Weekend Woman's Hour: Welfare Support at Sandhurst, Women Plumbers, Flying with Children

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.1 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her only broadcast interview, Louise Townsend, the mother of Olivia Perks who took her own life in 2019 whilst at Sandhurst Military Academy, speaks to Woman’s Hour. Louise discusses her view that there was a lack of welfare support from the academy towards her late daughter and what steps need to be taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

According to the ONS, only 2.4% of plumbers are women. We speak to two female plumbers about why that figure is so low and whether they recommend the job to other women. Sovay Berriman runs the company PlumbMaid and is based in Cornwall, and Lysette Hacking, worked as a plumber for six years before becoming a lecturer in plumbing at Calderdale College in Halifax in Yorkshire.

The Supreme Leader of Iran has called for a massive population increase, and the state has been offering financial incentives for women to have more children. There is also now more pressure on women not to access contraception, and abortion has been criminalised further, with a potential prison sentence for women being proposed by the regime. Meanwhile cases of unsafe illegal abortions have increased. The BBC’s Saba Zavarei has been speaking to Iranian women about their experiences.

Where do you put your awards and achievements? Do you show them off or keep them all to yourself? We hear from the academic Dr Louise Creechan who keeps hers in her downstairs loo, while the co-host of the Wittering Whitehalls, Hilary Whitehall, has kept her trophy in her handbag.

As the holiday season begins, we talk to Jane Dowden and Lucy Cavendish about travelling on planes with small children, and how to deal with tantrums and disgruntled fellow passengers.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lucy Wai Editor: Louise Corley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Weekend Women's Hour with me and Eterani, where we bring you the best bits
0:04.8	from the week just gone. Coming up, as Iran titans laws on women's choices, we find out how women
0:11.3	are coping with the lack of access to abortions. Did you know that only 2.4% of plumbers are women?
0:17.2	We hear from two about the joys and the challenges of the job. So I knocked on a customer's door
0:22.8	and said I'm here to change your tap your landlord sent me and the homeowner laughed and shut the door
0:28.4	in my face. So I knocked on the door again and said no I'm really here the landlord sent me
0:35.1	and again he closed the door in my face. And flying with children, how do you handle it? Two moms
0:40.6	share their stories of tantrums and disgruntled passengers. But first, in 2019 Olivia Perks, who was
0:48.8	21 at the time, took her own life at Sandhurst Military Academy in Barkshire. She was training as
0:54.7	an officer cadet and was in the last term of a 44 week course. An inquest in May this year concluded
1:01.1	that the army missed opportunities to prevent her death and that Olivia fell victim to and a quote
1:06.9	a complete breakdown in welfare support during her time at the academy. The inquest was told that
1:12.9	Olivia felt an overwhelming sense of embarrassment after spending the night in an officer's room
1:18.1	after a charity ball five days before her death. A witness spoke of how Olivia had felt like she
1:23.7	was on trial as she was questioned about the incident by Sandhurst Academy leaders. Olivia had
1:29.2	previously attempted to end her life in the summer of 2018 but was deemed at low risk of trying
1:34.8	again as she was legally an adult. This was not relayed to her family. Olivia's mother Louise
1:41.3	Townsend believes there was a lack of welfare support put into place to protect her daughter.
1:46.7	Louise spoke to Nula on woman's hour for her only broadcast interview and began by describing
1:52.0	what Olivia was like. Olivia really was just a normal regular girl but she had this enormous
1:58.4	sense of adventure and fun really and as she was growing up she developed a passion for sport and
2:05.2	was quite apparent that she gave everything that she did each and bought with the 100%
	...

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