Woman's Hour

The number of women sleeping rough has risen over the last decade and as the economic impact of Covid 19 takes hold, social policy advisers fear the situation could worsen. Female rough sleepers with their complex profile have it worse on the street, and in wider homelessness terms the number of lone women and women with children has soared in temporary accommodation. Katya Adler talks to Dame Louise Casey who, as “Homelesssness Tsar”, championed the “Everyone In” policy which got rough sleepers off the street and into temporary accommodation during the height of the pandemic and Petra Salva, the head of the Rough Sleepers Unit at the charity St. Mungos. A new film version of The Secret Garden is released on Friday. Written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the book was first published in 1911 and is seen as a classic of English children’s literature. But the story of the author behind the book is far less well known and utterly fascinating. Katya Adler is joined by Ann Thwaite, whose biography of Frances Hodg