Hope in the Deep End Podcast
Hope in the Deep End is a podcast from the Shared Health Foundation in Greater Manchester. We work in areas of deprivation to reduce the impact of poverty on health. Join us each episode to hear from clinicians, policy workers and advocates working to bring Hope in the Deep End.
Want to appear on 'Hope in the Deep End'? Email us on contact@sharedhealth.org.uk
POLITICS SERIES
Councillor Darren Sanders
Cllr Darren Sanders is Deputy Leader of the Council; Cabinet Member for Housing and Tackling Homelessness.
Join us in a conversation about the positive changes he has implemented while in office, the changes he would like to see and what keeps him hopeful.
POLITICS SERIES
Recent Politics Chat
Shared Health's Policy and Comms Lead, Sam Pratt, and Policy and Campaigns Officer, Isabel Kaner, discuss recent political developments in England. Join us in a conversation about Andy Burnham becoming PM, what commitments we'd like to see from the new government, and what we're hopeful for as we head into party conferences season.
POLITICS SERIES
Kwajo Tweneboa
Kwajo Tweneboa is a Social Issues Campaigner. He became a housing activist when his family's personal experience with temporary accommodation led him to it.
Kwajo would expose, on his Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok pages, images sent to him by social housing residents across the country and even in New York, shaming housing associations into action and raising awareness.
Kwajo's book, Our Country in Crisis, looks back at decades of poor decisions and highlights the modern-day the impact of the loss of social housing as a safety net.
POLITICS SERIES
Rebecca Long-Bailey MP
Rebecca Long-Bailey has been an MP since May 2015, and currently represents Salford. Amongst the issues she has campaigned for are safe housing, adequate NHS funding, and the State Pension Inequality for Women. Before entering Parliament, she worked as a solicitor, specialising in healthcare cases.
She is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, which Shared Health is a co-secretariat of.
POLITICS SERIES
Darren Rodwell
As the former Leader of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Darren has over a decade of success in housing, urban regeneration, and community development. With an award-winning and proven track record of driving large-scale inclusive housing projects, fostering public-private partnerships, and delivering sustainable growth. Passionate about bridging public and private sectors, with demonstrated success in complex multi-sector initiatives.
POLITICS SERIES
Natalie Bennett MP
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Natalie Bennett, is a current member of the House of Lords. She served as the leader of the Green Party from 2012 to 2016.
She is an Australian-British politician and journalist, known for advocating for environmental issues, feminism, social equality, and republicanism. As a journalist, she worked in Australia and Thailand before moving to Britain in 1999, writing for The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times.
POLITICS SERIES
Danny Beales MP
Danny Beales has been the Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he was previously a member of Camden London Borough Council from 2014 until his election to Parliament.
Danny is a member of the APPG for Households in Temporary Accommodation, and a keen advocate for ending homelessness, sighting is own childhood experience of homelessness as a driving factor in his campaign for change.
POLITICS SERIES
Agatha Phiri - Founder of Agatha's Space CIC
Agatha Phiri is a journalist, community organiser, HIV activist, Podcaster, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Agatha’s Space CIC. After spending 14 years trapped in the UK immigration system, surviving on £5 a day, and raising her daughter alone, she turned pain into purpose by creating a safe space for women to heal, grow, and be seen. Through Agatha’s Space, she supports women to rebuild confidence and gain skills to become financially independent. Additonally, Agatha’s Space raises awareness to end new HIV transmissions and supports women living with HIV to live with confidence and dignity.
POLITICS SERIES
Siobhain McDonagh MP
Dame Siobhain McDonagh MP has been the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden since May 1997. She has led countless campaigns to secure decent housing, boost education, protect health services, secure jobs for young people and protect the less fortunate.
Siobhain is the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, which Shared Health is a co-secretariat of. The APPG's most recent campaign, the SAFE Protocol, called for councils to notify GPs and schools when homeless families are placed in temporary accommodation. The SAFE campaign's asks have been implemented in the Government's Child Poverty Strategy and the Homelessness Strategy, alongside an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill being welcomed and passed in the House of Lords.
POLITICS SERIES
Margaret Mullane MP
Margaret Mullane is a Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham since 2024.
Margaret has been a consistent champion of council housing. Using her experience as a Council Cabinet Member to hold the police to account and tackle crime in her constituency of Dagenham and Rainham, and offer a new model of politics for the area, putting the community at its heart.
POLITICS SERIES
Nicola Richards
Nicola Richards is a Director at Cratus, a public affairs agency. She is the former Conservative MP for West Bromwich East, elected in December 2019. Nicola’s public affairs background earlier in her career focused on Jewish community relations, Holocaust education and fighting antisemitism, a theme she continued in Parliament.
As a Member of Parliament Nicola also campaigned on public health matters in the areas of HIV and Breast Cancer. Nicola has served as co-chair of an APPG and has experience serving on multiple committees.
POLITICS SERIES
Councillor Bev Craig
Bev Craig has been the Leader of Manchester City Council since December 2021. She has overseen Manchester’s ambitious plans to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy, increasing investment into neighbourhoods across the city, better outcomes for children and young people, tackling inequalities, building more housing and working to meet Manchester’s net zero ambitions.
In this episode, we chat about how Bev came into politics, her passion for tackling inequalities, and staying hopeful.
POLITICS SERIES
Homelessness Minister Alison McGovern
Alison McGovern has long been committed to improving temporary accommodation for families and children.
In this episode, she reflects on her political beginnings, her upbringing in a family of advocates, and the progress she’s made—alongside her vision for a more secure and compassionate future.
episode ten
30% of all children are in poverty
In this week's episode we discuss the heartbreaking statistic that 30% of all children in the UK live in poverty.
As we get closer to the general election Dr Laura Neilson from Shared Health and Alison Garnham, Chief Executive from Child Poverty Action Group discuss what the future government should do to reduce the impact of poverty on children in the UK.
episode nine
Compassionate Care
This week's episode focuses on the importance of compassion in healthcare. Dr Laura Neilson speaks to Dr Jen Davies, clinical psychologist at Shared Health Foundation, about how we can improve the way we care for our patients and for ourselves.
The Together Service, part of Shared Health Foundation, is embedded in primary care and is accessible to all patients of the practice. The service works with all parents and expecting parents to create healthier bonds with their baby, and also with those who have experienced baby loss and trauma.
Resources:
The Threat Drive Soothe Systems - The Psych Collective
How 40 Seconds of Compassion Could Save a Life - Stephen Trzeciak - TEDxPenn
episode eight
Focused Care Patients: Episode 2
episode seven
Infant Parenting
episode six
Focused Care Patients: Episode 1
episode five
Let's chat about teeth!
This weeks episode focuses on oral hygiene and teeth! Our guests are Dr Ben Atkins, former President of the Oral Health Foundation and ran his own Homeless Dental Practice and Dr Christina Worle, Clinical Lecturer in Restorative Dentistry and is an expert on Trauma informed Dentistry.
Dr Laura Neilson speaks with Ben and Christina about poverty, access to dentistry for deprived areas and if wooden toothbrushes are all they are cracked up to be!
episode four
Let's Talk about Toilets!
Professor Monica Lakhanpaul is a Consultant Paediatrician and Professor of Integrated Community Child Health at University College London and is passionate about toilets!
Talking about the loo is not a common conversation in the UK. We often refer to poor hygiene in toilets and lack of clean water in 3rd world countries. Clinicians often are taught to treat constipation and UTIs with prescribed medicine but there is actually so much more behind the emotional and mental health of a child that affects their bowel movements. Asking the question where the toilet is situated, does it have light, who else has access to the toilet, how clean is it, can you afford to keep it clean and how does it make you feel when you use it can open up a whole conversation that you never expected to have!
episode three
34 Homeless Children Die in England, in conversation with The Lullaby Trust
The Lullaby Trust is a charity that provides advice for safer sleeping for babies and support for parents and professionals going through a Sudden Infant Death.
Our recent report from The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Temporary Accommodation shows that 34 homeless children died because of their vulnerability and homelessness. How did that happen? What can we do to stop it happening again? What are the risks of co-sleeping?
Dr Laura Neilson and Jenny Ward, CEO of The Lullaby Trust talk all things babies, cots and poverty.
Our resource produced in partnership with The Lullaby Trust can be found here.
EPISODE TWO
In conversation with Alex Bax, Pathway
In this episode we meet Alex Bax, CEO of Pathway.
Pathway is the UK’s leading homeless healthcare charity; and has helped 11 hospitals in England to create teams who take care of over 3500 homeless patients every year. Pathway also carries out research and provides training through the Faculty for Homeless and Inclusion Health, a network of more than 1700 people who are passionate about healthcare for excluded groups. People who have been homeless are included in every area of our work.
Laura and Alex discuss the welfare state, the impact of shame and what hope we can bring to the most entrenched situations.
Episode one
Supporting Homeless Families
In this episode we meet Angie and Matt, who are Focused Care Practitioners in Oldham. There are over 120,000 homeless children in England alone, many are part of a single parent household who face multiple barriers to health, housing and education. These households get placed in various forms of homeless accommodation including B&Bs, Hostels and Temporary Accommodation.
Focused Care works to make the invisible patient, visible. By working under a flexible remit and time elastic support service, Focused Care is able to unpick the problems behind the problems, remove barriers of social injustice and bring hope to the most difficult and traumatic situations.
For more information on our Homeless Families project click here.
To read our our joint report from the APPG on Temporary Accommodation with Justlife, check out our website here.