Woman's Hour - 11/11/2008

With Jane Garvey. Actor and writer Ruth Jones talks about what it feels like to be, as she puts it, the longest-ever overnight success story. Concurrent Planning is an innovative approach to adoption and fostering. Its main goal is to reunite a baby with its birth family, while, at the same time, placing them with a foster family who will go on to adopt the child if it becomes necessary. Jane discusses how the scheme works with Jackie, who adopted her child through concurrent planning, and with John Simmonds of the British Association for Adopting and Fostering. Plus the story of Rosemary, a mother who nearly lost her child but was helped by the concurrent planning department of the children's charity Coram. In 1846 Charles Dickens set up Urania Cottage in Shepherd's Bush, a home for so-called fallen women. For just over a decade the home taught young women from prisons, penitentiaries, workhouses and the streets of London basic literacy and how to cook, sew and clean. Prof Jenny Hartley talks about how these women ended up as characters on the pages of Dickens's books, not least in Little Dorritt, currently being dramatised by the BBC. Sri Lankan activist and writer Sunila Abeysekera discusses her career in campaigning and how she is due to be honoured by Human Rights Watch. Including drama: A Taste for Death.