Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Women’s Prize winners, Clare Connor, SEND, Weight, Mum’s poem in son’s exam

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

This week, two debut authors received the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-Fiction, each worth £30,000, respectively. Anita Rani spoke to the two winners, novelist Virginia Evans and Lyse Doucet, known to listeners as the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent.The Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup has begun. Nuala McGovern talked to Clare Connor, former England women’s captain, now the outgoing Managing Director of England Women. Over her 18 years in the job, Clare has overseen the professionalisation of the women’s game as well as a big boost in grassroots participation.The government has announced how it is planning to roll out quicker and easier access to educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and occupational therapists for SEND families. Nuala spoke to the Schools Minister Georgia Gould and Principal Educational Psychologist for Salford, Claire Jackson, about the upcoming Experts at Hand programme.Last week, Hannah Murray, who played Gilly in Game of Thrones, told Anita that during the final season of the show, the papers wrote she was pregnant - when she wasn't. Hannah said that maybe this was the only acceptable way for a woman in the public eye to gain weight. Following a strong listener response, we discussed if there is a right way to talk about women’s weight. Anita was joined by Alex Light, a body confidence activist and author and Dr Dolly Van Tulleken, food policy researcher, policy consultant and visiting researcher at the MRC epidemiologist unit in Cambridge University.Have you ever had one of those moments when life feels so circular that you just can’t believe it? A 'once-in-a-lifetime synchronicity' is what the poet Emily Cullen called it when she discovered that a poem she had written seven years ago, inspired by her eight year old son, turned up on the English exam paper he was sitting in Ireland. Anita caught up with Emily and son Lee.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The Signal Awards recognise the podcast that define culture and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team and stand out.

The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the program. Coming up, the winners of the Women's Prize, 2026 for fiction and nonfiction, Virginia Evans and Leicester set. Claire Connor, the woman who transformed cricket in England and Wales, she's leaving her role at the England and Wales Cricket Board after this summer's T20 Women's World Cup that kicked off yesterday. We continue our conversations on send with the school's minister, Georgia Gould,

as part of the government's changes to the English system. They're promising more experts at hand, so specialist support for children. And the poet Emily Cullen, who discovered that a poem she'd written seven years ago inspired by her son when he was eight turned up last week on his English exam. But first, the Women's Prize for Fiction

was founded 31 years ago by the novelist Kate Moss after a major literary prize released a short list of books that contained no female authors at all. The non-fiction award was added three years ago after the Women's Prize Trust found that nonfiction books by women are less likely to be reviewed and less likely to be shortlisted or win prizes than books by male authors in the same space.

Their research has also found that the gender pay gap has increased in the past five years for women writing non-fiction. Well, on Thursday, at an elegant, if slightly inclement, garden party in London's Literary Heartland of Bloomsbury, two debut authors received the Women's Prize for Fiction and nonfiction, each worth £30,000 respectively. The two winners were novelist Virginia Evans and Leicester Set,

known to us here as the BBC's chief international correspondent, and they both joined me yesterday in the Woman's Hour studio, and I started by asking them both how they felt. I feel like it will take me a long time to absorb the feeling, but primarily I just feel so thankful to the judges who took the time to read all of those books and to see what I wrote and to see the value in it. Lise, congratulations, the energy in that room

and the women in that room, Electric. How are you feeling? From start to finish, the women's prize has been one big hug. Thrilled to be on the long list, stunned to be on the short list. There are literary giants on my list. So for me, it was just a wonderful, wonderful hug from this great community of writers, but also of readers.

And unlike Virginia, I always, I feel overwhelmed by it. And touched that the judges saw something about a book, about a place that seems so far away in every way in the plight of women and girls, but that the judges found in it something more universal, something which had meaning and joy and something that they felt was worth reading.

Well, let's talk about the books and what the judges had to say, Because, Lisa, your book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, was described by one of the judges as an epic tale of life throughout the rise and fall and rise of the Taliban, cleverly told through the lens of the staff of the infamous hotel intercontinental.

I found it incredibly human and readable. So tell us why you made that particular hotel, the focal point of the book. In our news business, there is this phrase now about news avoidance that we find the news so grim and glum. I find I turn away from, dare I say it, on Radio 4, turning away from Radio 4 in the World Service

to listening to Radio 3. Classical music. Oh, relax. But of course we're citizens and we do need, we want to know what's happening in the world around us because what's happening so far away is not far away at all. So I wanted to explore a different kind of storytelling.

And when I first began traveling many, many, actually decades ago, I had found myself turning to novels, turning to narrative nonfiction, to immerse myself in a place and time, where history literally comes alive on the page. I read Freedom at midnight when I was living in Pakistan during the partition of the Indian subcontinent. And some people in this book,

which was written like a novel, although it was real history, they were my friends in Pakistan. And I thought, this is living history. And so it was a risk. It's a risk. And I say to all authors, would be authors, want to be authors out there. And Virginia certainly knows this story.

And I wanted to see if I could, I had to learn how to write in a different way. And I had, so I tried to use a familiar prism, a hotel. Let's be honest. I'm sure even women's hours listeners love a luxury hotel. Never mind that it became the worst hotel. A familiar prism to tell what can be for many an unfamiliar story. And the hotel has never closed its doors despite the decades of conflict.

The hotel itself is a person in my book because I think all of us, you know, buildings carry history within their walls. They become to epitomize certain places and times. their memory palaces. And it was, I was, so in a country where hospitality is hardwired, I thought the home of hospitality, the first international luxury hotel, a hotel which was my first home in Kabul for nearly a year when I first went there in the depths of the Cold War and the harshest winter in Kabul in decades. And that for all of the buildings which came crashing down were gutted and ravaged by one war after the other,

the Intercontinental Hotel is still standing proud on that hill on the western verge of Kabul. And, you know, it's balconies, 200 balconies like eyes looking out over the city, bearing witness and then becoming a victim of the war. The book is subtitled to People's History of Afghanistan. And one of those people whose stories he tell is Abida, who became the first female chef at the hotel. Would you read a little to introduce us to her? Abada has no formal education. She has no, she can't read.

can barely write, but her superpower is in her hands. Wow, she can cook. Oh, she tells her stories in the traditional embroidery of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, where illiterate women have always told their stories through their embroidery. Abada Nazeri, chef, seamstress, widow, mother of eight children, had been the first woman to sign up for a job at one of the government-owned hotels. She had dazzled the intercons new foreign. She had dazzled the Intercon's new and managers with her mouth-watering Afghan dumplings. They had never tasted Montu and Ashak before, had never even heard of them. They gushed over the plump pockets of pasta, stuffed with onion-y Afghan leaks,

and finely chopped meat and onions, smothered in a velvety, garlicky yogurt sauce. She was hired on the spot. Last week, the day she was sacked had been another of her darkest days. Abada had never imagined it would happen to her, not in a hotel where they respectfully called her Madarjan, dear mother. Feels incredibly poignant, given what we know, about the restrictions placed on women.

I mean, it's only five years ago. Unbelievable. Five years. They returned. You must have done stories at that time. So many. And women have been erased from public life. They feel forgotten.

And in many ways they are for it. It slipped from our news. It briefly makes an appearance when something terrible happens. And sadly, all too many terrible things happen. And that's the world in which we lived. And I hope this book can draw more people. Do we know what's happened? What has happened to Abida?

Yeah, Abida is still there. She didn't get her job. She was actually sacked before the Taliban came to power on August 15, 2021, because the hotel was losing money and they had to do cost cutting. So I stay in touch with her. She's, you know, she sadly lost one of her. daughters to sickness that had plagued her for all of her life. And Abida suffers from many aches and ailments, but she still maintains her optimistic and

full of spirit. So we stay in touch. She's not physically well, but she tries to find that everyday courage to keep going. Well, from the non-fiction book of a foreign correspondent to the fictional book, The Correspondent. I love the title of your book. It's a great title of it. Of course. It can go in many ways. Sort of mysterious.

It's been called a sleeper hit because it came out last year. Climb to the top of the New York's bestseller list. One of the judges said that your novel was immediately original, incredibly compelling, and has real emotional heft. It's structured as a series of letters written and received by an elderly former lawyer named Sybil Van Antwerp. A great name. Why did you want to tell the story through letters and through her eyes? I started with the thought that I wanted to tell a story in letters because I had read. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanf. And that book is a memoir and it's letters from this academic, you know, intelligent reader in New York City. And she's looking for these very obscure books. And she can only find them at this bookshop on Charing Cross Road. And so she develops this, you know, this relationship with a, with a bookstore, basically. You know, it's, it feels like it's relationships between people, but it's this relationship that starts with her looking for these books.

And the book is very short. It's very beloved. And it's very quick to get through. And I finished the book and I thought, you know, I was at the moment where I was ready to write something new. I had a book out on submission and it wasn't selling. And so I got that book and I finished it and I thought, okay, I would like that to be longer. I wished it had never ended. I thought the book was perfect.

So then I thought, how big of a story could you tell in letters? Could you really tell a sprawling story? Could you tell a story that crosses the world? Could you tell a story that is a whole life? And so that was part of it. And then this character, this woman, Sybil, sort of came to me. And she was fully herself and I knew her and I knew exactly what she thought and I knew exactly what she would say. I also knew what she was haunted by.

I knew and I knew that her life felt closed, but that I wanted it to open as she was aging. And so I started with the first letter And it's still the first letter of the book. And it was really organically written. I wrote it kind of letter to letter. And, you know, the exercise of trying to keep the narrative tight and keep the story tight, but also let it sprawl in some way. And so it did feel like a dance to kind of keep it tight,

but let it breathe. Shall we hear some taste of Sybil's correspondence? So this is a rare. email that Sybil, so Sybil's 73, and she's sent to a former colleague on the subject of their co-worker's funeral. That's right. This is a good one. Dear James, were you invited to the funeral? They're finally getting around to it six months later, and by invitation, as if it's the royal wedding. He must be ashes by now. Doubt they've kept the old shell on ice for half a year. It's uncouth. It bothers me. It honestly does. Makes me think I need to have a conversation with my

own children. Anyway, it gets worse. Liz asked me to speak at the service. Speak, dear God, the horrors never cease, as if getting there wasn't enough of a task, so do let me know if you'll attend, if you were invited. If you were not invited, perhaps you could come along as my plus one. I'd rather not drive out to Frederick alone is what I'm getting at, James, and Bruce is taking his children on a skiing trip to Colorado,

and it would be good of you to pick me up. Do get back to me, warm regards, Sybil. Well, Sybil sounds like a character. Where did she come from? You know, she came sort of out of the organic matter of women I have known and, you know, women close to me and my aunts and women I have worked with. And then I met a woman. We were hoping to buy her house. And this woman brought us to her house and she took us on a tour through the house. And she was very like Sybil in that she was at a certain age and she was living alone and her children were grown. And, you know,

meeting her, I just had this kind of spark of a thought of, you know, you see someone, let's just say at their front door and you, and this is the way we encounter most people. You have one snap moment to meet someone and have your opinion fully formed. But when you go inside someone's house, and I mean this literally in this case, but also figuratively, you know, you go inside someone's house and you look around and you take time and you start to see the things on the wall. and hear the stories and see the photographs, it opens up, you know, what has been and what a whole life looks like. And so I met this woman, her name's Anne, and she took us through her house. And it was, it was marvelous. You know, she's walking us through the house and saying, you know, this painting was from when we lived in this country. And this book was signed by Seamus Haney because he, you know, came to my house, you know, all these different things. And I left that day and I thought, that's it. There's something in that, you know, this desire to take, go through the very narrow door of the snap

and then go inside the house and open it up and reveal, yeah. Which is what you've both done in your books. How significance is the prize in the national year of reading for both of you, for your own work and for women's writing more broadly, Lees? The women's prize is very special. And there are people who say, why should there be a women's prize? But Virginia and I are not here because we're women. We're here because we're writers and first published writers.

And that's how we first want to be known. The Women's Prize is a great excuse for women to come together to celebrate that I don't have a gendered view of reporting that women report differently from men. But I always see as part of who we are. And journalism is defined. And I think writing is defined by the kind of questions we ask and literally what we see in a room and what we don't see. And sometimes we see things differently. And I hope it sends a signal to all those wannabe writers out there because writing is a solitary business and you're left alone with your doubts.

In my case, it was, can I write a book? Well, I like writing a book. I loved writing a book. Love words. And most importantly, what will the readers say when they reach the book? So may we both stand as a testament, especially you, Virginia, your story is just draw dropping. Your determination.

You knew you would do it one day. That just keep going. Just keep going. Least de Sets and Virginia Evans. Virginia Evans' book, The Correspondent and Leicester Sets book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, A People's History of Afghanistan, are both available now. Now to a woman who's being called one of the most influential figures in cricket, Claire Conner, the managing director of England Women's Cricket, will leave the job after this summer. And what a way to go as England and Wales hosts the ICC Women's T20 World Cup.

It began yesterday at Edgebaston, England, Scotland and Ireland are all taking part. When Nula spoke to Claire earlier this week, she started by asking her, what is it about this moment in time for the women's game? I think it's lots of things. I think it's the wider women's sport movement, the success that we've seen from the lionesses,

the red roses in their high-profile competitions. I think it's the fact that women's cricket now is really breaking into the mainstream. We've got more professional players around the world than ever before. and a game that's in rude health, you know, 12 teams taking part, including Ireland, for the first time, you know, 12 team tournament. And the coverage and reach of that tournament will hopefully inspire more boys and girls, particularly girls, of course, to follow the game.

So how do you see the England women's chances? I think we've got a great chance. I've obviously watched the team progress over the last 18 months, particularly. After a difficult ashes last winter, we've made some changes to our leadership of the team and we're getting better and better and that's exactly what you have to do. We've had good series wins against New Zealand and India in the last couple of weeks in this format. We're clear on, you know, getting really clear on what our strongest team is. It's real competition for places and we're ranked second in the world. You know, you mentioned 18 months there and some of

the changes that have come in but you're coming to the end of 18 years in the game which it must be quite incredible to look back on that time, but also hosting this tournament, and I can hear the excitement in your voice and how pivotal you feel it is for the game as you come to the end of your role. Yeah, that's right. 18 years sort of overseeing the women's game from a wholly amateur game to now fully professional. And before that, you know, I played for England for 10 years. So really, it's nearly 30 years of being completely immersed in it. And it's been the biggest privilege to have been part of all of those changes, all of that progress, greater in the game. I've loved it, but all good things come to an end. And I think the ending this

summer, you know, it'll be a fitting celebration this summer of where the women's game is. And so that's why I think this summer is a really good time to sort of say, say goodbye for a little bit. And I feel that the game now, not just at England level or even professional domestic level, but at every kind of touch point in the game, whether it's coaching, umpiring, playing in a pathway team, playing in community teams, playing in a club setting. There is opportunity everywhere now for women and girls in the game. And I think, you know, collectively everyone should be really proud of that because progress, particularly over the last five years, has been extraordinary.

Let me run through some of the aspects that you have brought up. You alluded there to the team and like having the best team. What needed to change? Because we mentioned the Ashes defeat. You announced an urgent review into the England women's game. In broad strokes, what were the changes you? needed to happen. Well look, it was nearly 18 months ago and sport moves on very quickly, doesn't it?

You know, there were just a few key areas that we were really letting ourselves down in. And so we addressed those. We did a very thorough review of, as you mentioned, that sort of got presented to our board. And we made some changes. We made some changes in terms of the leadership personnel of the team. We made some changes about how we went about things. And, you know, I think critically, the critical role, really, for any, elite sports team is the head coach role. We brought in Charlotte Edwards into the role about 14, 15 months ago.

She's the world's best head coach in the women's game, you know, second to none. Former England captain, World Cup winner, Ashes winner, coached all over the world in Australia and India. And the timing was perfect to bring her in into that role. And she's made an enormous difference. So, yeah, we're tracking in the right direction now, lots of the areas that we focused on. We've seen real improvement in, which is really pleasing going into such. an enormous event this summer. And a new captain as well. Yes, that's right.

Let's talk a little bit more about her, Nat's Iverbrunt. She's in the role for about a year now. Just over, yeah. Tell me a little bit about her journey. Nat's an amazing young woman. She's a mum. She's got a little boy who's just over a year old. She had probably quite a similar journey to many of us in the game.

She started playing boys cricket. She was very talented young sportswoman. She could have probably picked football, hockey, tennis. golf, to be honest. I think she ended up playing for Epsom Boys' first 11 when she was 17 or 18 and then shortly thereafter kind of burst onto the England stage. She's, in my view, she's the best all-rounder in the world,

certainly, you know, one of the best top order batters in the world, very humble and we're glad to have her back. She's been injured for a little while. She's missed these last couple of series against New Zealand and India, but it's good to go, ready for this week. But you talk there about that big arena, so to speak, and the pressure that there can be on players,

and we'll talk about moving from amateur to professional in a moment. But what sort of support is in place for those players? Oh, well, any sort of support you could possibly imagine, whether it's around sort of psychology and wellbeing, whether it's around nutrition, science and medicine, medical. We've got a women's sport research group trying to really gather at speed, research and data into specific women's injuries,

pelvic health. So it is an environment now that supports the players, pays the players very equitably and I believe is setting them up for success. Because I mentioned as well, we do know that Sophie Eccleston. She did take time after the ashes for mental health reasons, but there is support in place to help

because I'm just thinking of the pressure that comes obviously with being in the global spotlight. Yeah, we have all of that support in place and the players know the channels to access that support. I would say we've got an empathetic environment that sort of strikes the right balance between empathy but also high performance

and that's sometimes a tricky balance to strike where you're sort of pushing players and, you know, wanting... As hard as you can, probably. As hard as you can and you're wanting performance and you want, you know, for them. You want them as individuals and as a team to hit their potential.

So getting the right support systems in place is really important. And perhaps that is easier if they are professional. You know, looking back over your years, one of your money achievements was seeing the move from amateur to professional. Tell me why that matters and what difference it makes to the woman who is playing. Yeah, look, it matters for lots of reasons, not just sort of equality, which is very important,

but it matters to those players at the top end and it matters to little girls looking at our sport. It matters to players at the top end because they feel valued, properly remunerated, and they feel like cricket can be their sole focus. And therefore, there are enough hours in the day to get better and to reflect and to constantly be improving as cricketers. That's ultimately why professional sport, you know, has, you know, the professionalisation of all sport has yielded such an uptick in performance. You know, when I played the game, I was played for England for 10 years.

I was completely amateur. I combined it with being an English teacher, doing a bit of media work. and yeah, I didn't earn a penny for 10 years. And now our players are earning probably more than any other women's, most women's sports stars or teams in this country. But it also really matters for the grassroots of the game and for girls and women embarking on the game because it shows them that cricket values women and girls

to the extent that it has always valued men and boys. And that's really important in aspiration and feeling included. We mentioned you had a successful career playing cricket, became England's captain, winning the Ashes in 2005. How different was the game back then? Oh, well, it was, yeah, sort of unrecognisable, really, as I've said, in that we were all amateur.

We were only together as an England team for probably 50 odd days a year compared now to, you know, some years our England players are together for maybe 120, 5, 140 days a year. We didn't have the sort of structures underneath us or the support around us, but we still, I suppose, the common thread was a love of the game,

a love of playing for England, and a real drive to sort of be the best that we could be. But the game itself is unrecognisable from then. Yeah, because as we've talked about, it's growth. But, you know, there are other parts, even away from the cricket pitch. For example, I'm just thinking back. to the 90s when you weren't allowed in the long room at Lords that I managed to have a peek in when I was there which is beautiful ornate, historic, a place you want to be. When I first played

for England at Lords in 1997, I was 21. Women weren't allowed in the long room yet I was an England player playing at Lords at the home of cricket with all its kind of meaning and tradition. And then as you say, you know, I became the first female president of the MCC 25 years later or whatever. So I've seen enormous change. I mean, how did it feel to love something so much that parts of it still didn't love you or want you? Yeah, well, it didn't feel great. But I think back then we were grateful. We were grateful to be playing at Lords. We were grateful to be playing for England and to be having these amazing opportunities touring the world, albeit as amateurs. So, you know, we were optimistic and we, you know, we seized the opportunities.

that we did have. And it's thanks to the likes of, you know, the late Rachel Hayho Flint and lots of people who supported her at the MCC that women were eventually allowed to become members of MCC. I'm speaking at an MCC members event. I think there's over 100 people coming next week to celebrate the fact that women are, you know,

are included throughout the MCC as a club now. And yeah, you know, Lords this summer will be a real home for women's cricket. It'll host games during the World Cup. It'll host the Women's World Cup final on the 5th of July, which is selling out fast. And then it'll host a week later the first ever women's test match at Lords between England and India. So, you know, it is, as I said at the beginning, it is an enormous privilege to be able to reflect back on the standing of the women's game and women in cricket, you know, when I was a player 30 years ago or so through to where we are now. That was Claire Conner, managing director of England women's cricket. And if you want to keep up with the Women's T20 World Cup coverage,

every match will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 5 Live and across the BBC Sport website and app. The Signal Awards recognise the podcast that define culture and being honoured by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations

which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Now, back in February, the government's announced a long-awaited overhaul of services for children with special educational needs and disabilities in England. Some of their proposals were subject to a consultation period, now closed and will require legislation.

One thing that will start sooner, they say, is the process of making it quicker and easier to see the experts who can best judge your child's needs. These are the educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and specialist teachers, all vital cogs in the machine, but too often,

short-staffed and overstretched, thereby triggering huge delays in children getting vital support. Well, the government believes it can sort this all-out with its Experts at-hand program, and it's just announced the rollout to local areas for September. Nula was joined by school's minister Georgia Gould and Claire Jackson, principal educational psychologist for Salford in Greater Manchester.

She began by asking Georgia, what the Experts at-hand program is. I've spoken to families around the country and as you said one of the things I hear time and time again is that there's a massive battle for support, waiting lists, you feel like you have to go through all these hoops and bureaucracy and meanwhile you're seeing your child fall further and further behind and we want to shift that.

We want to put support in much earlier. So the experts at hand service is a new service. We're putting 1.8 billion into building it up and it is a service of all the kind of workforce that you talked about that will be. be working directly wrapped around schools. So supporting teachers, doing direct intervention with groups of children, building up the capacity of schools. And really critically, none of that will require a diagnosis or an external referral. It will be a partnership between those

services and schools. So faster in that respect, you mentioned the 1.8 billion for use from this September. But when do you think somebody might see an expert at hand at their school? So this year we're putting in 429 million, so that's the first big investment, tranche of investment. And we expect to see it starting from September, but it's a new service that will be building up. And part of that investment is more resource into training to bring new people into the system. But when I've been talking to speech and language therapists, educational psychologists around the country, I know they're very much gearing up. I'm in Rochdale talking to their teams about the support that they're pulling together.

So I know they're kind of really working at the moment with schools to set up this new service and make sure that we're starting to see it from the new school year. We've spoken many times on Send in the Spotlight, our podcast on these issues. And something that came up again and again was the issue of recruitment and retention. You talk about bringing in a raft of new people. But where are they coming from? Yeah, so we're putting 40 million into training. But training who?

Training who? Training people who are coming forward. we're actually seeing a really good pipeline of people who want to come forward from the people in different, often coming from education backgrounds, coming for people who are interested in supporting children. There hasn't been the investment in these kind of services to build it out. And I think one of the things that I'm really excited about is when I talk to people who are educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, they say that they got into the profession to really support children

and spend time, you know, really kind of seeing that direct work in the classroom. classroom and often the job has become a lot of form filling, a lot of paperwork. And, you know, what we have seen, sadly, is a lot of people moving out of the public sector into the private sector. So I hope these jobs will be really engaging jobs that are kind of to the purpose of why people got into to this work. But how do you stop that form filling? So these teams will be working directly with schools. So teachers will say, actually, you know, there's a child in my classroom that's really struggling. What strategies could I use? Could you observe the child, could you kind of give us some advice or, you know, this child really, you know, is struggling

with sensory processing or need some direct support with speech and language? Could you do some kind of group work to build up that support? None of that will need a referral. None of that will need a form. It will be a partnership with, you know, with that resource dedicated to direct intervention, which is just a massive shift in the system. So less paperwork can be promised? Yeah, absolutely. And we and we are, you know, in the new system, which as you say, we were consulting on. and we're looking carefully at the consultation at the moment. But we are saying that we will retain EHCP's education health care plans, but that will be a simpler process.

There'll be a digital plan. So at the moment, you know, often schools are having to manage lots of different plans from different local authorities. We want this to be a much, much simpler process, but critically, early intervention without all of that bureaucracy, real partnerships with people who understand children. And I know the EHCPs are a contentious issue. We're not delving into that.

This time we will continue speaking about it, of course, because some people have concerns about that. Yeah, they're really keen to keep that engagement going. You know, we are really carefully looking at the thousands of people who respond to the consultation. So it's really important we work with families to get this right. Let me turn to Claire Jackson, principal educational psychologist for Salford in Greater Manchester.

So glad to have you here. I'd be curious for your response to the Experts at Hand program of what you know so far. Well, what we know so far, is that it is an exciting opportunity for us to get staff to be doing that preventative work. So one of the things that has a challenge for me as a principal educational psychologist is recruitment and retention of staff. So building up that range of work and making sure psychologists are in the position to make a difference is really helpful. Why do you think it's so hard to recruit and retain?

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

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

You know, there are children that are struggling. There's lots of families that are struggling and the demand is there for service. So whether you need a diagnosis or not, there's a lot of stress in the system and a lot of work for educational psychology. So I'm not sure that particular point will make a difference to that.

Yeah, interesting. Can you give an example of a technique that you would employ as edged, psych as the shorthand is for educational psychologists, that you'd be able to pass on to a teacher to support a child. Yeah, we're doing that kind of work all the time. Yeah. One of my favourites is the use of tools.

So schedules to help children to plan their work and to retain their attention throughout a task. It helps them to chunk that piece of work down. And it's also a tool that then they can use into adult life, You know, see people using their diaries and their, you know, their agendas for meetings and that sort of thing. Children can adopt those sorts of strategies as well in the classroom. And it can help teachers to explain complicated things and get them through. Anything else you'd like to add?

For example, I'm just thinking of, you know, what people may, parents may encounter with their ed psychologists that might be able to help their child. Often they have issues with regulation in the classroom. So we talk quite a lot about co-regulation and supporting children, maybe with breathing techniques and all those sorts of things to help them to manage. But often the advice isn't really about the child and teaching the child skills. It's about managing the school environment so that they don't become stressed in the first place. So explain that a little bit further. So if the classroom is run in a predictable manner, children know what?

what's expected of them. They've got good relationships with their teachers and with other children in the classroom. Those sorts of difficulties arise less. So we'd always be looking at that. We'd be trying to prevent things from escalating in the first place and making sure that the lesson meets their needs. Yeah, so it's interesting.

It's that environment infrastructure as well as the actual child and their needs. Speaking of needs, what do educational psychologists, such as the ones you manage need? They need to see them making a difference. They need kind of that, I suppose for many people, right? That's the rewarding bit. You need to see a tangible achievement.

That's it. They want to see that they're using all the skills that they trained to use in the classroom and more broadly in education. And they want to see that actually for our children and families, we can see that there's a difference has happened. And when do you think, I'm just wondering with a whole school approach, the minister is speaking about as well. What will it look like in practice?

I mean, when would you be getting to the child? We're starting with the whole school approach if the whole school have got, you know, themes and issues that we need to address. So ideally we'd be starting with the whole school approach to address the needs of the children that have got commonly occurring conditions or there's something about that school environment

that certain types of children are finding difficult. And then it'd be obvious which children we need to work with at a more bespoke level because they kind of wouldn't be part of that cohort. They might have multiple issues or they might not be part of that cohort. They might have different issues. Minister Gould, we know from our listeners that many children wait months or even years for crucial assessments. So they might feel this all sounds great to listen to on the radio, but will it actually happen in practice?

Yeah, and I think that's the thing I've heard more than anything, you know, sometimes years waiting for support and like how powerless families have felt watching things get worse. And I think what I'm really excited about this new service is, you know, this is early intervention. The teams, these amazing people like Claire, will be in schools, spotting things early, supporting teachers, answering questions. And if it does need something kind of more special,

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

you know, that that work of like taking a whole school approach, doing a kind of audit of the buildings, kind of seeing the paths that children take, watching lessons. All of that work will start straight away. So our parents should start to see those improvements and be part of that conversation. And what about children that are in crisis now, not looking further down the road, but right now, which lots of people have already got in touch with me before without leaving asking. Yeah. So the kind of existing. legal structure is still there. You know, children can still go through

the education, healthcare, plan, assessment process. There's still all the statutory duties in place. This is about adding something new that puts support in earlier. So children don't get into crisis in the first place and really change the system. So we are really

supporting children to stay in their local schools, in their community. But you will admit there are huge waiting lists at the moment. Oh, yeah, of course. And we're really working with local authorities to reduce those waiting lists. We've written to every local authority in the country, asking them to develop a reform plan to really improve.

All of these areas, waiting lists, children out of school. So we recognise that there's huge change that needs to happen and that we have an important role, you know, both putting support in, but also holding local authorities to account. But, you know, this new service, we expect to really, really shift how support is delivered and, you know, just take that battle out of a system for teachers and for,

families. Do you have a timeline or when people might expect a reduced waiting list? We're all the time kind of putting pressure on our partners to try and move faster. We do think that this early intervention will reduce waiting lists. We're going to be monitoring the system really carefully over the next year so we don't have a kind of set timeline but we are, you know, we are really determined to put the support in and do that quickly. Schools Minister Georgia Gould and Claire Jackson there. Still to come on the program, the poet Emily Cullen, on her poem she'd written for her son seven years ago

when he was eight that turned up last week on his English exam. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to the Daily Podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds. Now, last week on the program, I spoke to Hannah Murray, the actor who played Gilly in Game of Thrones. Hannah told us that while she was doing the media rounds

for the final season of the show, the papers speculated that she was pregnant, but she wasn't. I remember thinking, oh, that's the only acceptable way you can gain weight as a woman in the public eye is to be pregnant. And I wasn't pregnant. And I also didn't feel like they should be allowed to comment on my body in that way. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a big, I think that was a big turning point, actually. That was kind of around the time when I decided, I think I need to step back from this industry.

I think I want to take a break, but that break has never stopped. It's still ongoing. Well, our Instagram account was flooded with responses from you about this. And it got us thinking, seven years on from what happened to Hannah, why are we still scrutinising women when it comes to their weight? Have we developed appropriate language to talk about women's weight? Should we even be commenting on it at all? Well, to discuss this, I was joined by Alex Light,

a body confidence activist and author, and Dr. Dolly Van Tula, a food policy researcher, policy consultant, and visiting researcher at the Medical Research Council, epidemiologist unit in Cambridge University. And I started by asking Alex what she thought about Hannah's comment. I feel so sad for her that she felt, she really, she felt pushed out of this industry, that she had to take a break

and that she wasn't able to continue because of the scrutiny around her appearance and specifically her weight. And I just, I think it's just so sad that this is something that women have, have to contend with, especially when they're in the public eye. But for women that aren't in the public eye as well, it's also an issue. And it's just incredibly sad. Dolly, I want to quote, we've got such a huge reaction, as I said on our Instagram.

And I want to quote the comedian and actor Jade Adams, who said, The greatest threat to the patriarchy are fat women because we've eaten our way out of the male gaze. Who's setting the standard for how we look? Well, I mean, the social commentary about weight and our bodies, particularly women, is so deeply embedded in our culture and the association between being thin and healthy and being thin and valued is deeply embedded and it's partly because we can see weight and it's a really interesting perspective from my work I concentrate on public health and what we can do to improve

public health it's largely driven by our food system and the food that we eat and because in the UK we live in this sort of horrendous situation where we're absolutely surrounded by unhealthy ultra-processed food, which now makes up 60% of what we eat on average, at the same time as having this social commentary that's completely obsessed with our weight and that association with health, even though the majority of health problems related to ultra-processed food are essentially invisible. So we think that weight is the greatest sort of metric or marker of someone's health. But actually, when you look at what ultra-process food consumption drives,

it's type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, cancer, these things are really hard to see. And to the point that if you evaluate more than those actual really concerning health problems, you can actually drive people to put their own health at risk in order to achieve an aesthetic assumption about what makes us healthy. Right. And I think most people listening and we'll be listening to you nodding along going, yep, she's right, she's right. But why are we still here? Why are we still looking at ourselves in the mirror? and hating what we see? I think because there's such a deep narrative about what weight says about us

and our personality and our capability. And in the public health space, we are sort of on a mission to try and move away from that because the associations between weight and being strong-willed and not being lazy and being able to kind of fight the odds,

I find it incredibly depressing that we actually celebrate the exception. We celebrate when people have broken the norm and, you know, whether it's a big weight loss story or whatever, we celebrate that continuously, even though for me that is the most nightmarish position to put people in, to say, yeah, we're going to put you in this really unhealthy food environment,

surrounded by ultra-processed food, that's literally designed to make you addicted and to have an unhealthy relationship with food, at the same time as going, oh, but we also expect you to be thin, rather than creating the conditions that enable everyone to live a healthy life, kind of without having to think about it, and to be able to enjoy that. And you have examples of food companies that literally play into that.

We're literally being driven to have this unhealthy relationship with food, which we know with ultra-process food, which drives all sorts of health problems, not just weight game, but other things. And at the same time as going, you should fight that. Yeah, you've got the sort of ultra-process at one end, and then you've got the kind of real restriction of kind of eliminating food at the other end, which we'll come to. But Alex, I want to bring you back in because we had so many messages,

women are saying various different things. But another listener told us that she was at her slimest when she was suffering domestic abuse and her husband was throwing out all the food. And at the time, she was told how great she looked. Why does some find it hard to see thinness as anything other than an achievement? And we had a few messages like that where people are congratulated about their weight loss. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, for a woman in this society, our currency is our appearance and specifically tied to how thin we.

are. And so thinness is seen as the greatest moral achievement. And so when someone achieves it, we don't really care how they've done it. It might be grief. It might be sickness. It might be, as you said, in a dangerous environment. We actually, a lot of the time when we complement weight loss, we have no idea how it happened. Yet we shower praise on the person for being thin and for for achieving thinness. And it's, you know, it's seen as a compliment and it's seen as sort of like a passing compliment. Oh, wow, you look, you've lost weight, you look amazing.

But there is so much, it's so dangerous that compliment. And I think it's something that we need to look at and assess how we speak about people's weight and specifically women's weight. Irish singer CMAQed shared her deep sadness about body shaming comments that she received online after a performance at the Radio One's big weekend a few weeks ago. She said she'd love to stop talking about it but can't because it keeps happening at an accelerating

and worsening pace as I become more famous. Can we talk about the body positive movement, Alex? Can you explain what that was and what's happened to it? Of course. So the body positivity movement sort of peaked at the in the late 2010's early 2020s. And it was this real cultural moment. where we were expanding the definition of beauty and seeing bodies that we'd never seen represented in the media before.

And it was an amazing opportunity for women to see themselves represented in a space where previously only very thin bodies, you know, had been visible. So it was a really exciting time and there were a lot of ad campaigns and marketing campaigns featured in really diverse body sizes and types. But unfortunately, we saw that movement die off, and it happened quite quickly, actually. I really, I did, I was naive and I thought that it was here to stay. We were all a bit naive, I think. Right, right.

I thought that we had expanded the definition of beauty for good, but as it turns out, we hadn't. And we slipped straight back into thinness. And now we've kind of, we've really gone the other way to sort of celebrating ultra thinness. And of course that's coincided with the rise of JLP ones. which is kind of, you know, the phenomenon that's gone stratospheric. And so, yeah, we've seen the demise of the body positivity movement. And it's been really, really gutting because I think it meant a lot to a lot of women. Yeah.

And one of our listeners commented, again on Instagram, but it's not acceptable to be large in the age of GLP ones. GLP ones, they're in the injected medicines that help people feel fuller. Dolly, what do policymakers make of this sudden uptick in the use of GLP ones for weight loss? Well, I mean, it's absolutely being a, kind of focus point in terms of government policy on tackling sort of health and food and weight, which is historically embedded. I would say that what's really interesting about what Alex was saying in terms of the fact that we still hold weight as this absolute high moral position to

be in is true of people within the food and health policy space and campaign and academic space as well. And I was sort of struck thinking about this discussion by how many conversations I'm in regularly where people who are academics in the food and health space, who are policy makers in the food and health space, who are campaigning on this, will comment about weight, whether it's a reflection of their own weight or other people's, to the point where we're now holding it as a requirement or even a qualification for being fit for being an academic or a policymaker in this space. And I think of even, I remember doing these interviews for a report about politicians tackling obesity as a policy area. over the last 30 years. And in 1993, there was a comment in Parliament to the health secretary at the time, who was Virginia Bottomley, saying one need only look at her to see that she is fit and healthy and responsible for the nation's health.

The idea that your weight and your physical appearance allows you and qualifies you to be fit for office. And someone very recently reached out to me about RFK, who's the health secretary in America, going, isn't it great that he's at the gym and he's such an image of good health? and that's what qualifies him. And I'm there thinking, what about actual qualifications that are about, you know,

what you studied, what you know, what you bring your ideas. And I think women, any women out there can relate to that, that our value is still so much on our appearance and our weight rather than our ideas

and what we have to offer in terms of our skills and talent. Dr. Dolly Van Toulikin and Alex liked there. Now, have you ever had one of those moments when life feels so circular that you just can't believe it? And something happens that makes you feel like you've been heading to this exact moment all along. Like maybe life does have a plan after all.

A once-in-a-lifetime synchronicity is what the poet Emily Cullen called it when she discovered that a poem she'd written seven years ago, inspired by her son when he was eight, turned up on the English exam paper he was sitting last week in his junior certs, which is the Irish equivalent of GCSEs. Well, Emily joined me last week along with her son, Lee. and I started by it asking Lee, what happened? Well, when I just turned the section, A, B and C,

and then I turned the page for D, I was like shocked to see my mom come up with her poem. And then when I told her, she was like in tears. How lovely, how did you find out, Emily? I went to collect Lee, drove the car, and I met him close to the school, and I could see he'd have, you know, a broad smile in his face. And I thought, oh, that's great.

he must have remembered, you know, the Shakespeare quotes we were memorising together. And I said, how did it go great, mum? And he said, you won't believe it. But the poem you wrote about me came up from the paper. And I just said, what, what do you mean? And he said the one about the chalk. And I was thinking, oh my God, you know, how could this be happening? You had no idea that your poem would be picked to be put on the English example.

It was just random by chance. It's never appeared before. Never appeared before. I had no idea. Nobody had contacted me beforehand or contacted my publisher or anything. So I had absolutely no inkling and there is my beautiful 15-year-old son getting into the car telling me that he just did an exam and answered a question about a poem which he inspired. I mean, Lee, when you turned that paper over and you saw that it was your mum's poem written about you, what went through your mind? Did you feel proud of the exam? Did you think, I'm going to waste this? Like, what happens in that moment? I was just like, oh wow, now like writing about myself, writing chocks. So, yeah, I was shocked once again.

Shocks, yeah. So, Emily, tell us about the inspiration for the poem. It's called Envoy and Chalk. Yes, indeed, Anita. It's one of those poems that wrote itself, really. They're kind of a given poem or a gift, if you like. Some poems take a lot of grafting and, you know, a lot of work. This one just came out.

I was having a bit of a tough time, lots of things happening. I suppose it's a poem for the sandwich generation, if you like, people who are caring for young children and also looking after elderly parents. And my late beloved mother was in hospital at the time. I was driving a lot to the hospital and my shoulder had gotten quite inflamed. You know, there was a lot going on and I was worried about things. And I was calling Lee for his dinner. He was down on his scooter, scooting around the estate.

And I went out the door, was calling him. And then I looked down and my old. I caught on, he had choked something on the pavement and I saw in green neon letters, the world is great. And it just caught me, you know, it just really just stopped me in my tracks. And I thought, he's right. He's absolutely right. And I mustn't forget this and we mustn't lose sight. The world is great. And, you know, we can get so caught up in, I suppose, you know, all our troubles and cares and we're careworn and I suppose the constant barrage of headlines, horrifying things in the news, wars, conflict, injustice, oppression, and then just at a micro level, you know,

the things of our lives that are consuming our time and energy. And just to be reminded in that moment to get that Volta, if you like, from Lee and his beautiful chalk writing, it meant everything to me and I came in and I thought I have to capture this moment because it stopped me in my tracks and it was a little message for me that I needed to be. Yeah, message for you through your beautiful young son, that sort of innocence of a child, just seeing the clarity. So could you read the poem for us? I'd be delighted, be delighted. Invoy and chalk, I'm calling my son from the end of the estate. When my eye snags on green pastel words,

he has chalked on the pavement, the world is great. This is just the line I need to read, my mother in hospital, my shoulder inflamed, our financial future uncertain, earth eyeballing Armageddon. Yet, how right his perception.

He bolts up on his yellow school, eight-year-old fringe, quiffed with gel, on the cusp of the age of cool. It's beautiful. It really is beautiful. What a great line to end it with on the cusp of the age of cool there, Lee. I'm looking at you. It looks very cool. Does it land any differently to you reading it again today? I think it's perennial, really. I think history is quite cyclical, unfortunately. We don't seem to learn from the mistakes of the past. There are continuous conflicts and wars. And yet the beauty of the natural world is all around us, the wonder of the everyday and these magical synchronicities that can unfold.

And indeed, having our parents with us is such a gift. And I think taking a moment for gratitude, you know, is something that I always come back to in the midst of my cares and worries as well. And I think poetry can help us to do that and remind us to do that. Well, I definitely think your poem has done that for us this morning. Lee, did you reference yourself in the exam paper? Did you say it's about me? I was going to, but then, yeah, I was thinking that the examiners would be like,

this kid thinks he's the son of the poet. Emily Cullen and Lee Davidson there. The poem Envoy in Chalk is from Emily Cullen's third collection of poetry, Conditional Perfect. That's it from me on Monday's program. We'll look at the British flower industry, which is blooming and it's women leading the revival. We'll talk to two flower farmers about the increasing demand for homegrown flowers and its potential impact on our environment and our economy.

Join Noola at 10 a.m. on Monday. And from me, enjoy the rest of your weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. The Signal Awards recognise the podcast that define culture. And being honoured by the Signal Awards sets your purpose. production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC.

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