In conversation …

Bishop Rachel talks with the Reverend Canon Dr Sandra Millar about living life as a single person, particularly during lockdown.

In this third podcast episode, Archdeacon Phil talks with Bishop Rachel, about how our faith can be affected by troubled times. The two discuss life, hope and struggles, detailing the past few months and how it has affected them personally.

How are young people dealing with change and uncertainty during lockdown? Bishop Rachel talks to five teenagers from our worshipping communities, along with Barrie Voyce (Leader of Illuminate Stroud and the key lead on future plans for youth ministry in the Diocese of Gloucester).

In this sixth podcast in the series of 'Holding the Key: Unlocking the door to doing prison differently', Edwina tells us, "If we are looking to bring people out [of prison], let's look at the people who shouldn't be there in the first place. Lots of women who are in prison in the female estate; they really don't pose a risk to the public, most of them pose a risk to themselves."

Talking about the vision for Hope Street, a secure accommodation project for women leaving prison, she said "I sat down with a team of people to see if we could design the gold-standard, replicable, scalable-model, for women to be able to be sentenced to the community, that would work with probation, the police, the judiciary, children's services, drug and alcohol services. We thought if you really mapped all that - we should see if we could possibly create it. So we did."

"We designed the building, it's now operational with the staff in it. We have beds for 24 women and their children, but then crucially we have a housing pathway, so they have step-down accommodation so they can move on and start living more independently."

Bishop Rachel responds, "It's fantastic to see how you've inhabited that vision. It's also utterly fulfilling everything we've been saying. Not only do we think it's a good idea, but the evidence supports that. And you've made that happen -if you hadn't pushed for this and are now producing more evidence to show that it works, this would not have happened."

Bishop Rachel says, "There should be an equivalent for Hope Street in every county."

Exploring how we navigate through a landscape of trauma towards a place of hope, Bishop Rachel talks to The Revd Hilary Ison, a member of the Project Team exploring ‘Tragedy and Congregations’; Dr Alexander Kent, Reader in Cartography and Geographical Information Science at Canterbury Christ Church University; and Ramani Leathard, Head of Asia, Christian Aid.