Polly is CEO of Shelter, the charity that defends the right to a safe home. She is a prominent media commentator and speaker on social justice, housing and homelessness, leadership, feminism and women’s issues, on platforms ranging from the Oxford Union to the first Women’s March London.
She was previously CEO of Women’s Aid and, before that, Executive Director at Action for Children, and has spent many years both campaigning publicly and influencing at the highest levels of government. She is also a trustee of Women in Sport and the Young Women’s Trust, a member of Bayes Business School Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, and non-executive director of Wessex Local Medical Committees.
She is part of the Founding Group of A Better Way Network and of the Charity Reform Group. She can be followed on Twitter @pollyn1 and Instagram @pollyatshelter.
Polly is CEO of Shelter, the charity that defends the right to a safe home. She is a prominent media commentator and speaker on social justice, housing and homelessness, leadership, feminism and women’s issues, on platforms ranging from the Oxford Union to the first Women’s March London.
She was previously CEO of Women’s Aid and, before that, Executive Director at Action for Children, and has spent many years both campaigning publicly and influencing at the highest levels of government. She is also a trustee of Women in Sport and the Young Women’s Trust, a member of Bayes Business School Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, and non-executive director of Wessex Local Medical Committees.
She is part of the Founding Group of A Better Way Network and of the Charity Reform Group. She can be followed on Twitter @pollyn1 and Instagram @pollyatshelter.
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. Before we delve into today's very special episode, I just wanted to say a massive thank you. Thank you so much for all the love and support following the news that Killer in the Family has been shortlisted in the True Crime Awards this year. I appreciate it so much and it really makes all the hard work, the hours of research and working through these really tough stories just so valuable, and so thank you. Okay, so today we have a very special episode, as it's not only International Women's Day, but we also have a very special guest, an inspirational woman who I've had the honour of working with in my career. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Here is my interview with Holly Neat, cbe. Hi, holly.
Speaker 2:
Hello hi Claire.
Speaker 1:
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:
Not at all. I'm honoured. Thank you for having me, thank you.
Speaker 1:
So I'm going to tell the listeners a bit about you and then we'll get into it. So Holly is CEO of Shelter, which is a charity that defends the right to a safe home. She's a prominent media commentator and speaker on all great things like social justice, housing, leadership, feminism and women's issues. She's previously Chief Executive of Women's Aid, which is where we work together, and before that, executive Director for Children. She spent many years both campaigning publicly and influencing at the highest levels of government, and Holly and I have spent time influencing in Secretary of State's offices and things like that together. So, as well as all of those things, holly is trustee of women in sport and the brilliant young women's trust. She's a member of Bayes Business School, global Diversity, equity and Inclusion Council and is also part of the founding group of a better way network and the charity reform group. She can be found on Twitter at HollyN1 and Instagram at Holly at Shelter Holly that's quite the CV of that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but you know, people's intros always sound better than the people themselves, don't they?
Speaker 1:
That's absolutely not true in your case. So, as you can imagine, with so many of the stories that we talk about on Killer and the Family podcast, they do concern domestic abuse and sometimes domestic abuse that has been going on for many years and has had lots of multi-agency involvement. So obviously on the podcast I talk a lot about my time at Women's Aid and everything we did there together. So I think listeners will be really interested for you to tell us a bit about your time at Women's Aid and any highlights you might have.
Speaker 2:
I mean my time as Chief Executive of Women's. Aid was at absolutely transformational time for me, actually. I mean, I absolutely loved it and I'm very proud of what we did, but also quite humbled by a lot of the women that I worked with there and, in particular, women who are themselves survivors, who are leading and working in local, genuinely life-saving domestic abuse services which are so, so under threat. I mean, they were under threat then, but those services are massively under threat now.
Speaker 1:
And I think I look back at the campaigns we did around, like investment in refuges, and obviously we got investment. And then I look now and I'm like how is this still? I mean, we know how it's not getting better, but it's like it feels frustrating, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:
I don't want to be sort of have a pat answer to this, but there's a one-word answer and it begins with P and it ends with Y and it's not Polly, let's put it that way. So I mean yes. So I think it's a a dially undervalued and misunderstood sector and really struggles with a lot of patriarchal but also misogynist assumptions, and you know, I think, that domestic abuse is so dangerous, so incredibly widespread and affects the lives of so many women. It is once you've worked closely in the sector. It is still totally unbelievable what a struggle it is to actually keep the sector going at all, but it is so yeah.
Speaker 1:
And do you have any? So thinking about sort of some of the work that we did together, so particularly around sort of campaigning work, do you have any sort of things that really stand out to you, that you might look back and be like that was good.
Speaker 2:
Yes. So, having said all of that, that is a bit depressing. Yes, I genuinely think we did great work at Women's Aid and they still are doing great work.
Speaker 1:
Yeah yeah, Blimey.
Speaker 2:
I'm not trying to, yeah, but so I think, as you've just referred to, I think we did campaign successfully for more funding for refugees and that was important. It still wasn't enough and we've already said there's still a huge issue there, but we did it.
Speaker 2:
I do think we raised the profile of domestic abuse a lot during the time I was at Women's Aid and that was a very important thing to do. And then, more specifically, the things that stand out to me, I suppose, are our successful campaign to have coercive control made a criminal offence, and that it wasn't only that. We successfully campaigned for the legislation change. But well, you know, because you led this bit, we really worked on how that policy was designed to be most effective. That was really important. So it wasn't just oh, we've had a win, We've got the law changed. It was done with a huge amount of effort to make sure that the impact would genuinely be there.
Speaker 2:
And also our incredible colleague, Theresa Parker, who still works at Women's Aid on their communications, the piece of work that she did and I was also involved in with the arches, publicising coercive control, Because people didn't. Now coercive control is kind of in the language and there's a reasonable understanding, I think, of what it is, but at that time there really wasn't. And the work we did with the arches and the fantastic cast as well, that brought that to life. I think that was really powerful.
Speaker 2:
And then I really remember when Sally Chalem was released yeah basically off the back of that legislation, the understanding of coercive control. I mean that was a huge moment, a really powerful moment. So coercive control was a big one, and I suppose if I had to pick one other thing, it would definitely be the work we did around the family courts and the report we did on child homicides that demonstrated how child contact being agreed by the family court with a domestic abuse perpetrator had led to the deaths of children, and so that was incredibly powerful and I think we were pushing against, still are, to be honest with you a really toxic assumption that pervades the family courts that the family courts are biased against dads and that allegations of domestic abuse that are heard in the family courts are often a lie that women are concocting in order to stop dads having contact with their kids. And I mean that myth is so powerful that it impacts judges decisions Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Let's get into that because we have. So I've talked about 19 child homicides report on the podcast before because I think really working on that sort of made me realise how much familiar side and men who hate that decision to kill not only their partner but their children as well is sort of not talked about as much as the phenomenon that it is and the drive of control and coerced control behind it.
Speaker 2:
Also yes, and also the fact that the way it's reported is very often the man is the tragic figure in the centre of it all. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And you know, almost like Shakespearean flawed hero type, very, I think, masculine construction that goes with how we think about these absolutely appalling cases.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, and you will know Luke and Ryan Hart, yes, and so their mum, claire and Charlotte, were killed. Mum and sister were killed by their dad and I've done an episode about them and they started their work because they were absolutely called at the way that people talked about their dad, who had just killed their mum and sister, and they were like he's a great guy and he was sort of like, hang on a second. Surely we as the surviving family have a right to dictate how our narrative has played out, and they've done such powerful work.
Speaker 2:
And I think they're amazing, really brave, and Sally Challon's son as well is just an incredible campaigner, and that's so important because, you know, I definitely am a firm believer in feminism and feminist solidarity, but I also think men's voices in these conversations are absolutely vital.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, totally, and I think so thinking back to sort of 19 child homicides, you've talked about that sort of real toxic, powerful environment that we campaigned in and we launched that report in, and I think one thing that I talked about on the podcast is, you know, that real struggle in family courts, when children are involved and domestic abuse is involved, there's a real feels like and it still feels like there's a real sort of lack of belief of women, and there was still at the time that we launched that report in 2016. Yeah, it was against quite powerful and toxic background. Can you sort of talk a bit about why it was still really important for us to talk about those issues and to talk about perpetrators of domestic abuse? You had killed their children as well.
Speaker 2:
Well, partly because women and children's lives are being put at risk by the family courts, because the family courts don't understand, or it often don't understand, domestic abuse and because they're of this really powerful mythology around male victimization, the whole idea that women invent allegations of domestic abuse, or even that there's a, I think, one of the important myths, apart from the myth about women lying, which actually is not confined to the family courts. I mean, I see, in housing, for example, in homelessness services, when women have fled domestic abuse, very often they're not believed when they present.
Speaker 1:
That's really interesting. So actually that's the myth that pervades.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, and I think women are not being believed.
Speaker 2:
I mean, we saw that in the Me Too movement, you know as well, and I just think women not being believed is commonplace.
Speaker 2:
So in the family courts is one of the most dangerous environments and I felt at the time and I still do one of the environments where there's the biggest level of responsibility to change that, because these are decisions that affect people's lives or even put their people's lives at risk. Number one and number two we're talking about judges. These are highly educated people with a huge amount of status in our society and they have a responsibility to understand some of these key societal phenomena, one of which is domestic abuse, the gendered nature of it and the fact that you know the idea that women are routinely making these things up is a myth, and I think that you know if anyone has the responsibility to get their head around that, it's family court judges. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that that mythology isn't unique to the family courts. I suppose what I am saying is the family courts have a significant level of responsibilities to understand it.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, and I think people might not sort of I don't want to say people won't believe it but when we launched the campaign, like routinely in the family courts, perpetrators of domestic abuse who were fighting over their children were allowed to question the victim. They were allowed to question them and if they were also going, yeah, I was like and people might be, like you know, unbelievable.
Speaker 2:
And when I found the how, I was even surprised. I mean, and one of the things that we really thought should be relatively easy to change is the right of a perpetrator to directly question their victims in the family court, and I mean, but the arguments in favour of that, that, the sort of level of entitlement that came through when people were arguing in favour of that, and a level of entitlement that they just couldn't see, it was really pretty bizarre actually.
Speaker 2:
And I think there have been some things that have changed from from from our campaigning, which I think is really important.
Speaker 1:
But, you know, in the context that we launched the campaign, the child first campaign like if someone was going through criminal proceedings for a domestic or sexual offense, then the family court didn't even have to pay attention to that, which was another thing that I was really like what?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and we actually had cases of men being bussed out of prison they were serving a sentence for abusing that woman and then being bussed into the family court and allowed to face to face challenge her account of the abuse when they which they'd already been convicted of Exactly. I mean you literally couldn't make it up and like, well, I don't know, I mean absolutely speechless. What can you say about that?
Speaker 1:
Exactly yeah, but as we've said, like the campaign did lead to some change, like changes are still needed Successes in some of the most shocking situations, but I guess where?
Speaker 2:
I suppose I still think that dangerous child contact is being ordered in the courts. I still think there is a bias against domestic abuse survivors in the family courts.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and I think there are lots of changes still needed.
Speaker 2:
So when.
Speaker 1:
I think it'd be. Really. I'm going to ask you what you think of the current landscape, of what's happening domestic abuse, but also women, which you know we've talked a bit about before, but I think I think it's really interesting to talk a bit about you know you. You are a prominent campaigner, you're very public, you're out there, you're feminist campaigner and sometimes that can feel potentially a bit dangerous, like, does that ever cross your mind?
Speaker 2:
It has done in the past. I don't feel it as much as I used to. There's a kind of I mean, you know, if you're out there and you're a campaigner, you're not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. So I get that. And men's rights activists and really angry landlords. Angry landlords what?
Speaker 1:
a combination.
Speaker 2:
What a combination. Yeah, don't like me, not all men and not all landlords. That is literally my Twitter feed sometimes, but I, you know, I mean honestly that doesn't bother me at all. Like it it couldn't. That couldn't bother me less. The general environment of social media and the general environment towards women bothers me a lot more. But I think and it's interesting, funnily enough, at the same time as I think, my personal situation has become less risky since.
Speaker 2:
I've been at shelter than it was at Women's Aid definitely. But I think the environment on particularly X I should call it now has become a lot more toxic and I suppose it's interesting. So it was always a bit of an echo chamber but it used to feel like it was an echo chamber of people that I might like to make contact with and who might wanna help me and who might agree with me and who we could be building a bit of a movement with. And that echo chamber had some obviously downsides and you definitely were in an echo chamber of people who wanted to hear what you had to say, but now I feel like I'm in an echo chamber of people who hate me, you know, and I'm a lot more circumspect now about what I talk about, particularly on X. I don't branch out and sort of express a view on certain topics that possibly a few years ago, probably a few years ago, would have done.
Speaker 1:
And I think it is really interesting to talk about. And I touched on this when we spoke with Theresa from Women's Aid about like I think in some ways, you know, that level of misogyny in social media in the country has got a lot worse and you know, we are seeing, like this week we've just seen the stuff about Sarah Everard killer, who absolutely should never been put in that position and absolutely is not just a bad apple, and I think there's a whole range of things that for me, for like, having worked in this sector for so long, you wanna see positive progress, don't you? And sometimes it's really hard to see those things that you were talking about 10 years ago still being an issue. And do you see that in the landscape, Like, what's your sense of? You know where we are as sort of women, but also campaigners, and what's happening there in the wider landscape?
Speaker 2:
I mean I guess just to say something about the because I was really thinking about that when that came out about Sarah Everard's murderer Because we worked when I was at Women's Aid we worked with the police a lot I met some really inspirational police officers, men and women who were really striving to make the police force better in the way it responded to crimes against women and girls and the way it understood domestic abuse and worked with domestic abuse victims. And actually I think I'm interested to know and I don't really know whether that trajectory of improvement in practice has continued, despite the very high profile cases where clearly there is an inherent misogyny within the police and I think I always knew there was working with the police so you could tell how much those really great officers were pushing against that tide. But I suppose what I would really want to make sure is that those people, and maybe more of them, are still doing that. Are we still seeing that drive within the lots of police services that definitely I saw a few years ago to get better? And how are we?
Speaker 2:
When I say we, I suppose what's really important for police chiefs to be doing is to be still reaching out to and nurturing those people within the force and making sure that they don't just buckle under this tide of misogyny and absolutely necessary, really negative reports about what's going on in the police. I think that's important. I'm not saying we shouldn't be hearing that, Absolutely we should be but I would also like to be reassured that, if you like, those good apples I met a lot when I was in the States, despite the problems that definitely there were that those people are being nurtured and protected and then morale is being protected through this.
Speaker 2:
And I would really like to be reassured at some point that that's the case. I'm not in a job where I can kind of demand that reassurance. I would like it. I would like to know if anybody would like to tell me that would be good. Yeah, so that's one thing.
Speaker 1:
I've forgotten the whole wide scope of your question now, because I think it was thinking about, thinking about the sort of wider you know, wider society, sort of how approach to responding to domestic abuse, but also, like, like, as we were saying, that sort of misogyny thing. What is there any hope out there? And we could finish on that sort of vibe. Is there, what's the hope out there for people who are sort of they want to see change, they are feminist campaigners, they, you know, or they just don't want to see Jess Phillips read out another really really long list of women who've been killed. What is the hope out there?
Speaker 2:
So, I suppose that's why I spoke about those good apples and are we nurturing them. And that doesn't only go for the police. That goes for all kinds of housing would be another example. So there are a lot of efforts to improve the response to domestic abuse survivors in housing, which in general is very poor. And, you know, we need to be seeing more profile for services that are fought by and for women, and there's a lot of work to be done on the narrative around misogyny. But I also do think that there are a lot of young women. I've got two daughters in their 20s, one in a one 20, one to 25. And they and their friends are absolutely clear on their feminism. They know misogyny when they see it and they are, I think, relatively optimistic. So I'm optimistic because they're optimistic.
Speaker 2:
What I do think is that feminism needs to get its act together and just unite and just come together on the fact that we are still seeing this tide of violence against women, still seeing these patriarchal and misogynist assumptions having a lot of power, and that's what we need to be challenging and that is the fight for everyone, and I think we just need to. You know, maybe we need another wave but, we definitely need it soon like police.
Speaker 1:
Yeah Well, I think that's quite a good, a good place to end our interview on the call for another wave of feminism. Thank you very much, Polly.
Speaker 2:
You're welcome.
Speaker 1:
There we have a really wide ranging and just such an interesting interview with Polly, who was Chief Executive of Women's Aid and is now Chief Executive of Shelter. Thank you so much, everyone for listening, supporting, sharing and downloading the podcast. I will be back next week on another podcast, so please do subscribe wherever you can and do follow me on social killer in the family pod and do let me know any stories you might like me to cover. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is Killer in the Family podcast. Until next time, take care you.