Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: SEND transport, Hair thinning, Women and prison, The Tuam babies scandal: A Woman's Hour Special

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Mums who give up work or cut their hours because they have a child with special educational needs and disabilities say problems with school transport is one of the reasons. An opinion poll from Opinium commissioned by Woman's Hour for a programme on SEND last month revealed 12% of mothers flagged lack of appropriate funded transport as a problem. Woman's Hour hears from three mums, Ellie Partridge, Ramandeep Kaur and Sabiha Aziz, who are struggling to transport their children with SEND to school, and in some cases are having to pay hundreds of pounds a month. Hair loss comes in many forms, from thinning to complete loss. In his new YouTube series, Hair Stories, hairstylist Michael Douglas, with over 37 years of experience working with women’s hair, explores women’s unique stories and the personal connection they have with their hair. Joining Michael is Katie O'Callaghan, who experienced hair loss and ultimately chose to undergo a hair transplant.In her speech at Labour conference the Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood said: "for women, prison isn’t working." To discuss her latest announcement, as well as the launch of the Women's Justice Board, Nuala is joined by the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers, and Lily Blundell, Head of Community Programmes at the charity, Women in Prison.For this special edition of Woman's Hour, Nuala McGovern travels to Tuam, County Galway in Ireland to visit the site of a former mother and baby home which came to the world’s attention in 2014. It was revealed that up to 796 babies and young children who died in the care of the nuns who ran the home, had been disposed of in a disused sewage tank. Now, more than a decade since the scandal broke, work is starting on a full excavation. Nuala speaks to guests including Paul Forde, a survivor of the Tuam home, whose baby sister's remains may be in the mass grave.When Cathy Hollingworth was first diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, she decided to document her journey through poetry. Now she’s publishing a collection of 22 poems called Getting It Off My Chest. She joins Kylie to discuss the poems and how they helped her get through her treatment, as well as what she hopes others can learn about talking to people with cancer.The London Piano Festival runs at Kings Place from Friday 4 - Sunday 6 October. Nuala is joined by Katya Apekisheva, co-founder of the festival, a Professor of Piano at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, to explore of the lives and music of women piano composers from the last two centuries.Presenter: Kylie Pentelow Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Louise Corley

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, this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Kylie Pentelow. In the next hour, we'll hear from the women who are spending hundreds of pounds a month getting their children to school. These mothers of children with special educational needs and disabilities say their local council won't pay for essential transport to schools that have been recommended for their children's needs. Hair loss, it's something that affects at least a third of women and we'll hear the story of one woman, Katie, who's gone through it and from Michael Douglas, the renowned hair stylist who helps women experiencing it. My hair has always been a bit of a benchmark for my health,

I think, even from being a child. It's kind of been almost like the barometer of how I've been sort of mentally, physically, from sort of having to deal with, there was some childhood trauma. And then the past 10 years, especially, it's been a bit of a roller coaster. There's been this grief,

there's been early perimenopause. That's coming up. Also, following Labour's announcement about the Women's Justice Board, its goal will be to reduce the number of women going to prison. But will it work? And as the London Piano Festival runs this weekend, we'll be celebrating the work of female composers across the last two centuries. Lots to get through, so grab a cup of whatever takes your fancy and settle in for the hour. Now, we have been inundated with comments from you, our listeners, about your struggles getting help for children who have special educational needs and disabilities, known as SEND. This week, we heard about an issue which at first

may sound simple, but women have been telling us that getting appropriate transport to get their children to the right school can be a real challenge and is in some cases making their already stressful lives even more difficult. Mums have told us they're having to give up work or cut their hours because they aren't getting support for travel for their children. An opinion poll from Opinium, commissioned by Woman's Hour for our special programme OnSend last month, revealed 12% of mothers cite the lack of appropriate funded transport as a problem. We heard from the local government and social care ombudsman for England who published a report shared exclusively with this programme about Sandwell Council in the West Midlands. It's been forced to review its entire

school transport policy after it failed to provide transport for a disabled child to get to school. It has apologised to the family and accepted the Ombudsman's findings in full. In this case, the council was breaking the law, but many others say they are strapped for cash. The latest government figures for England alone show they spent £1.3 billion on SEND transport for five to 16-year-olds. So some, like Birmingham City Council, are perfectly legally creating their own policies for SEND children who are not of compulsory school age. Birmingham City Council told us reductions to non-compulsory post-16 transport provision are something that has been seen nationally due to financial and resource pressures.

I spoke to three mothers of children with SEND, Ellie Partridge, Ramandeep Kaur and Sabir Aziz, about the impact that these changes are having on them. Samar SEND's four years old. He's got autism, global developmental delay, sensory processing disorder, ARFID, which is an eating disorder, and pathological demand avoidance. You're spending £60 a week on a taxi to get him to school. Yeah, it's actually £60 a day. £60 a day you're spending £60 a week on a taxi to get him to school? Yeah, it's actually £60 a day.

£60 a day you're spending? Yeah, there and back and then there and back again in the afternoon. Gosh. Why are you spending that and what impact is that having? It's obviously having an impact on mine and my husband's job. We can't work the full hours that we need to work. He can't go to the local mainstream school because of his additional needs. And it's the school named on his EHCP. Which is the plan for his education that needs to meet his needs.

So what have you been told about why that isn't being paid? Because he slips through the net because he's four. He's not compulsory school age. However, if he was to be five next week, for example, he would get it from January, but he'd still be in reception and because he's a July baby, he's not going to be five until July, which has also had a big impact. Well, Birmingham City Council told us that the council recognises that difficult decisions need to be taken in order to protect statutory services for our most vulnerable children and young people in their families.

And it says an extensive consultation was carried out to make parents aware of the changes, which were communicated through schools and other stakeholders. What do you make of that? Were you consulted? We were not consulted at all. We had no idea of this consultation until yesterday, actually. And we were quite shocked. And you're going to appeal tomorrow so what will be your argument here early is that he's obviously got all these additional needs that need to be met and this school is the best school for him that all his

needs are being met and he's happy and that to me is so important and I'm hoping that they offer the transport because there's other children within the postcode that are getting transport and their space on those buses but they're just not not giving us that option unfortunately. Ramandeep your son's kind of at the other end isn't he's 17 and aims to go to college can you just tell us a bit about him? Yes, so I'm a parent to three teenagers and my middle son is 17. He was born with the diagnosis of Down syndrome and he obviously has associated learning disabilities. He has always gone to a specialist school, so primary and secondary, and he's now gone on to the second year of his sixth form in the specialist setting. He was offered a bus pass, I believe. Some people might say that sounds like a good solution. Why wouldn't that work? My son's cognitive abilities mean that he

actually is unaware of dangers. He needs an adult with him at all times. He can't cross the road safely. He actually can't read a bus timetable. He has very poor communication, so he wouldn't be able to ask for help. And actually, when we challenged the council and explained to them that a bus pass simply would not work,

I asked my GP to write a letter and he wrote in the letter that it would endanger my son's life. And that was really chilling to read that. He was offered a personal transport budget. Why doesn't that work for him? Well the transport budget is an offer of 45 pence per mile. My son's school is 10 miles in one direction so you'd be looking at a 40 mile journey in the day and actually the cost for the taxi at the moment is 46 pounds per day. I'm managing to split the cost between another family who are in the same situation as myself. So it doesn't come anywhere near covering the cost at all.

So what do you want to happen? What do you want to change? Well, the route that my son was on previously still exists. There is still a taxi or a minibus going past my house every day. that I will drop everything just to get him to school. And I've not had to do that for my other two children who aren't disabled. So it feels really unfair to me that the expectation is that I will do it for my disabled child. The council's told us it's maintained a level of support that enables families to make their own arrangements and it's been providing additional support to our most vulnerable students and families. Let's go on to Sabia. Sabia, you've recently had a bit of a win, haven't you? A bit of success on your son's transport for school. It's been reinstated. What support does he need to get to school? Yeah, so my son is 18 years old. He is severely learning

disabled and has severe nonverbal autism and epilepsy. He needs full-time support for everything and actually he is two-to-one in the community. His needs are very complex and very severe. And this is clearly evidenced in all the medical reports and all the specialists and professionals that are involved with him. And this is all evidence that was sent to the council when we made the application for him for his transport. And you were also offered a personal transport budget. Why doesn't that work for your son? So my son's been at his current setting for almost 10 years now there was absolutely no change in any of the circumstances regarding his condition or where we live or the placement or anything the only change that came in was the

new policy and his age so a personal transport budget wouldn't work for him because it is quite a paltry amount that they're paying and actually it's evidence that he needs two people with him in the community and that cost doesn't cover that but also there isn't two people available that could do that there's myself and his father we have other dependent children and his father works full time. And I don't see why we should be making sacrifices and, you know, sort of freeing up our time to take him to school. Both of us and my husband potentially giving up his job just so that we can take him to school and bring him back. Well, the council have said that we've given families as much notice as possible and have made support available from the team. In recognition of the current financial climate, the council has not increased the contribution that families on the lowest income make towards their child support.

Ellie Partridge, Ramandeep Kaur and Sabia Aziz speaking there. Birmingham City Council also told us, we appreciate that the revisions recently made to the travel assistance policy are a big change for those families impacted and therefore have increased our highly successful travel training provision to prepare our students for adulthood and those who are working towards independence. Meanwhile, the local government association said that the challenges of home-to-school transport

for children with SEND highlight the broader crisis within the SEND system and they urge the government to commit to long-term SEND reforms which must include funding to address rising transport costs for SEND children. And the Department for Education says it is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise within mainstream schools, which in time will mean fewer children needing to travel a long distance to a school that can meet their needs.

Now for many, hair is more than just part of their appearance. It's a reflection of personality, style, identity and self-expression. But what happens when you start losing it? Hair loss comes in many different forms, from thinning to complete loss. It can happen suddenly or over time, and it's said to affect many women at some point in their lives. Well, in his new YouTube series, Hair Stories, hair stylist Michael Douglas, with nearly 40 years of experience working with women's hair, explores women's unique stories and the personal connection they have with their hair. Nuala was joined by Michael Douglas and Katie O'Callaghan,

who experienced hair loss and ultimately chose to undergo a hair transplant. Nuala began asking Katie if she knew what had triggered it and what that feeling was like. I think my hair has always been a bit of a benchmark for my health. I think even from being a child, it's kind of been almost like the barometer of how I've been sort of mentally, physically, from sort of having to deal with there was some childhood trauma through to lots of things happening in my 20s. And then the past 10 years especially have been a real mixture of um it's been a bit of a

roller coaster there's been this grief and there's been early perimenopause and so just i think big life events that are often out of our control for me i was a bit like almost like a volcano which was always gonna erupt at some point and I got older, my hair took the full force of this build-up of stress and of suppressing a lot of things for a long, long time because it has to go somewhere. So what did you do? I mean, I noticed after COVID my hair fell out quite a lot.

I would say even about 30% of it a couple of months. And I just, every time I pulled the hairbrush through my hair and it just kept coming out or in the shower, it was just mounds of it. It alarmed me, but yours was to a more extreme degree. So I'm just wondering how you felt about it, how you managed it. Well, I felt terrified, I'll be honest. It happens in different stages of my life. A big lot of hair loss happens after I'd had my daughter about nine years ago now.

And I put that down to, oh, you know, lots of people have postpartum hair loss, but mine just seemed to be extreme. And then I was a single parent as well on top of it. So I thought, okay, it's just a lot happening in my life. And I kind of battered it off and hoped that things would get better. And then more hair loss kind of happened again. I lost someone very, very close to me very suddenly. And, you know, grief is like a sledgehammer

and there's no getting away from it. You have to kind of live with it. And, you know, it's very central to your daily life. And for me, again, loads of hair loss. How much, if you don't mind me being brutally frank, how much hair did you lose? How bad did it get? It was really noticeable. So I was hiding my hair loss for a long time using, I was wearing hair scars wrapped up.

I was using hair extensions in my hair. I was styling my hair in certain ways. I was using that spray that you can get that like covers up your roots. You name it. I've tried it. I've bought it. I've used it. I have if there was a gold medal in hiding your hair loss, I would get that medal because I just, you know, hours of my life I've spent trying to cover it up. But what I was shocked about watching hair stories, which is going to be on YouTube and Michael as he speaks to you and others. You didn't tell those closest to you that you were losing it. Why? No, I didn't tell anyone. And it's really, it's very difficult for me to look back on not telling people because I'm really quite an open, talkative person.

And I think talking is extremely healing. The irony is the one thing that I needed to talk about the most, it makes me quite emotional talking about it now, but I just was so embarrassed. And for anyone who's listening to this who you know has any kind of hair loss problems will know that there's there's nothing really like it when you can't even bear your own reflection in the mirror some days and you don't know what to do about it it's such a lonely place and I didn't want to burden those

people closest to me because I thought once I opened up they would then constantly be thinking Katie's dealing with something that's really stressful really worrying to her and I just wasn't ready to go on that journey so I kept everything close because for me I just thought this is probably the easiest option is to almost pretend it wasn't happening for a long time and I you know in honesty, I was praying for a miracle. You know, I was trying everything. I was all these vitamins and, you know, I was coming up with the craziest sort of things

to try and help my own hair. She has the greatest laugh. I put broccoli all over my head one night. You know, I slept upside down off the bed another night trying to get the blood to rush to my head. You know, because when you're desperate... Sure, sure. You will try anything.

And you did have a hair transplant, which we can come back to in a moment. But I want to throw over to you, Michael, because there's various figures that we see, but we know that many women will experience this at some point in their lives. How much do you hear about it from women? An enormous amount.

I mean, during lockdown, one of the things I did is I went live on Instagram every day for half an hour and just offered people hair advice. I had nothing else to do. There were so many people that wanted the advice. And then it was like a massive focus group every day for half an hour of women saying, this is the problem I've got. And I just couldn't believe the amount of people suffering with hair loss.

And there didn't seem to be any good solution out there for them. So I would say probably 200 to 300 DMs a week on Instagram alone of people suffering with hair loss. A lot of it is also just a psychological thing where they feel like they're suffering with hair loss. A lot of it is also just a psychological thing where they feel like they're suffering with hair loss, but they're not. There is actually a symptom called hair awareness where you become so paranoid about the hair in the shower and you start looking at your receding hairline

and then you become so obsessed with it you can't get out of the repeating pattern of worrying about it. So that is a thing. So first of all, I need to establish when I'm speaking to somebody whether they're just suffering with a paranoia around it or whether it's a real problem. But yeah, I mean, it's massive and there doesn't seem to be any good solutions. When I met Katie and I could see, we were in Cyprus and she had this headscarf and I can spot it a mile away really when someone's slightly hiding something with their hair,

because that's what I do. I thought, I've got to ask her about this, you know. And then she went, oh, yeah, well, I've had a hair transplant. I was like, tell me everything, you know. And it was such a great moment to get. I could see her, like, wanting to get this stuff out, you know, all these feelings out. And I was just ready to receive all the information. When I saw the extent of the hair transplant and what she'd been through, I was like, God, is there any way we could tell this story?

Because my two or three hundred people who message me every week about this would value all this information so much. And that's really where hair stories came about. And hair transplant is, of course, might be a step too far for some. It has worked for you and I'm delighted for you for that. But do you, Michael, is there anything that you advise for people whose hair is thinning as a hairstylist? Yes. I found one of mine was beginning to fall out.

I just chopped it. Yeah, OK. Yes, that's a good idea. I mean, what a hairdresser does, what I do is deal with the hair that's there. Yeah. But when you're losing it, going to a hairdresser for advice is not actually that helpful

because if it's not there, there's not a lot they can do with it. What we can do is disguise it and mask it. And there's little tricks like putting a parting in on a diagonal, which separates the hair more evenly on either side of the head. There's ways of making it look a bit thicker, but that's not really addressing the problem. The best thing to do really is go and see a trichologist, which is a kind of doctor of hair and scalp and they will try their very best to determine why you're suffering with the hair loss and if you can get to the underlying problem there that's when you can start to do something about it and that's what Katie did eventually is go and see a trichologist and they've come to the conclusion the best thing was a hair transplant. Yes indeed you know you're not a scientist you're saying go

go and see somebody who is scientific in that particular way. But it is so interesting to hear, Michael, that so many women come to you and that that was part of the issues that they were experiencing. Do you feel it's different, Michael, the way men and women approach hair loss? I was thinking about this this morning and I was wondering, is it different now generationally? I actually don't think it's that different. I mean, I see lots of men, especially young men. This is what I'm thinking, generationally maybe it's different now. And petrified that they're losing their hair.

I mean, I know a young lad is at 18. He is definitely going to be bald by the time he's 25. And actually, a hair transplant wouldn't help him either because by the time you've transplanted the hair, you're losing more than you're transplanting. And then you're essentially taking it from the back and filling up the front, but you're losing it at the back, you know, so you're playing this game. So actually a lot of it is trying to get people to come to terms with the fact that this is happening to them. And there's a great conversation I have with lots of men that are bald. And they said the day I decided it was gone...

To shave. I was set free. And I have never thought about my hair ever since that day. And I... It's unbelievable that I put myself through a 10-year process of letting go of it. Perhaps easier for men to shave their heads than women. Totally.

Women is a completely different game, yeah. Back to Katie. How was the hair transplant uh difficult decision easy decision it took me about at least two years to come to that decision lots of trips to the doctors lots of doing research myself going to different hair specialists thinking of doing a britney straight away get it shaved off just embrace it and i couldn't bring myself to do it so the hair transplant i was very fortunate that i found an incredible doctor in liverpool and very

sympathetic and talked me through um what the process would be but also made me fully aware that there are you know sometimes no guarantees that this is my hair this is the result today but i know myself that i you know the future could be very different for my hair. My hair could fall out again. And that's something that I've had to be open about this now, because if that is my future, I want to embrace it. Katie O'Callaghan and Michael Douglas there. And Hair Stories is on YouTube on Thursdays from 7pm for the next eight weeks. Next, for women, prison isn't working. The words of the Secretary

of State for Justice at last week's Labour conference. Shabana Mahmood said that rather than encouraging rehabilitation, prison forces women into a life of crime. She announced the launch of a Women's Justice Board whose goal will be to reduce the number of women going to prison. As things stand, fewer than 4% of the total prison population are held in women's prisons. Women in prison have tended to commit less serious crimes and are more likely to be a parent compared to men. Every year in the UK, around 17,000 children are affected by maternal imprisonment, many of whom will end up in the care system. Women in prison are also more likely to have been the victim of violent crime,

with around 60% of them having experienced domestic abuse. To digest and discuss this policy announcement, Nuala was joined by Dame Anne Owers. She was the Chief Inspector of Prisons until 2010 and was until last year National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards, which provides oversight of the treatment and care of prisoners, and by Lily Blundell, Head of Community Programmes at the charity Women in Prison. She runs services for women in Manchester, South London and Surrey. Nuala began by asking Dame Anne Owers about that statement, for women, prison isn't working.

Well, I think we've known that for a long time, haven't we? It's 17 years since Baroness Causton produced her review on women in prison, asking for small residential centres nearer to home. It's six years since the previous government produced its female offender strategy, also saying that we needed more community options for women, fewer short sentences. So sadly, this road is paved with good intentions. What we need to see now is some action, because we know that a lot of women in prison, we know about the problems that you've already described for women in prison. We know that over 50% of women who are sentenced to prison are sentenced for less than six months, during which not enough can be done to look at the underlying problems that have got them there, but which does disrupt, as you say, their family life and their chances of rehabilitation. And a recent report by both the probation and prisons inspectorate has made clear that in those short times, not enough can be done to deal with the underlying causes.

So we're not protecting the public. And we're also damaging both women and their families. So it is beyond time that there was a different approach to women. But how do you understand then it not happening? Because in her speech, also the justice secretary said, the shameful fact is we've known this for two decades. Why would now be any different do you think? Well that's of course the question everyone's asking and that means that you've got to put some effort into it. I think what's been clear is that it hasn't had sufficient priority. The focus is often on men's prisons of

course many many more men in prison, more violence. Let me move over to you, Lily. You have experience of working with women who have been in prison, for example, or are at risk of going to prison. How do you see the picture in front of you? It's great news. It was a great day for us, sort of a really big celebration. But as Anne said, you said, we have been talking about this for a very, very long time, and it's been a long time coming. I echo some of Anne's concerns. Why now? Why wasn't it two decades ago?

But it's a good start. And I think for us, it's really good news, but it really needs to be done well. The board really needs to consult with the grassroots organisations, charities like us that have been doing this and championing it for 40 years but most importantly it needs to include women with lived experience of criminal justice system women with lived experience of vulnerability they really need to do this well and do it right and the board needs to be made up of diverse people and it needs to really engage with local communities yes a universal approach to criminal justice, particularly for

women, is useful. But we know that each locality is different, each community is different. And most importantly, each woman is different, and they need a different approach, which is why community services like ourselves and Women in Prison exist. I mean, there will be people who immediately push back on this, right? That say, the reason prison is is there it's as a deterrent um the way to stop the women who are committing crime uh is to have that deterrent in place yes yes absolutely but i think so many of the women that we work with all particularly one we did a bit of study in one prison a women's prison in the uk and over over 70% of them said that they didn't feel safe in the prison. I agree with Anne's point that actually what good does it do

to put people in a prison environment that sets them back such a significant amount of time? We know that self-harm is eight times higher in the women's estate than it is in the men's estate. Prison is not a safe place for women. And we know this. We know that we can do much better work, much more trauma-informed work and women-centred work in the community. And yes, I understand the point around wanting to be a deterrent for further offending. But we know working with women in the community does reduce re-offending.

Does reduce re-offending, because of course that's also the issue that that comes up again and again but I want to get into the issue of self-harm because I was surprised by some of the statistics I was reading in relation to this. Can you expand a little bit on what you found? So the difficulty is that lots of people are being held in prison incorrectly and lots of people... What does that mean? They're held there for reasons that men wouldn't go to prison for and that men potentially would serve a shorter time for or would be in the community for. So if women are being held in prison as a place of safety

because they are unmanageable, it's a term that is used in probation, they're unmanageable in the community, so they're experiencing quite severe mental health, there's not provision for women in the community, they're going to put them in prison as a place of safety for the community but also for themselves we know that that is not a suitable placement we know that we can do more support in the community and in terms of the sort of self-harm rates being so incredibly high the the prison population is yet four%, but the women's experiences in prison is so acute and it's so troubling that, you know, we've got to try this provision of community support.

As Anne said, you know, we're 17 years on for the course of reports that called for community provision. It has been happening and it has been increasing, but it needs to happen more we need to be looking at alternatives to custodies and tapping into um to community services that have been here for a long time that have been working with women for a really long time do you think that that community provision will be ready to go i do think in some areas it's ready to go unfortunately the funding is is so sort of different across all of the uk that some community provisions are ready and equipped um provisions like us we've been around for a really long time. We're very well rooted in our organisations, with partner organisations in our communities

and women with lived experience. So for organisations like us, we are doing this work and we know that we can take it on and we know that we are the best people to be doing it and we know that women are better off working with us than in an inappropriate placement in prison. I think the funding is just the key element to it. But there hasn't been specifics yet

with the Women's Justice Board on exactly funding, for example, timeline. Yeah, and I suppose that's part of the apprehension that I probably share with Anne is that, yes, they want to release this board by spring, but what will that look like and what will it result in? Because ultimately, they're looking at reducing the number of women who are in prison and they're wanting to reduce the number of women's prisons in the UK. Ultimately, to do that, you need to have alternatives to custody, which is a community

provision. So in order to do that, you will need to fund it. One of the problems of course is that whereas prisons are funded centrally and by government a lot of women's centres which we know do fantastic work both preventing women going to prison and working with them instead of them being in prison they depend for over 40 percent of their funding on charities on charitable trusts and so on so there's got to be resilience in that sector. There's got to be reliable, sustainable funding for alternatives in order to create what will be a much better system, both for the women themselves and for society. And forgive me to my listeners for repeating myself, but we haven't had those details yet from the Women's Justice Board. Do you have faith in it? Would you like to be part of it? I think there are other people who can probably, as Lily says,

it's really important to have community representatives there to have representatives from women themselves. I hope it will work, but it's got to have teeth and it's got to have resources. And it's got to make women a much greater priority within criminal justice than they have been. I mean, what we do know is when we focus resources in youth justice away from prisons and into the community, instead of there being well over 2,000 young people in prison, there are now only 440. So we know that actually focusing resources on prevention, on working with the issues in the community, those kind of things can work. I think that reduction of 65%, which I was also reading,

I think it's a good news story that perhaps doesn't always get the headlines. And I think we have other headlines about youth offending. But I think it's really interesting if we take it in that longer historical context of what's happening. But some might ask about the fact that the focus here, obviously, on women and Shabana Mahmood saying it's not working for women in prison.

Is it working for men? Could they not benefit as well from interventions like the ones we're speaking about over the past few minutes? Well, of course, the answer is yes. If we're looking to what prevents offending in the first place, what protects the public in the long term, it's clear that short prison sentences can do very little. I think one of the things, though, is that there are some specific problems with women in prison about the extent of short sentences,

about the underlying problems, and about the generational impact. That means that's a good place to start. A place where we finish. Yes, we're not there yet. What about the most serious female offenders though, Anne? You know, high profile women who've been found guilty of murder, for example. Should they be treated differently to their male peers? Well, there's still the question of dealing with what the underlying problems are. But in terms of whether they're in prison or not, then the same, exactly the same arguments apply to men. If the apprentices are serious, then clearly people, there will be prison sentences and some of them will be long prison sentences. Let me turn back to you, Lily. You have something called conditional cautions. Can you explain that?

Yeah, yeah, of course. So across our Manchester and our South London community services we work in um in the diversion sort of what is what we call it um the preventative model um so it's trying to pick up and support um women at the points where they start getting involved or in touch with criminal justice sort of agencies so conditional cautions is where a police officer would arrest someone and say actually if they didn't have this need that this wouldn't have happened so for example if they didn't have if they had access to the right funds they had the right income they wouldn't have gone and shoplifted so let's not charge them let's discharge them to the local women's centre to address what that need is and try and get them support that they need to try and stop this from happening again effectively what we then do is contact the woman, see if they would like our support,

and see what we can offer them. Basically, that whole system is approached back to women's offending, but trying to catch them at the early intervention point to avoid the criminalisation of women. Do you have specifics on how effective that is? From our perspective, from what I've seen, it's very, very few numbers that we get back around on a probation order or back into prison if we've worked with them and engaged with them at a conditional caution point. I couldn't give you exact numbers, but I know from the nuance of working in Manchester particularly, that actually the numbers are very, very, very

small. And more often than not, women just want to talk about things and they just want to talk through what's happened, which allows them the space to work through what their root cause of the situation that's involved them to be involved in criminal justice rather than the risk of getting them re-back involved because they've not had the chance to work through their circumstances. Lily Blundell and Dame Anne Owers. And if you've been affected by self-harm, please visit our website for more

details on support. And later this month, we'll be hearing from the children and families who are impacted when women are sent to prison. We hear what life is like for children and young people sometimes left to cope alone when their parents receive custodial sentences, and from the relatives and carers who are suddenly made responsible for the children left behind. Now still to come on the programme we'll be celebrating the work of female composers across the last two centuries featured at this weekend's London Piano Festival and remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week just subscribe to the Daily Podcast for free

via BBC Sounds. My next guest has chosen a creative way to record her journey through breast cancer. Cathy Hollingworth was first diagnosed two years ago, and she wrote poetry that documented what she was feeling and thinking. Now she's releasing 22 of those poems in a collection called Getting It Off My Chest, which details her experience of going through treatment and life in general. Cathy is currently cancer free and she joined me in the studio. So poetry, is that something you've always written? Never so determinedly as through this journey. I started, I should say, I should say, the first thing I should say, I think, is that there are two things it's hard for people to hear. One, when you tell them you've got cancer. The other, which is possibly harder

and scarier, you've been writing poems about having cancer. It's tricky. I've seen some very panicked expressions on people's faces. But I started, as you know, I mean, I've been through lumpectomy, mastectomy, lymph node clearance, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and I'm on drugs now for a long time. But as you say, I'm cancer free, which is fantastic. I started writing the poems because I didn't want to forget what was happening to me. You know, a lot. I was going through a lot. I was going through so much. I didn't want to write a diary. I was a bit too lazy to do that, actually, to do that consistently. And the poems were a way of allowing me to really focus on the words and to contain the experience, you know, absolutely in perfect precision.

And it was words, you know, so many times people said things to me along the way and the words stayed with me. I don't think there's a cancer patient who hasn't heard the words, I'm sorry, it's cancer. And those are the words that start the poem unlucky numbers um the other phrase in that poem you're unlucky when they discovered that my lymph nodes had cancer um and I once that started once I started feeling oh gosh there's so much here I started squirreling those words and phrases away there's my oncologist, it was about a week after my

first chemo. And I saw her and she said, you're looking very perky after what we've thrown at you. And I was a little bit Yeah, you know, maybe I can maybe I can get through this. Maybe I can sail through chemo. But then a week after my second chemo, my hair's coming out in handfuls. My nose is full of blood every morning I have a massive nosebleed my tongue is covered in ulcers my taste has completely gone everything tastes horrible not so perky that's when I wrote that so and cancer runs in your breast cancer has run in your family has yes when I was my diagnosis came when I was 62. It was exactly the same age that my mother was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Actually, she was in this very studio, I think, talking to Jenny Murray on Women's Hour about breast cancer.

She was a particular ambassador for the charity Breast Cancer Now in the early days. So that's, in fact, we may get onto that, that the collection isn't just about sharing the experience, but it is about raising some money as well for cancer charities of which breast cancer now is one yeah absolutely that's that's where the the money from from any sales is exactly is going to i just wonder if you can read uh one of your poems and it's it's the way people kind of talk to you and and see you at the time yes well I wanted to say something about language and

the poem I've I've I'm going to read is is is how I imagine how I wondered when I was going through chemo and you you're not the person you were you're somebody different physical changes have happened you know I was bald and and all of that but you're you are a different person and I I did wonder whether people might be slightly frightened about coming to see me whether there was whether they were anxious how what was I going to be like was I going to be actually dying you know in front of them um so that's why I wrote this poem I've got something else to say about language as well but shall I read the poem first so it's called on thinking About Going to Visit Someone With Cancer.

Will she be bald? I hate a hairless head. I hope to God she has a hat on. Will she be crying? Will she talk about dying? Tell me how long she's got until she'll probably be dead. Will she show me her scar? The place where bits should be but aren't.

Will she be terribly frail and grey will she just look at me sadly and have nothing to say no conversation no animation just cancer too scary I don't think I could bear it I'll probably just text it's so powerful it's interesting that you say that you were worried about what other people would be worried about saying. It's a natural impulse to want to cheer them up, to be jolly. Oh, great. You know, you've got through that. That's wonderful. You know, you're far down the line.

And sometimes trying to respond like that, it undermines the experience in a way. I mean, I understand nobody wants you to feel rotten. Everyone wants you to be well. And that's a chivvying way of helping you through but one of the things that was the most helpful for me when I was going through it was when someone said you are having a rotten time it is rubbish you know goodness me I don't know how you're coping so maybe you didn't want oh it'll all be fine. No, I didn't want that. I understand where it comes from, but it's hard, it's a good way in. Wasn't there one situation where somebody asked you

specifically about what your prognosis was? Yes, I didn't know this person very well. It was after I'd had my surgery and before my chemo when I'd had a short haircut in advance of, you know, the idea that I was going to lose my hair, which of course I did. And she called across the road to admire my haircut and I thought oh well I'll tell her and I told her that I had the diagnosis and straight out she said oh what's your prognosis and I mean I I was reeling it was as if she'd said when are you going to die

um and so if I'm giving advice about what to say to people, don't go with that. What did you say? I think I said, well, I'm not going to die just yet. You know, I didn't quite know what to say. No one before or since has asked me that. When I was reading your poetry, I was laughing out loud a couple of times.

Oh, good. I'm glad you said that. Good. Because obviously it's a really serious subject, but you made me laugh. I'm so pleased because I was going to say they're not all doom and gloom. So thank you. I think, you know, British people are brilliant, aren't they?

In the darkest moments of making something funny. And you've done that. Was that a conscious thing? I can't help it. Yes. Yes. Well, it helped me. It helped me to cope with it.

You know, you can't go dark, dark, dark, dark, dark and then still rise up. So you have to find a bounce back, if you like. Cathy Hollingworth there. And Getting It Off My Chest is available as an e-book to buy on Apple Books and on Amazon. This week, we broadcast a special programme from TUME in County Galway in Ireland, where we visited the site of a mother and baby home, which came to the world's attention long after it closed. In 2014, it was revealed that up to 796 babies and young children

who died in the care of the nuns who ran the home had been put into a disused sewage tank. Work is now starting on a thorough excavation of the site, but DNA from relatives will be needed to identify any remains that are found. One relative who's already given his DNA is Paul Ford. He's 79 years old and was himself born in the Tum mother and baby home. Nuala began by asking him if he was always aware that he was born there. No, not really until later.

Do you have memories of being in there? Not a iota. Nothing? Brainwashed, I was. What age were you when you left? I'd be about four and a half. Maybe I was five, you know, but I don't remember even coming into the new foster parents.

My foster family were a lovely family. I was one of the lucky ones. And they did everything that they could for me and let me short of nothing. Clothed me and fed me and I went to school. And so you had a full education then? No, not really. My education was very, very poor.

Actually, when I closed the door behind. My education was very, very poor. Actually, when I closed the door behind me when I was 13, I was illiterate. I wasn't able to read or write. At 13? Yeah. But I was a self-educator and I learned how to read and write. Good for you. Yeah. But after coming out of the home,

it struck me in my mind, I don't know why, but apparently they were Londoners songs in the home. And they used to ask me to sing a song every night by foster parents before I'd go to bed. And the song I used to sing was Patsy Fagan. Oh, I know that song. Do you? Hello, Patsy Fagan.

I'll sing it for you now. Okay. Hello Patsy Fagan, you're the apple of my eye. Hello Patsy Fagan, you can hear the guldog cry. You're a decent boy from Ireland that no one can deny. With the harem scare and the dim-wake harem's apple of my eye. Lovely job. I only know that bit.

That's all I know. That's all I know, but I have to say, you sing it a lot better than I do. I remember that itinerants used to camp down the way from us and they might come looking for food, begging. And if they got nothing in the house, if they get them nothing on the particular day, they were calling me a homebird. They knew where I came from.

A homebird, is that the term they'd use? That was what they called me, that I was out from the home in June, the homebird. But I remember when I was going to masses, well, other pupils, certain ones, would take advantage of you and they'd start prodding me and stabbing me. And not one senior ever told them to stop, you know. Do you think then that the people around you, society,

looked down on children that were from the home? Yeah, they did, yes. Paul, when did you decide to search for your birth mother? I tried at an early age. But a few years down the road, I met this nurse. I asked him to find out all he could about my mother. And he came out of the house one evening and he said, we found her mother and we know where she is and you can call to see her.

But he said, you cannot call for a week. Well, that was as long as 10 years because I thought something was going to happen before I'd see her. You had to wait a week, but it felt like 10 years. Yes. And where was she? She was in the Magdalene home in Galway. So what had been a Magdalene laundry that had turned into a home?

That's right, that's right, that's correct, yes. And before she died, I was in her company for about nine years. Oh, OK. So when you met her, what age were you? What age was she? 45 from 80 years. 43? Yeah that's the age I was. So your mum in her 70s probably at that stage but what did she tell you? Did she tell you anything about you being born or what she had to do? No she did tell me certain things that were very beneficial to me down the road. She told me her two cousins and I met them.

Now, at the particular time I met her, I noticed that she was getting a little bit of dementia. But I was quizzing her up too about my father and that wasn't forthcoming for some reason. But eventually she did tell me five or six years down the road. I brought in all my family to see her and all our brothers and things like that. But there was one particular time I brought in my two sons

and on our way out, one of my sons, he would be about six, now he said, I know, for I've got my brown eyes. So there was the resemblance. Yeah. And she had stayed, is that right, Paul, in an institution, like in the laundries all her life? That's correct. She told me, I said, what were you working at?

She said, I was folding sheets. So in the actual laundry. She was folding sheets. That's what she said, yes. I had a sister as well that I didn't know about. And she was born in 1942 and she died in 1944. And she's put into that. Into the mass grave?

Yes, she's there and I have my DNA I have that done and if the fine bones and my DNA matches her I'm going to take her hopefully and I'm going to bury her and I'm going to allow her mother

and if I don't, my family knows and my family will do it for me. That's really quite something. Did your sister have a name, do you know? Oh, she did. Ellen. But your mum never mentioned Ellen. Oh, never, never, never mentioned anything.

Well, you see, she had my sister in 42 and I was born in 45. And the mother had had two children. That was punishment for them to send her to the Magdalene home in Galway. So she was unmarried, she had the second child, and then this harsh punishment of being sent to the Magdalene laundry. Yes, yes, yes. But I do remember one thing that a nurse told me, or a nun said, that every morning when she went to Mass, she lit two candles.

So that will tell you that she knew. Of the two children of you and little Ellen. Yeah, that's right. And that's only about two months ago I found that I had a sister. How was that when you heard that? No one ever told me. There was a second child and all that was through Catherine. Catherine Corliss, yeah.

Catherine Corliss is mighty. She is mighty, isn't she? Yeah, and she did everything for me. My mother, God rest her, I took her to my hometown to be buried in Kilkerton. And my wife is next door. And that's where my sister is going to be buried if they find a body. Paul Ford talking to Nuala there from our special programme on the Tum Baby scandal in Ireland

10 years on. You can catch up with the whole hour on BBC Sounds. It's the episode for Monday 30th September. And if you're here in the UK and believe you're related to one of the children buried at Tum, the excavation and identification team

want to hear from you. Do go to the Woman's Hour website where you'll find details of how to contact them. And while you're there, we'd also invite you to share your story with us by sending us an email via the Contact Us tab. Now, the London Piano Festival is running this weekend. Half of the programme is dedicated to celebrating the work of female composers across the last two centuries. To explore the lives and music of some of the

women, Nula was joined by Katia Apekisheva, a co-founder of the festival and professor of piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Nula began by asking Katia about the range of composers featured. We're very passionate about discovering new music and indeed there are some fantastic female composers who have been forgotten for a long time. Charles Owen and myself, we are co-artistic directors of London Piano Festival. We are going to perform works by Mel Bonice and Cécile Chaminade. Let's talk about Mel Bonice for a moment. Tell us about her music and her dramatic life story. Yes, she was quite an important figure in French late Romantic period.

So she lived in end of 19th century, beginning of 20th century. And she went to Paris Conservatoire where she got some tuition from César Frank, where she fell in love with fellow musician, which her parents really didn't approve of, taking her out of conservatoire. And then she married a wealthy, much older man, had children with him.

And later in life, she again met her first love and began an affair with him. And she became pregnant with her lover's child. And somehow, amazingly, she managed to hide her pregnancies from her husband and gave birth in secret and gave up her child to her former maid who raised her child, but somehow kept connection with her daughter, with her daughter not knowing that was her mother. And later on, Mel Bonisse's son fell in love with that illegitimate daughter. And so she had to very dramatically reveal that they were related. That was Katia Apekisheva and the London Piano Festival runs at King's Place until tomorrow. Coming up on Monday's programme, actor Kush Jumbo has reprised the role of Lady Macbeth alongside David Tennant in the Shakespeare play, which has just transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. She joins Nuala to discuss how she's approaching one of Shakespeare's most famous female characters.

So do join Nuala on Monday for that. But for now, from me, thank you very much for listening. 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.