a chance encounter on the 55 bus between Farringdon and Tottenham Court Road, I know it well, where our eyes locked and we could not stop smiling at each other. I followed him off the bus and said,. The rest is history. Go Roz! And Jane says, Kate said, met we named our son william ryan kate said my name is katie and i met my partner on the online game world of warcraft 13 years ago we were good friends at first but our love blossomed and now

we're engaged and living in the netherlands how time flies and finally i met my husband in 1983 at sidmouth folk festival love at first. These holiday romances never last, but Chris is my best friend, still happily married. Oh, you've all warmed my stone-like heart. Now, It's a Sin is the powerful new drama on Channel 4 by Russell T Davies. It tells the story of a group of young gay men living in London during the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s

and has become Channel 4's most binge-watched new show, netting over 6.3 million streams since its launch. At the centre of these male friends lives a woman, Jill Baxter, who offers unconditional love and support during a different era and a different pandemic. Emma was joined by the woman who inspired the character, Russell T Davies' long-time friend Jill Nadler, the actor who plays her on screen, Lydia West,

and Lisa Power, an LGBT rights campaigner, co-founder of Stonewall, and during the crisis, one of the earliest volunteers with the Helpline switchboard. In this clip, Jill is concerned for her friends and asks Richie, played by Ollie Alexander, whether he should consider changing his attitude to sex. Don't you ever think you should... What?

Stop. For a bit. Stop what? Sex. Why did you say that? I don't know. No? Why did you say it? Oh my god, they got you. The thought police. You are infected. No, I'm just saying.

Jill, don't listen to that shit. Do you know, I listen to whatever I want. Because the problem with you is you're too clever. It has been said. No, I mean it. You're too clever by half. Like, in your mind, you can think your way out of anything. But think about this head boy. If there was an illness illness and say you had it

and you slept with him and then you slept with him and then you slept with 500 people, like all of you do every weekend and tell me, Richie, if you're so clever, what's going to stop it spreading? What's going to save you? Your A-levels. And the hashtag going round is absolutely perfect. Hashtag BeMoreJill.

Lydia West talked about her character, Jill. Jill is the first person in that house to deal with someone close with the illness. So she knows so much more than the boys at this point. And every part of her just wants to tell them just to get smart because they're just playing about and they don't have a clue of the what's going on we'll keep going with the point in just a moment can I first of all say la to you can I say that you absolutely can I'm sorry that's awful when people do in jokes if you haven't seen the series what what is that so la is the um kind of the way the friend it's a private joke between the friends and they so how they

greet each other um and yeah I think it's it's we all have like with our really close friends these like private jokes and to have that on screen and actually getting the laugh right was so difficult and I remember like we had a rehearsal and we were all just like and Russell was like no it's not right and we were like he was like no, no, no. So it took a long time to perfect because I think Russell and Jill, correct me if I'm wrong, had this between their friendship group. So yeah, he wanted to incorporate that

and it just shows kind of just their intimacy and how close they are and how much they love each other. Let's go to the real Jill, Jill Nadler. Do you want to do a bit of la? La! See, that's so much better than mine. You've got vibrato in there.

And it's so much better than mine. Jill, the character was based on you. You're actually in the programme. I've not got to that episode yet, but you're playing, weirdly, the mum of you, if I can put it like that. Tell us about the beginning of the crisis for you and how you became that person that, as we were just hearing, started to know what was going on. Well, I heard about it while I was in college, in drama school, and I read some articles in the

paper, some things about, you know, a mystery illness america that was uh causing you know gay men to fall seriously ill and die and so it was a gradual and gaining of knowledge of reading up and finding information it was very very difficult to find any information at all in the beginning um and it was very disjointed information because i think really nobody actually did know. And then it became sort of creeping into our community and into our world. And I just was that person who would try to find out more information all the time. How did you convince your friends, if it did play out like this, friends that perhaps were sceptical, that they needed to be perhaps thinking about this and even changing behaviour? Oh, I think in reality, you can't tell people what to do. You know, you can try. I mean, in complete reality, it's everybody gradually learned that it was a very serious.

It was a very serious possibility that people, you know, friends would catch it and people in our community caught it. But actually telling people not to go out and, you know, meet people and have sex and stuff like that, there was no way I could stop people doing anything like that. Let's bring in Lisa Power at this point, someone who will remember this time well, co-founder of Stonewall and one of the earliest volunteers with the LGBT Helpline Switchboard. What do you remember about your knowledge at the beginning of this? How did you start to understand it? Well, we started to get calls on Switchboard and we didn't know any more than someone like Jill. So actually, as an organisation, we did the same as Jill. We scrabbled for information. And we were lucky because you have to remember in those days

no internet um no easy modes of transmission of information uh we literally had uh tourists coming back from america as it's shown in the show bringing back the latest information from new york and san francisco and we were updating our information in logbooks. We had logbooks which are now lodged in the Bishopsgate archives in London. Literally, we were writing stuff in those logbooks so that each person, as they came in for their new shift, would read the latest in the logbooks and be able to pass it on. And we ended every phone call for years during the 80s with, have you heard about AIDS?

Trying to tell people. because until the government campaign, effectively, we and a London-based gay newspaper called Capital Gay were the only consistent, reliable sources of that information until the Terence Higgins Trust started up and then the national campaign from the government. There are, of course, millions of women with the disease, HIV positive, with AIDS. Interestingly, the Terence Higgins Trust has said that there's been a rise in people, women, googling about this. What would you say about what you were hearing from women at the time, Lisa? We were hearing a lot of things. I mean, some of them were quite wild. I remember an elderly lady who phoned who was worried that her cat might get AIDS if it bit a gay man. And I think we were able to dispel that fear. But the trouble was that there were a lot of euphemisms around. And for example, the government leaflet that went round to everybody said homosexuals. So we got quite a lot of

lesbians ringing us up going, does that mean me? But it was clear that from an early stage, although AIDS appeared in gay men and in drug users, it was clear that women were not immune. And the difficulty was that we had a national campaign in the Sunday Times newspaper at the end of the 80s, start of the 90s, saying that AIDS was a gay plot to get money and that heterosexuals wouldn't get it and absolutely denying there was a link between HIV and AIDS. It's the kind of denialism that we've subsequently seen in COVID. Data from the Terence Higgins Trust indicates women made up of 28% of new HIV diagnoses in 2019 and around a third of people living with HIV in the UK are women. Globally, there are more women living with HIV than men.

If I can come back to you, Lydia West, who's playing Jill in It's a Sin. When you did go into this and you first read the script, what was your knowledge like of the AIDS crisis? I'm ashamed to say it was so limited and I did not know half of what I learned in the script and from kind of then the research that I did I didn't know anything about section 28 I didn't know all the conspiracies about kind of patient zero and all these rumors that were going on and the misinformation I just I learned so much and then it made me dive into it and I referenced back to quite a lot a website

called hiv.gov and it had has a timeline of kind of everything that happens and the publications that were coming out and the headlines and I remember being so surprised at a headline from the New York Times in 1984 which said that it's HIV is transmissible via saliva and by a spit and I just remember thinking if if Jill, fictional Jill was around during during that time and dealing with this like and she would have read that it's like that's what you would have believed and that's what you then would have kind of thought and that's why there's so many moments in the script that and in the story like when I don't want to spoil it but if in episode two when when Jill has

an incident with the mug it's like that's what she could have been thinking of and that's what she could have seen and that was all she had access to so it just blew my mind that I was was not I didn't do the work but before to to know about this stuff and it wasn't brought ever brought to my attention so that's what I kind of hoped from while creating the show and then afterwards that generations younger than me would gain from that. To come back to you Jill Nadler do you think that this is having an added impact at the moment because we're living through another pandemic, albeit a very different one? Yes, I definitely think that. I definitely think that people have realised the impact of an illness and then they, you know, think back or didn't even realise that that was happening to a whole section of society. So I think people have a more, also I think people are very emotional while they're in lockdown.

So on top of that, it's about a terrible illness. And then we're dealing as well with this pandemic. So the whole thing is heightened. And I think it makes people realise, my goodness, what a terrible time people actually had, you know, especially the men who, you know, died so young. To come back to you, who, you know, died so young. To come back to you, Lisa, you mentioned COVID. How has this pandemic made you feel with reference to what you lived through in the 80s and 90s with AIDS?

I think the COVID pandemic has really made a lot of people remember stuff. I mean, it's not directly analogous because it is much more easily transmissible. It's as easily transmissible as we feared in the early days that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, might be. But there's no doubt, certainly for many of my friends who were infected by HIV, their attitude has been, well, I didn't let that pandemic take me out. I fought that one. And now they're in the risk group. They're in the highest risk group for the current pandemic. But they've dealt with it before. And I think it leads all of us who went through that to think about things like risk reduction and actually doing what we can. And, you know, looking through the rules in those ways, we're much more liable to actually listen to what's going on and much less liable to listen to the chatter of people making up mad theories about it.

And if you've binge watched everything else but haven't yet visited It's a Sin, there's our recommendation for this weekend. Jane emailed in off the back of that item to say, I was in my early 20s during the HIV and AIDS crisis. We were all aware of this. The government put out warnings with tombstone symbols on posters about the risk of HIV transmission. Not highlighted on the programme was the stigma around having a test. People could be at risk, maybe a rumour, of losing their job as employers would be aware of you having had a test. Women were also at risk, so protected sex was de rigueur. It was only as time went on that I became aware of the horrific impact on the gay community.

And 40 years on, Jane, we are all realising the horrific impact on the gay community. That's it from me. Have a lovely weekend. Join Emma again for Woman's Hour from 10am Monday morning. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

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