Woman's Hour - Working from home, Care workers and Covid-19, DIY hair care

Episode Date: April 4, 2020

We're being told to work from home if we can, so how is it going? Anna Harris who works for a marketing and advertising agency, and Caroline Whaley, the co-founder of a coaching consultancy aimed at women and leadership, discuss. Lara Lewington from BBC Click offers some tips and advice for staying in touch via tech. The Lives of Houses is a collection of essays which asks what a house can tell us about the person who lived there. Hermione Lee describes why we are so fascinated by the homes of famous literary figures. The Government has issued new guidelines on the personal protective equipment that should be used by NHS staff on the frontline. It's also said that it's important for social care staff to feel safe, and the new guidance will offer them information and reassurance. Christina McAnea, Assistant General Secretary of UNISON which represents thousands of workers in the sector, and Margaret Hodge MP for Barking and Dagenham, discuss. Kayleigh Llewyellyn is the writer and creator of a new BBC comedy drama series called In My Skin. Based on her own story of growing up in Wales, it follows 16 year Bethan as she negotiates her school life, sexuality, and hiding her mother’s mental illness from her friends and teachers.What does social distancing look like in one of the more remote parts of the UK? We find out through The Woman's Hour Corona Diaries with Angela Crawford from the Isle of Lewis. DIY hair care: the Dos and the Don'ts. Tanya Harrison is the founder of Harrison Hair Studio in Liverpool. She shares some tips if you’re eager to have a go yourself.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Dianne McGregor

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.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. In this programme, we will talk about how you can use tech to stay connected. You can hear from Kayleigh Llewellyn. She'll talk about her TV drama series In My Skin. It's about her own teenage years growing up in Wales. And these are trying times, let's be honest, and you may well have to cut your own hair.

So, just for starters, this is how you do a fringe. Take your first section, teeny bit, and rest your fingers on the bridge of your nose and then just cut on little bits. If you just do it a bit at a time, then you'll be able to get the shape in it and it won't be too short. More on that a little bit later.

And you can hear, too, from Hermione Lee on our apparently endless fascination with the homes of famous writers. First, then, this week, we want to talk about personal protection equipment. It's something that has featured in many a radio and television and newspaper discussion over the last couple of weeks. New government guidelines on PPE were issued on Thursday. But on Friday's edition of Woman's Hour, we asked who's caring for the carers? What is happening to staff in social care, whether they're in the community or working in homes? I talked to Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking and Dagenham, and to Christine McAnee, the Assistant General Secretary of Unison, which represents 200,000 care workers.

I asked Christina if things have indeed improved. Certainly on the ground, we haven't seen any slowing down of the kinds of really quite distressing calls and emails that we've been getting across the union from people who work in care homes and deliver care to people in their own homes. Now this is a fragmented industry isn't it because you have care homes they're run by all sorts of different organisations and there are many agencies providing community care workers too. What sort of things are your members worried about? What are they telling you? We're getting calls from people who are being told you don't need anything. Now the basic equipment in most places would be gloves and an apron but we've got members who are now having to deal, care workers who are having to deal with people who don't necessarily understand

social distancing. So vulnerable adults who have got dementia, people with learning disabilities who don't really, won't necessarily understand what social distancing means. And for our members, they're very worried because nobody's telling them what they actually need to keep themselves and their families safe and to keep the patients and the people they care for safe. And that's the big problem. It's the lack of communication out to the people actually delivering the care. Some good care homes, though, will surely be doing that. And on a practical level, I confess, I don't actually know. But in a good care home, presumably whoever's in charge on a given day

will hand out the PPE appropriately. And presumably it's then changed with every change of resident? You tell me what happens? What should happen? So, yeah, people should have enough aprons and masks to be able to change those between clients or patients, whoever they're looking after. The kind of stories we're getting are people who go out and deliver care to people in their own homes.

So they may be seeing between 20 and 30 clients a day and they've been given a box of gloves that maybe has 10 or 12 sets of gloves in it they may not be given any aprons at all when they're doing that kind of job and they're told to just go on with it they're worried because a lot of the people that they deal with they don't know if they've got COVID-19 and we're getting stories through from care homes where patients are being discharged from hospitals or have been diagnosed with COVID-19 but aren't ill enough to get into hospital or don't meet the criteria. They're still at home, they're still in the care home and all the staff have got to deal with it

is a plastic apron and a pair of gloves. Masks seems to be a problem, they don't seem to be getting access to masks and it's not, it's not, it's just the sort of fitted mask that they need, the surgical mask, not the full breathing mask that they need. I mean, there must also be a chance, of course, that your members are, I mean, I'm sure they won't want to, but they might be in danger of spreading COVID-19, particularly if they're visiting people who are indeed at home and unlikely to be getting out and not seeing anybody else. Yeah, exactly. And we've had people on the phone crying. What they're worried about is they may are indeed at home and unlikely to be getting out and not seeing anybody else. Yeah, exactly. And we've had people on the phone crying. What they're worried about is they may have a relative at home that they're trying to look after, but they have to go to work because this is a predominantly female, predominantly low paid workforce. And so they are incredibly

worried. They want to go out and do the best for the people they care for, but they're worried that they're perhaps taking infection in or taking infection away when they leave. Sure. And, you know, it's like a perfect storm, to be quite honest, and it's all the things that people have been saying would happen if we have a crisis in social care has exactly happened. And the impact it has on things like the NHS is massive

because they're stuck not being able to discharge people to community care homes or they're having to take people in where a care home's struggling because a third to a half of the staff have gone off sick. And can I just pay tribute to the care home managers who are doing a great job because I'm giving you the worst examples,

but you're quite right, there are many care home managers who are doing the best they can in the circumstances the dedication of you know many many of them is absolutely incredible i'm not knocking every care home no no stay there christina let's bring in margaret harge labour mp for barking you've been talking to some of the care homes in your constituency um i have indeed and i concur with everything i think that christina said on the back of peter kyle started doing work in this in his constituency and on the back of that i rang all 10 care homes in my constituency that with about 200 residents and i thought actually i was a bit nervous about

it i thought they wouldn't want to have a phone call from the local mp but actually they were so grateful that somebody would be list would listen to them, hear their concerns, and they are feeling very isolated. I think that's the first thing. The second thing to say is three issues emerged from that, and they were really worrying. The first is the issue about PPE. So what the politicians are saying at the daily conference is simply not what's reflected of what's happening on the ground. I mean, that's so clear to me now. I had one care home telling me that they were going from pharmacist to pharmacist to try and buy eye equipment, which of course wasn't there because they weren't getting

deliveries. Another told me that they were going to the secondary schools to pick up protective eye equipment from the chemistry labs. Terrible stories. That's the first issue. The second issue is around food. So there is no early morning shopping slot for the workers in care homes. And the online delivery system simply doesn't work for them. Some of them, they're just knocked off, and others you can't bulk buy on that system. Right. And the third point, Margaret, I don't want to rush you.

And the third one is the testing. They can't maintain reliable and safe levels of staffing without testing. The very people who live in these care homes, they're the most vulnerable group. They're the most likely to be victims

of the coronavirus and they will find it hardest to fight that virus. So it's really important that we get away from promises on testing and action on the ground on testing. Just got an email here from a listener that's come in as we're talking. My 89-year-old mother has been released from hospital.

The consultant telephoned on Wednesday to say she has tested positive for COVID-19. Why have they released her? How are her daily carers supposed to keep themselves safe? That's a good illustration, Christina, of what you're up against and your members are up against. It is exactly that. And I think part of the problem is that nobody's telling you produce some little easy to understand short video clips that explain how the virus is spread and explain to them what you need in different circumstances? Because people are incredibly afraid. They think they're going to catch the virus.

I don't mean everyone thinks this, but many people are just concerned. They're afraid about how they would catch it and how they would spread it. And I think if we could explain what is the actual protective equipment that they need in different circumstances, that would be incredibly helpful. We're just not getting that. Right. And something else I think it's important to acknowledge is that some members, some of your members working in care homes, are going to be asked to do a rather different sort of care because we know that COVID-19 is spreading in care homes naturally because of the environment, and those patients will not be admitted to hospital.

So there's going to be a change of circumstances, to put it mildly, in some of these establishments, Christina. There is, and what's happening is there's been some discussions taking place within both the local government association and with NHS employers about actually being able to move staff. So I think the big worry will be when staff in the care homes start to get ill

and we start to see levels of staffing that aren't safe, what it means is they're probably going to have to move people from the NHS to go out and work in care homes to care for people, particularly those who've been diagnosed with COVID-19. And as you say quite rightly, Jane, you need a different type of care when they've actually been diagnosed with it than perhaps the ongoing care they normally would have. Now that itself will have an impact on the NHS

because they'll be looking after the most acute patients but if they're having to then transfer people to work in care homes that's a huge worry. Christina McAnee and before that Margaret Hodge the Labour MP for Barking and not surprisingly that discussion led to a whole load of emails from you and if you want to hear more about that issue, get the Woman's Hour podcast from Friday, which you can find on BBC Sounds. Now, because of coronavirus and social distancing, so many of us are largely confined to the home. And we've all, including the likes of me at my advanced age, had to learn new skills and all about new tech and how it works. Honestly, you should hear the Women's Hour Zoom meetings. Or maybe you shouldn't.

We have this week had a conversation with Lara Lewington, who's a presenter and a reporter for the BBC TV show Click, which is all about tech and how to use it efficiently and well. Lara provided information on how you can use it to keep in touch with older relatives and also about what you might want to watch out for in terms of your kids' use of it. So I asked her first of all about Zoom. There are so many different functions and it's actually free to use for up to 100 people in a meeting for up to 40 minutes. But I think a lot of people are probably signing up for the premium account so they can have more than 40 minutes. Because if you want to be streaming a

dinner party, playing games, doing exercise classes, a lot of these functions it's now being used for, you're going to need more than the 40 minutes. Right. Are people really zooming a dinner party? That fills me with absolute terror. Well, they are. It's a very easy way to have people around without having to actually cook for them. But I think people are really trying to engage as much as they can online with friends, because we don't know how long this is really going to be for that we can't see people. And especially for those who live alone or just really want to relax and have some distraction in the evening, meeting up with friends online is actually a really pleasant thing to do. And I would say I've been doing it quite a lot.

And I would say it's probably 50 to 60 percent for me of the real experience. Obviously, I work on a technology program. I'm probably not your average person because I'm very happy to engage with technology. And some people may just not feel the same about it. Can we talk about safety? I particularly want to focus on Houseparty. Now, just very briefly, define Houseparty, the app. What is it and what does it offer? Sure. Well, the Houseparty app is a way of having a virtual house party. Embedded within the app are games, things that are a bit like drawing pictures.

And you guess what the picture is, games of charades. So it's a platform that makes it very easy to play those games without having to set them up yourself in front of a camera when you're video calling people. The app has become incredibly popular recently. It's been around for a few years, though. In its earlier days, it was more teenagers using it. And it was actually quite controversial because parents were worried about kids being left out of parties and all of the issues surrounding that. But obviously, in the last few weeks, it's brought on a whole new meaning as to what you can do at home. Is it safe? Well, there has been a bit of a controversy this week.

It all started with online rumours that downloading the app led to other sites like Netflix and Spotify, your account being hacked on them or you having your account blocked. Now, the company says there's no evidence to back up these claims. And whilst the app can access your Facebook or your Snapchat contacts, if you give it access to do so, it doesn't even access Netflix or Spotify. Now, Epic Games, the owner of Houseparty, has actually offered a $1 million reward for evidence that the app has actually been the target of a smear campaign. So if you have children under the age of 15, for example, or even younger who will be using this and using it very efficiently, can you be assured that they are as safe as you can be when participating in an event on house party look i

think when it comes to apps and doing anything online in general there are security protocols we should all be using but the thing is everybody has been thrown into this situation at great speed and i don't think most of us have been prepared for it, especially in terms of when you're giving a computer to a child to do some homeschooling. Some of us are just handing it over at great speed, not actually dealing with the right parental controls. But just briefly back to House Party, if the chat isn't locked, then anyone can join in and you don't know who these people are. Well, I actually spoke to a cybersecurity expert yesterday about house party and zoom specifically and they're in the midst of some extensive research as to exactly how safe these apps are now i haven't actually had the feedback from that research to really be able to give you something cast in stone

but i think the company has defended itself here it has said it's not accessing any of these platforms that it's being accused of doing so. So that is one thing that's going on. But in terms of the security in general of apps that we're using, we need to be reading the small print. Apps are tracking a lot of our activity, particularly free apps. It's not a hard and fast rule, but generally they will be tracking more than the ones that you pay for. And a lot of that tracking is legitimate. You don't get anything for free, do you?

If an app is free to get, then chances are somebody somewhere is getting some info out of you that might well be lucrative. Of course, you don't get anything for nothing. But it's a balance. And in a lot of cases, we don't mind giving away the data if we're getting a good service back in exchange for it, as long as that data is safely used and the privacy policies are in place that need to be. Absolutely. OK, can we just move on to older people? My parents, who are both 86, I should say, are using Skype rather more enthusiastically than I've ever used it. It's surprising what people can do with a few bits of info over the phone. Good old fashioned technology. We shouldn't write off the older phone, good old-fashioned technology. We shouldn't write off the older generation, should we? Absolutely not.

No, absolutely not. And there are some very easy ways of doing things. And of course, some of the older generation are more tech savvy than others. But even something as simple as a WhatsApp call, you can actually have four people on a WhatsApp video call. And if you have a WhatsApp group, all you need to do is make a call to the group and all the people will be called. And they may not all answer it. You may end up with three people on the call instead of four. But there is some very, very simple ways of communicating. Even through using Zoom, the person who actually sets up the meeting, which is pretty simple in itself, sends that invite. So all somebody needs to do is click on the link and then accept using your microphone and camera. So when you're speaking to relatives who aren't that tech savvy and you want to make it easy for them, you can make it easy from your perspective.

And of course, there are also the voice control devices where they would be giving very simple instructions. So that's also a very, very easy way to do it. They might be a suitable gift for an older person. Send them one of those voice activation machines. I'm not going to mention the name. No, we mustn't. It might very well be a real help. Indeed. I think one of the issues is it is, I wouldn't say fiddly to set up, but it probably takes somebody who is a little bit able with tech to actually set it up.

That was Lara Lewington, who talked to us on Skype, an experience that was very enjoyable, not least because her sound kept coming in and out and dropping on and off, which a number of you pointed out was quite ironic in the circumstances. Now, Jenny told us on the programme on Wednesday that it was just over a year since she'd been lucky enough to go to the house in Winchester where Jane Austen spent her final days. Jenny found the whole experience really moving. So what is it about these places? Why do we continue to visit, for example, Shakespeare's birthplace in droves? Well, The Lives of Houses is a collection of essays jointly edited by Dr Kate Kennedy

and the literary biographer Dame Hermione Lee. Her subjects have included Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Penelope Fitzgerald. So what is it about a house in which somebody famous has lived that thrills so many of us? It's such a peculiar and mixed emotion that drives us to these places and I love your account of going to Jane Austen's last home. That's an example of a very moving feeling that one has

of really being in touch with the life that was lived there. But it's a funny mixture. We somehow feel that maybe sort of genius will rub off on us somehow if we go into the rooms. We believe that we might be more in touch with the person who wrote the great works if we see the rooms in which they worked. And of course, we're all tremendously nosy. And there's an element of sort of just inquisitiveness about this. You know, what was their bed like and what was the bathroom like and things like that. And quite often, I mean, in the situation you describe, it's very moving.

And I think we do feel very much. And I think that's the truth, too, when you go to the Bronson house, the Bartonage in Howarth or Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst. Just the size of the rooms tells you such a lot about their lives. But quite often it can be a bit disappointing, you know. What about your

subjects? What are the most interesting things you've learned about them from visiting their homes? I love the Penelope Fitzgerald story where she lived on a barge. Yes, for a time she did. Penelope Fitzgerald story where she lived on a barge. Yes, for a time she did. Penelope Fitzgerald is a wonderful English novelist of the mid-20th century.

She fell strangely through the nets of middle-class comfort and bourgeois life. And because of various circumstances, she and her family became extremely poor. And at the beginning of the 60s, they lived on an old leaky barge on the Thames in Chelsea Reach, which is now quite posh, but then was a pretty sort of mixed, disreputable place. And she was bringing up three children. Her husband was a sort of hopeless case by that time. And they often literally didn't have enough to eat.

Then they used to take their sponges and their towels up to the King's Road public bars where the sort of 60s life was just beginning. But what they were doing was having a bath and then going back onto the barge. And eventually this barge sank with most of her possessions, including a lot of precious childhood mementos. So she wrote about it wonderfully in a novel called Offshore, which won the Booker Prize some years later. So that house became, you know, a house that had vanished in time and place and is all the more moving for being recalled when she wrote about it.

How often do you spot, when you're reading their fiction, the house that they'd actually lived in how often do they use their own homes in their fiction very often and i think that that's what uh tracks us to going to the houses often it's the fact that they've been written about so movingly so a wonderful example of this is virginia wolf who for the first 13 years of her life until her mother died, would go every summer with the big family down to Cornwall to Talent House. And she used to write about this over and over again because when her mother died in 1895, they never went there again. Her father couldn't bear to go there again. So she lost the house at the same time she lost her mother.

And she writes with intense sort of grief and pleasure mixed together about her memory of waking up the first morning they would get there from london she'd wake up and she'd hear the wind making the blind just tap against the window and the sound of the waves breaking outside the window and thinking this is the purest happiness that i can have and then she would write this and write this thing in her novels, Jacob's Room, and most famously in her wonderful novel, To the Lighthouse. And because you feel you're there when she's writing about it, you terribly want to go and visit it.

And now you can. When I first wrote about Virginia Woolf in the early 90s, in my biography of Virginia Woolf, I did try to make a pilgrimage to that house and the the owner who'd never heard of Virginia Woolf when he bought the house was a very cross person who was tremendously fed up with all these Virginia Woolf pilgrims coming to his house and staking out his garden but I think now they're more welcoming. Which writers houses would you recommend for a visit where you

know the current owner won't say, no, go away? Well, one very grand and splendid example, if you happen to be in North America any time in the future, in the beautiful, in the Berkshires, in Northeast America, is Edith Wharton's very grand house called the mount which she built at the turn of the 19th 20th century turn of the century and it's a very splendid house with a very splendid garden and she was a wealthy woman who also made a lot of money from her books so she wrote a lot of her books there um and there's something really fascinating about the kind of grand style and the love of Europe, both of which things get into her novels, novels like The House of Myrrh and The Age of Innocence. And you can kind of recognize those things in the style of the house. So that's a very, very grand example would be Monk's House in Sussex, where Virginia and Leonard Wolfe lived for many years when they weren't in London.

And Monk's House has brilliantly avoided that thing that can happen slightly deadeningly when you put little ropes up everywhere and you're not allowed to touch anything. And it's all very formal and everything's under glass cases. And there's a slight sense of alienation and disappointment when you go to visit the house. In Monk's house with the garden and the writer's hut where she used to work and the path to the church and of course down to the river, there is a very strong sense that yes, this was the place she lived in. That was Hermione Lee talking to Jenny

and Sarah tweeted to say how much she'd loved visiting Beatrix Potter's cottage to see and imagine the place where she observed the animals and the lovely garden. Brilliant, she says. Rachel, when I was a teenager, I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I read it so many times. Many years later, I was sent as a minister to Cornwall and became friends with a family who own a large house on the coast that Daphne du Maurier rented for a while and from where she wrote Rebecca. It was fascinating to be in the house on the grounds and to imagine Rebecca and Daphne being there ahead of me. Thank you for that. And of course, we do welcome your emails and your tweets every single day and you can email us now via our website particularly at the moment we're interested in how you're coping with everything that's going on in what challenges you've been encountering and hopefully some advice on how you've overcome

them but i think it's fair to say it's not easy is it for anybody at the moment and woman's hour has been collating what we're going to call the Woman's Hour Corona Diaries. We're talking to listeners all over the country at various points during the week and just hearing how they are and how they're going about things at the moment. Coronavirus has now got as far as the Outer Hebrides and Angela Crawford contacted the programme

from the Isle of Lewis. On Tuesday, the first cases of the coronavirus were announced in her part of the world. At the time she spoke to Jenny, they had three cases. All were being cared for at home. So Jenny asked how close Angela is to her immediate neighbours and what can she see from her window? Straight in front of our house is a loch in one direction,

so about maybe a mile away there are some houses in the other direction there's the Atlantic looking very stormy today and then we're at the end of a road so perhaps every 50 meters or 100 meters there's a house on its own strip of land which is called a croft so in some ways people would say we're already very isolated, but there's a great community spirit around where we are. So social distancing and self-isolation is not really that much of a problem if you live so far apart. Exactly not. got a 17 year old daughter you've got a husband I know who has lymphoma how are you coping with your family having to be together even though your neighbours are distant? Reasonably well we have a very big shed so my husband is gainfully employed out there most of

the time making furniture and other gadgets my daughter is far more technologically advanced than we are, so she's pretty much in touch with her friendship group through FaceTime or video calls. They're very supportive of each other. And really, social media has come into its own right now, I think, because although we're quite isolated and used to being isolated, we're very community-minded and perhaps in and out of each other's houses quite often, which is the most difficult thing, not just being able to call in for a quick chat or a cup of coffee. So this is where you can get on groups and WhatsApp or Messenger, and it is such a boon to be able to just touch base with folk and not just here but all over the world as well but when it comes down to real practicalities like medical care

and getting supplies how are you going to manage that well we have a local hospital i think it's got about just over 100 beds. The medical care here is superb. We're in a really fortunate position of being able to phone a doctor and have an appointment on the same day normally. Now it's mostly been done over the phone. But again, we don't feel cut off in that way. And again, we're used to very ill people being flown off the island by ambulance plane or by helicopter. Where would very ill people being flown off the island by ambulance plane or by helicopter.

Where would very ill people be flown to? They would either be flown to Inverness or Glasgow. So it's quite a distance. So Glasgow's about an hour away and Inverness possibly about half an hour away. And what about supplies? I've got no idea how an island will cope if food and all of that stuff can't get to you. Well, there are little shops in the villages, but we have two supermarkets in the town of Stornoway. And they are ploughing, queuing and only allowing so many in at a time. And they're reasonably well stocked up, apart from the inevitable lack of toilet paper or hand sanitiser or stuff like that.

But we're managing so far, we're actually managing pretty well. We've got all our basics. We've got, if you don't mind going and queuing maybe for an hour, you can get everything you need. And I think, like myself, a lot of people this year will be planting more vegetables. Have you started planting yours yet? I have, yes.

My potatoes are now in, waiting for a break in the weather to go out and finish a new vegetable bed. But again, that's part of being outside and getting fresh air and we've got thousands of acres outside our house with no houses on it, just flat grassland and so keeping fit doesn't have to be a problem. What grows well when you've got a storm and you're not that far from the Atlantic? Potatoes, carrots, turnip, kale, Probably the diet of round about the Second World War still does very well here. Barley.

There are sheep and there are cows. So we're not self-sufficient, but I don't think most folk would starve. That's Angela giving Jenny a slice of her life on the Isle of Lewis. And on Friday morning's edition of Woman's Hour, I talked to a listener called Pauline, who was in Morecambe. And she had, well, as you can imagine, a very different sort of life and a very different tale to tell. But Pauline was really interesting. So, again, do go back to BBC Sounds and you can hear that on Friday morning's edition of the podcast. And if you'd like to contribute to the Woman's Hour Corona Diaries, do contact the programme via the website and just give us a sketch of your life and what you're up to right now.

In My Skin is the name of a new BBC Three comedy drama series. It's the story of a 16-year-old girl, Bethan, who's trying to negotiate her complicated life at school, her friendships, her sexuality her pretty deadbeat dad and her mother's poor mental health which she tries to keep from her friends and her teachers

Here she is going to see her mum who's in a secure hospital and has been sectioned What have you done to me? I'm sorry mum I got you some puff. Pfft. Pfft. Stupid bitch!

See what you've done? Huh? You delivered me in the eye of the storm, Ian. There's cameras everywhere. Trina, played there by Joe Hartley, and Gabrielle Creevey is Bethan. Now, the series was written by Kayleigh Llewellyn, and it draws on her own teenage years in Cardiff. It's very close to my own experiences. You know, you get your moments of invention when you start to draw new characters. I sort of base them all

on real people that I know. But as time goes goes on and you write draft after draft of the scripts, they start to become their own entities to a degree. But, yeah, pretty much everything in there really happened. Now, Bethan often has to leave school to tend to her mother. I mean, the opening is where we see her mother in the street shouting and screaming and Bethan trying to control her. And yet Bethan really goes to great lengths to try and keep her mother's illness from her friends. Why? I was so worried when I was growing up that if any of my friends knew what we were dealing with in my household, not only my mum's mental health issues, but my father's addiction problems, that they would shun me, make fun of me, or even

worse, make fun of my family. So I felt like I had to hide it. And I simply didn't know that there would be plenty of other children in my school whose lives have been touched by mental health, which I suppose is partly because it's, as a society, something we just don't talk about enough. And it's only now as a grown-up that I've sort of found the courage to talk about it that I've realised how many other people have gone through it. Now, the mental illness in the series, and I know what your mother suffered from, is bipolar. How ill was your mother? Very, and she still is, actually.

I think she had her first mental breakdown when I was a baby and then went through a period of about 10 or 12 years where she was coping, and then it sort of descended from there. She had a particularly bad cycle in 2018 of sort of being sectioned six times in one year. So were you, as a schoolgirl, constantly having to run away from school to look after your mother? Not constantly, no, because these moments of hypermania and, you know, a full-scale breakdown that would see someone sectioned, you know know maybe my mum would go into hospital for six weeks and then she'd come out and perhaps not be completely back to normal but functioning and she could go back to work and be the fantastic mother to me that she always was

you know she's even though we we didn't have much money and my dad was a difficult man she always worked so hard to make sure my sister and I could have the things that we wanted and be able to do things like other normal kids. So, you know, then we might have a sort of a year stretch or a 10 month stretch where she was OK and then it would all ramp up again. How easy has it been, Kayleigh, to make a comedy about mental illness and alcoholism which touched you so closely? It's been very easy which potentially sounds strange to say but I love the kind of writing and TV that brings you comedy and drama side by side that has them holding hands because I think that is life and for people like myself who've grown up in those difficult environments I think it comes

very naturally that saying like um if you don't laugh you'll cry so you know you choose to laugh and I particularly remember growing up you know sort of thinking if things were coming to a head with my parents or you know I could feel a big argument brewing thinking if things were coming to a head with my parents or, you know, I could feel a big argument brewing, thinking if I can be really funny and really winning and get their attention, I can stop this from happening. So I think it's a skill that I've been honing for a very long time. And also for anyone who's spent any amount of time in a mental hospital, it is this crazy mesh of emotions because probably you're there because someone you love very much is going through the worst part of their life.

But also funny things are happening. So you do oscillate between crying and going, good God, what has become of us? Why are we here? So, you know, I really wanted to capture that, the messiness of it all. Now, the grandmother, she's a really strong support for you in the drama. How did your real grandmother support you? My real grandmother was the most incredible rock. She only passed away a couple of years ago, but I think she would be so blown away by the show and how well it's doing. I think it would mean the world to her.

And she was just um sort of calm in the storm her house was this haven that I could go to when things got bad and uh she was always just so proud of me it always used to really make me laugh she kind of didn't understand my job as a writer like she used to tell people that um Kayleigh tells stories because writing tv didn't fully make sense to her but she just knew that she was proud of me even though she didn't know what the job was and yes she would she would sort of turn up at the house and bring carrier bags of food and clean up. For me I could relax when she entered the house and think oh finally a grown-up is here.

Now Bethan is exploring her sexuality in the drama and she has a crush on a girl called Poppy. How difficult was it for you to go through that period when you were a teenager of trying to work out who and what you were? It's almost a sort of welcome distraction, actually, when you've got all that going on at home. I kind of wanted to capture that thing that maybe is slightly unique to teenagers, that something really terrible could happen at home, but if the popular girl wants to sit with

you, then actually you're quite chuffed, you've had a good day. And the other thing I'm trying to capture in the show that was true for me, and I think it's true for a lot of lesbians, that the dawn in realisation that I was a lesbian, because teenage girls have such intense friendships with one another anyway, that, you know, it is almost like a platonic romance. You speak to each other as soon as you wake up, you're talking on the phone before you fall asleep. If you fall out, it's all consuming, and you can't eat, you're so worried. So I was going through that thinking, yeah, I'm just like the other girls, we're just really good friends, aren't we and and then sort of that growing to be like I just really like it when she touches me I just really like it when she asks me to sleep over and this dawning realization of going oh maybe I fancy her we're not just

friends I must ask you what was your mother's reaction to the story being made for television it's a very um bizarre situation really my mum I started writing the script in uh 2017 it was and at that point my mum hadn't been sectioned for 10 years so she was still very much struggling with bipolar but she wasn't back in mental health care in that way so I thought now is the time to tell the story and then the pilot was green lit by BBC3 and five days later she had a breakdown and was sectioned again and she wound up being sectioned in the hospital that we were filming at at the same time which was just bizarre so because of that she wasn't able to watch it for a little bit of time. I think it had been out for about a month before she could see it. And I was in London

waiting with bated breath for her feedback. And then she just called me and said, I love it. I'm so proud of you. That's fantastic, isn't it? The programme is called In My Skin, and it's on the BBC iPlayer now, if you'd like to watch all the episodes. And the writer was Kayleigh Llewellyn. Now, you may very well be working from home. And to put it mildly, it can be something of a challenge, particularly if you have young children. And if there's, for example, only one laptop in the house, that's been an issue that's cropped up relatively regularly. If you're also expected to do some of the home education as well. So this week we talked to Caroline Whaley who is the co-founder of an organisation called Shine which is a coaching

consultancy aimed at women and leadership and to Anna Harris who works for a marketing and ad agency. Anna has four children. She and her partner both work four days a week. She is now homeschooling as well when she can. So I asked her how it was going. My husband starts work at seven and he works through till one. Then I pick up at one and I work through till seven. But quite often that seven becomes eight and quite often he then has to pick up at eight. And sometimes I might then have to start at six the next morning to get on top of things that I know are going to happen while I'm looking after the children and in between that time we're attempting to homeschool but it's far from easy especially with children of different ages. I think there's a lot of tips for people working from home and homeschooling saying oh you know just get them off working while

you're doing some schoolwork while you're working but it sort of doesn't allow for the fact that they've got different needs and they're different ages. So it's quite difficult and everything's blurring into everything else. It's relentless at the moment. Now, we don't want to ask too many questions about your employer, but are they understanding? Yeah, they've been very open about flexibility and making it work in a way that suits you. But it doesn't mean that it's easy.

It's still very difficult. What have you found the most difficult thing? Well, we've also been in isolation because I've had some symptoms. So we've not left the house and it's just non-stop. I mean, normally on a normal working day, I would have my husband around to help a bit with breakfast and then I would be home at bedtime. And then obviously the children are catered for in their various care arrangements at lunchtime. But at the moment, I'm doing breakfast on my own. I'm doing lunch on my own, and he's doing tea and bedtime on his own. So we're all in the same house. But there's just additional pressure on on everything. And I think what's quite difficult

is that where normally we'd be able to reach out to our traditional friendship groups. I think within each friendship group, there's a big divide about how people are making it work. And so you wouldn't have a normal support that you would have in a sort of normal environment. So some people have a lot more free time, whereas others have just completely deluged with work and parenting responsibilities. Now, the fathers are there too, or other partners, of course, not necessarily dads. You've been very careful not really to get into the gender politics of this, Anna. And it does seem like your husband is really pulling his weight, I think probably be the right term. But I'm sure you know other people, I've certainly seen stuff on social media

suggesting that some men, not all, are rather good at making sure that their working lives continue without having to do a lot of the domestic stuff. Yeah, and I think that's really unfair. I think this whole situation is really shining a light on the unfairness of, you know, the caring responsibility falling on the women, even when they have full-time work to maintain. It's just unacceptable. We've cultivated quite carefully over the last few years a sharing of work and that's really helped us out in this situation but I really feel for families where that hasn't happened and they're

really being forced to re-examine their home and working practices right now. I'm going to bring you in now Caroline the report from the Institute for Economic Affairs which disappointingly says that fewer than one in six home workers will be able to work productively during the coronavirus outbreak. Now, it's only their research. It may not be very big research. I confess I don't know exactly how big the study was. Do you find that disappointing, though? I do find it disappointing because, well, I think it's unhelpful at the moment anyway, because what we need is to be able to do what we can do. And as Anna, you know, clearly shows that people are absolutely pulling out the stops. That's what we're seeing everywhere. And to be actually sort of putting that across right now is just, I think, is a fairly unhelpful piece of news,

to be honest. Well, how do you make it work? Anna points to all the challenges she has, and she also acknowledges her own good fortune. What about people who are really wrestling with a whole range of challenges, may not have any kind of domestic space at all? The biggest thing here is don't beat yourself up. Okay, so everybody's situation is different right now. We work with thousands of women across the world. And if there's one thing that we keep seeing is this idea that, you know, whether it's the mum guilt or I'm not good enough. And the trouble is, the more we take on these roles, the more we expect to be great at all of them, and which is really helpful, and certainly never more than it is now. So it's kind of a moment to go, you know what, let's put that inner critic into self-isolation and give ourselves a

break. Because until we do that, I think the pressure will just continue to mount. There is an onus though, isn't there, on decent employers to behave decently at a time like this. I was reading stuff over the weekend about one of the people who responded to a tweet I put out that she'd been told by management that having a child at a Zoom meeting was unprofessional. It's outrageous. Businesses have just got to take this on board. If they're expecting people to work from home, then the reality is we are going to have kids actually are getting to know their colleagues on a more personal level than ever before, which is actually bringing a huge benefit, actually, rather than it being a downer. How is it a benefit, would you say?

We need to see world of business becoming more human anyway. In order for people to actually thrive in the future, we need people to be able to be to turn up and actually be themselves so the fact that we're actually seeing each other people are now having conversations with each other on a much more personal level than they ever did before in fact we're also seeing our partners working where we may have never actually seen them work before so we're starting to get to know people on completely different levels you might fall in love with a partner all over again when you see them working oh Oh, that's rather sweet. You never know.

Go on, Anna. I was going to say, it's been interesting earwigging on my husband's kind of work conferences. And I'm sure he's been finding it interesting earwigging on mine too. Do you think here we are at a real turning point in the way we as a nation work? What do you think, Caroline? Yeah, I, you know, it often takes these sort of catalytic moments. And I do, I mean, my greatest hope out of this is that there are going to be more equal and collective ways of living, just redefining and sharing roles. And I think,

you know, if we can get past this report as well, I think we are proving finally that flexible working can and does work. It's been such a battle for women over the years. Now everybody's having to do it. And so we can prove that flexible working is the reality of the future. And then I come back to this fact that I think we're going to get to know each other on a much more human level, which will allow us to support each other and be much more kind and empathetic than we ever have been. That's a very positive spin on things from Caroline Whaley. And you also heard from Anna Harris.

It was good to talk to them both this week. Dolphin Diver says, I normally work from home two to three days a week, as does my other half, and we normally share the office. For the duration of this lockdown, we've split up and moved his desk to the hall. Some distance is needed, much as I love him. Yes. From Claire. I've just done my work with a child sitting on my knee drawing. Oh, here we are.

My husband works in peace in the lounge, undisturbed. It's a compliment that she wants to be with me, but it is utterly infuriating that he can get on in peace. Yeah. Why don't we just stick with the positive bit and just be glad that she wants to sit on your knee? Because let me tell you, Claire, there'll be a time when she won't want to sit on your knee. And from Helen, doing OK with teenage daughter, but worried it will all go to pot after the Easter holiday. Well, I think in our house it's certainly gone to pot already, Helen. If that's not much consolation. Please do keep in touch with us and let us know how things are

going in your household. I think we all need to gather together and take comfort in the fact that very few of us have those Instagram perfect lives you see occasionally. And if you'd like constructive advice on how you can indeed work from home, go to the Woman's Hour website and we have an article for you with some top advice on how to do that. The Woman's Hour website, as I've said often before, is more or less the solution to everything. In trying times, you may have to face the fact, as I'm doing right now, I haven't been able to get my colour done this week. Now, the impact on my broadcasting performance may well be considerable. Let's see how things go over the coming weeks.

DIY hair care is something that we wanted to explore this week. It's not something for everybody and you do need to proceed with caution. We got the advice of multi-award winning hairdresser Tanya Harrison from the Harrison Hair Studio in Liverpool. She has set up a virtual hair clinic for her clients. Me and a couple of the stylists that work for me have just been going through and just tackling our own issues, mine being the grey, you know, making it so that you can't see your grey as prominent. Sarah, she's got curly hair, so she's been going through

and showing people how to do the hair curly Megan's been blow-drying and Alex has been showing you how to do braids What is it like for your clients? I mean, they must be missing you I go to the hairdressers once every six weeks or so It is something I look forward to and it must be true for your clients as well

Oh, yeah, it is they've all been you know contacting me what can they do and stuff like that so you know you've just got to get on with it haven't you and you've got to take this time and you'll be able to practice doing your own hair get all them tongs and stuff out of the cupboard that you've bought years ago. Yeah exactly but you know tongs in the hands of a rank amateur, and I'd include myself there. I mean, they can be dangerous things. Do you seriously think those of us who want to do our hair should attempt to do it ourselves, honestly? Honestly, no. But if you want to, then, you know, we'll be there to fix it when you come back to work. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay. Can I just read out? There's a few

emails here which are worth reading out if you don't mind. This is from Julia who says, my husband and I have isolated ourselves as one household with my parents who are 93 in order to help them through the crisis. It's very trying for a number of reasons. But one of the worst issues is that my mother who has dementia simply cannot either remember nor understand why she can't have her regular weekly hairdressing trip for a shampoo and set. Is there any way that I could tackle it myself? Do you have any advice for that listener? All that you've got to do is just take each section for the way she wears her hair so if it all goes back take your first section at the front and just the width of the the roller size that's your section size and then just

winding it back on itself using a setting lotion if you've got one or hairspray setting lotion you can get that online can't you that you'd be able to get i mean there are instructions on all these setting lotions are there oh yeah here's another one from hannah it's not just about making your hair look pretty but you develop a relationship with your hairdresser i've been going to my hairdresser for nine years and i would find it really hard to find another one that i know on a personal level and that's true as well isn't it tanya you don't just want anyone doing your hair you want the person who's always done it if you you're lucky. Yeah, definitely. I've got some clients who have done for over 20 years

and I regard them as friends. I see them more than my own family most of the time. So, yeah, it is. It's quite sad, and especially those ones who come to the salon and that's their get-out every week and we can all have a good chat and stuff. What about doing fringeses if you have maybe a teenager whose fringe is getting ridiculous what are your what are your tips for cutting a fringe

well what i'd recommend you to do is just take small sections so just take your first section a teeny bit and rest your fingers on the bridge of your nose and then just cut on little bits none of these dramatic you know getting a bobble in and chopping it off yes that's just scary if you just do it a bit at a time then you'll you'll be able to get the shaping in it and it won't be too short about grey um i should be grey although my mother's 86 and she's not that grey i don't know what miracle cure she's discovered. But should you cover up your grey? I've seen the things you can buy in High Street Chemist, the ones that claim to cover up your grey with just a quick spray. Are they any good?

They're brilliant. They are really good and they're a quick fix and they just shampoo straight out. You can get ones that are like a powder or or you can get the sprees, and they're really, really good. Bleach, sensible? If you don't know what you're doing, it's not, is it? No, never. Never, ever do bleaching on yourself at home. We take a lot of precaution in the salon. When we're bleaching somebody's hair,

we'll do strand tests and stuff. So I would never, never, ever recommend it. In terms of the impact of all this on you and indeed on your on your business um what was it like when you just realized you just have to close and you had no idea when you were going to open again? Oh it was it was really really hard I'm never off sick so I've never actually cancelled clients before so to phone clients and say that we won't be there they all understood and they were all they knew exactly why we were doing it but it was really hard but I'm quite positive and I'm looking forward to just getting back in the salon now. But you've no idea when that will be have you?

No no literally no idea we're just taking each week as it comes a lot of hairdressers are self-employed aren't they um it's going to be a really tough time for lots of people are you finding that in your industry that perhaps decent clients are are sending the hairdressers a few quid just to tide them over if even if they can't make the appointment yeah well some some hairdressers are coming up with all ideas for to be getting a little bit of money into the salon and most clients would would do that yeah definitely you did mention earlier that one of your colleagues mentions has she has a special technique for curly hair i mean i may as well abuse my position i've got abundant rather thick hair and in a few weeks I will, if I don't get a cut,

I will look like Crystal Tips. If anybody's old enough to remember Crystal Tips, they'll know who I mean. What am I supposed to do with my barnet over the next couple of weeks, Tanya? Do you wear a curly normally? It's just there. I suppose it is, yeah. It's wavy, certainly, yes.

The best thing to do is a good moisturising shampoo and conditioner on it and some oil or a blow-drying cream and just let it dry naturally. I know that's most probably horrifying to you, but just don't touch it. It's the best tip. Yeah, if I was to let it dry naturally before work, I'd have to get up at about half past three.

If you do it the night before you'll be fine oh I suppose just just leave it before before you go to bed I need you in my life just take each every section and just twirl it around your finger and some of the curls will just be more defined oh right Tanya Harrison who I really could do with on a 24 hour day seven day a week basis just to put me right. Thanks to her for taking part. And a lot of you, I know, really love that item. It was just good to get some scouse common sense on Woman's Hour. We don't have enough of it. On Monday's programme, we've had emails, and this has been very sad, actually, I've been looking at these from some of you who

are really missing your grandchildren and concerned that your grandchildren may forget you during the lockdown. So we're looking at that issue on Monday Morning's programme. And I'll also talk to the writer Sarah Vaughan, whose new book, Little Disasters, well, it's about how really, when it comes to it, we don't ever really know what's going on in other people's lives, however close we think we are to them. That's Monday Morning. I hope you can make the most of what will no doubt be a somewhat challenging weekend, but thank you very much for listening this afternoon. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of

the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.