Homelessness and the Housing Crisis: How To End Rough Sleeping (Sabrina Cohen-Hatton)

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:43BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, it's Amol here and welcome. Maybe welcome back to Radical, which I think you may know by now, our conversations about the deep global trends that are changing our world and a sort of safe space to encounter and challenge the really radical ideas that we need, that you need, to win the future. And we try and do it with some of the most interesting, some of the most influential pioneers and thinkers and people, basically, that are around today. And my goodness, we've got someone today who has got some radical ideas. She's extraordinary. But before I tell you about her, let me tell you about the issue that she addresses.

1:18It's homelessness. And homelessness in Britain is rising very, very rapidly. It declined for many, many years around the turn of the millennium. And now the number of English households living in temporary accommodation has more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. That is the highest figure since records began. And one of the things that is so distressing is the sharp rise in homelessness amongst young people. This is often connected to the housing crisis, of course. Someone who's thought long and hard about this, but someone who's also actually lived it, she's been there, is Sabrina Cohen-Hatton.

1:54I'll leave her to explain exactly what happened. But the bit that you need to know for now is that she slept rough. She was homeless from around the age of 15 and she spent a long time living and sleeping on the streets. She is now, however, written through an extraordinary case of meritocracy, you might say, or social mobility. She's now become one of Britain's most senior firefighters. She advises Prince William on homelessness. And as you're going to hear, she's got some really positive, constructive solutions or ideas for how to fix the very problems that she spent her life trying to overcome.

2:26It's special, this. here is Sabrina Cohen-Hatton the fact that you've got a book about decision making and you're one of the most esteemed firefighters in the country and the book is called The Heat of the Moment I think that I actually think that is one of the best titles for a book I've ever come across but we'll talk about The Heat of the Moment Can we talk about your extraordinary life a little bit beforehand? Of course. Tell us a bit about where you were born and a bit about your kind of heritage, because that's fascinating. Of course, I was born in Cardiff. My dad's family were all Moroccan Jews.

3:10My dad was then born in Israel after my family actually had to leave Morocco after a program. And my grandmother was attacked with a machete and left for dead. She survived and they left Morocco as refugees. And my grandmother is one of the most incredible, loving, kind people. and she never ever talks, bearing in mind she left as a refugee, she never talks about what she lost, only the opportunities that she had to build. And she still looks at the world through such a lens of love and compassion and understanding. She's just one of the most incredible people. She's 102 now. Oh, wow. What's her name?

3:46Shout out to her. What's her name? Rachel. Rachel. Safta Rachel. Safta Rachel. Oh, absolutely. She's awesome. People who've been through the extreme horrors of the 20th century, You often find that, which is, we're going to talk about the way trauma shapes outlook and decision making. And I think you've got a lot of solutions to some of the problems that you've experienced yourself, which we'll definitely get to. Some of them are pretty radical. But it's an interesting thing that a lot of people who've gone through trauma feel a tremendous sense of shame about it. They feel a sense of they need to disguise it.

4:17Or they just make, it sounds like Rachel, Rachel made the decision that she just actively wanted to focus on the future. She was amazing. She's been a big influence on you. huge influence so my father had a brain tumor when I was really young and he died when I was nine but when he was sick my grandmother was living with us and helping us care for him and stuff and you know I kind of saw her approach to things and she never ever focused on the negatives it was always what she was grateful for what we should be grateful for what we could do she would never sit in a sense of self-pity or victimhood it was always focused on okay this is happening so what's the reality what do we need to do she was someone that was hugely full of compassion hugely full of forgiveness didn't harbor any blame even to the person that had attacked her just thought about you know actually i hope that he's had a good life because i don't want him lying on his deathbed regretting that imagine being an environment that kind of drives you to do something so extreme and she's so circumspect she really is a hugely special woman and i and i hold her so dear to me I really do.

5:21This is your father's mother so this is someone who lost her son. You were eight or nine when he died. Yeah I was nine years old when he died and you know he'd gone from being this kind of incredible figure that was healthy and full of fun and full of vitality to someone that had to take a lot of steroids to deal with the chemotherapy. He put on loads of weight. He was almost unrecognizable from the man that we knew and the night before he died we'd had a really kind of difficult experience. Everything was really kind of challenging it was around the time of the gulf war as well so i had family that yeah i had family that had come over and were staying with us and then we're going back so it kind of there was a lot of chaos going on in the household at the time but i can remember me and my brother being outside showing my dad pictures that we'd made um in school and i don't know how i can remember this but the topic for our school project was the victorians and i can remember him showing him the these pictures that i'd done of victorians which i obviously thought were picasso esque the reality was they were terrible but you know he did that really cute thing of going that's amazing darling anyway he tried to yeah he tried to get back up to come inside and he couldn't he fell over he was on the floor and i can remember my mum panicking because she wasn't able to pick him up because you know she was small and he was so big and he was i can remember him crawling inside to try and get inside and it was really really difficult and the rest of the day just kind of went south from there and everyone was quite frayed and stressed anyway I can remember there was a big family argument and I had cried and I was upset and me and my father I shouted something at my father and he kind of sent me off to bed and I remember going to bed and crying myself to sleep and waking up the next morning and he wasn't there and it took my mum my aunt came over her sister came over and it took them ages to be able to find the words to tell me and my brother where Abba we called him Abba where Abba was and in the end my mum said it was a burning hot day it was July 28th 1992 when he died so the next day July 29th so midsummer and they said to me and my brother go and race to the bottom of the garden and by the time you're back we'll tell you so it was obviously the time when they were taking a deep breath and composing themselves and they said that your father's passed away and I can remember my brother screaming just crying and I can remember looking at everyone crying and I was just in shock initially and then my eyes started to started to started to tear up before I realized what was going on and I could process it And it was, it was, that was it.

8:09And it was just, it was the biggest ache of loss that I could ever describe. And what do you remember the days ahead? Things got really fractious and really difficult. And my mum's mental health deteriorated significantly. And there was a big separation with the family. and it got really really difficult between my mum and other family members her mental health was declining she was withdrawing and the days after were difficult the weeks after were harder the months and the years after became impossibly volatile and one thing I often say when you think about someone who's experienced great loss and and my mum by the way has never remarried she's never had another relationship since she is still 100 in love with my father and has never moved on from that and she has her own trauma there to to process as well but but when you see somebody that you love declining with their mental health when someone goes to war with their demons it's everyone around them that gets hit by the shrapnel and that was absolutely 100 what happened to us and And the business that they had failed.

9:35They had, by that point, they had a pizzeria in Cardiff and that all went under. And it got really tricky. We were living in abject poverty. We were going to school with kind of holes in our shoes. We didn't have a central heating system that worked. What was it that went from all of that to homeless? when you think about life rough sleeping nobody chooses to sleep on the streets if there's a better alternative of course nobody does i was trying to hide how bad things were from social services i was trying to hide how bad things were from the school our family had completely fractured at that point so i didn't have the connections i was completely socially isolated and at that point I became completely emotionally isolated as well so actually it felt at the time that if none of this is a possibility where am I what do I do where do I go and I'll never forget the first night that I slept rough and I was just wandering around for ages and I ran into some other people who were also rough sleeping and they said you know we're sleeping in the porch of there was a derelict church um at the end of uh at the end of the kind of the high street it was kind of dead opposite the police station for those that know Newport anyway it was pretty derelict but the porch was covered and the porch was open so you know we used to bed down in the porch and I can remember going there and someone shared their blankets with me and someone gave me some food and I can remember sitting there thinking wow people are actually being nice to me and it really surprised me but I can remember lying there being scared being anxious but also yeah but there was also this kind of really weird juxtaposition with being around a group of people that also it felt like I wasn't on my own at that point I was alone but I wasn't on my own being alone if that made sense um in the dreadful stereotype that is applied by people who like me you've never slept rough did you um sleep on park benches did you kind of you know did you uh did you kind of i mean literally what did you do to get a sleeping bag i mean were you trying to kind of cobble to it were you begging for money were you doing that all of that kind of stuff so shop doorways the porch of the derelict church abandoned buildings we'd sleep in places with cover places with cover yeah places with cover um around the back of the post office you used to be able to kind of go down because it was um it was it was one of those ones that kind of the the it was almost built into a hill a little bit so you could get covered if you went around the back of the post office you'd go down these metal stairs and where the the kind of back of the air conditioning unit was there was like a concrete ledge and you could kind of bed down on the concrete ledge sometimes it was usually taken mind you because that was the prime plot yeah You've talked about the compassion of other homeless people.

12:42You've also written and spoken, I know, about the lack of compassion from everyday punters, as it were. What kind of your 15-year-old girl, extraordinarily vulnerable, if I think about a 15-year-old girl now. But I mean, you know, you've got a daughter, you think about this sort of stuff. You know, what sort of treatment were you getting from people just walking the streets of Newport? It was mixed. It was mixed. and I can absolutely talk about some of the abuse that I got but I can also talk to some real acts of kindness and compassion that I had from people as well so I have to say it was mixed but very often when you're sat there on the side of the street I would experience people walking past there was a huge amount of indifference which I understand people are getting on with their everyday lives no one expects someone to come along and kind of solve everything for you but I can remember feeling like I was a ghost like I was completely invisible like real life was happening and I was just kind of there looking through a window somewhere seeing it all going on and that I think was one of the most difficult things um there were times when people were so abusive I'd be kicked just would sat there with my stuff and people would just sorry I just smacked you uh microphone you know I'd be sat there on the side of the road and I'd have my stuff next to me and someone had come past and they'd just you know put the boot into you or they'd kick your stuff or I'd be spat at by people and you know people would be incredibly

14:17dehumanizing incredibly dehumanizing because they'd made up their mind they'd shout at you because they think that you're scum and my goodness were they going to let you know it and I had a stray dog. I was a stray girl so he was a stray dog and so it kind of seemed to work. Exactly, he was adorable. His name was Menace because he was a flipping menace but he was my menace and I loved him but I know a lot of people would have a view on those experiencing homelessness who have a dog and people go past going oh you've only got that for sympathy or you're just using him to beg for money and things like that And it was really awful because the reality for me, I talked earlier on about being completely socially and emotionally isolated.

15:00Well, he became my social and emotional connection at a time when I didn't have anything else. Well, he was kind to you and he responded. He meant the world to me. And it also gave me something and someone to focus on. And I honestly, honestly believe that having that relationship with that dog for me meant that I wasn't seeking relationships with other people who would have sought to exploit my vulnerability. You mentioned kindness. What sort of kindness did you receive as well? There were people who would come up and bring you food. There were people who would come up and would bring me dog food or a little toy for menace or something like that, which was really kind.

15:40But sometimes by far the most poignant was when someone would come up and ask me my name because it reminded me that I was a person after all. So I absolutely experienced some really positives from people. And in fact, there was one couple who used to buy the big issue off me when I was selling it in a little town called Monmouth, about an hour away from Newport. And their names were Beryl and Mike. So shout out to Beryl and Mike. But every year they send me a Christmas card to my office. when I first took up my position as a chief fire officer I opened one of the cards and one of the cards was from Beryl and Mike saying massive congratulations legends it's amazing and just something like that you know what are we talking kind of 20 years on and they're still remembering me and doing something as kind as that I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about some of the solutions that you would recommend around homelessness based on your experience just before I give you some stats which are astonishing about the state of homelessness today.

16:40I actually want to ask a general dilemma, which is what people listening to this should do when they walk past or are confronted by a homeless person. For me, the most powerful thing that someone could do was to stop, look me in the eye, ask me my name, ask me how I was, ask me if I needed anything. And some of the big charities will always say, look, don't give money, give money to a charity because we can make sure that it's rooted to it. I've been there I don't subscribe to that all the time to be honest because I was living hand to mouth and there were times when if people hadn't graced me with kindness then I wasn't going to eat that day so you know I understand the theory the practice is that help isn't necessarily getting to people fast enough in reality to be able to help so that's where I have a slight discrepancy with with some of the more I suppose if you like uh policy driven advice now for me absolutely having a human connection is important asking if you need anything is super super important as well you know sometimes you might do something in a really well-meaning way you know someone might have stopped and got like a prawn sandwich or something and I'm really grateful but I'm I'm Jewish I can't eat prawns so you know then you kind of you you have this awkward moment where you're like oh thanks I can't eat it and you know and then they feel bad and then you kind of you don't even have the mental capacity to kind of process stuff.

18:06Having an awkward moment with a homeless person is not how that was meant to embark. No, exactly. It's really tough. So just asking what somebody needs. And people often ask me, should I give money? And this is the point that I say was completely down to you. It's a completely personal decision whether you do or you don't. Personally, I do.

18:28I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Sabrina Cohen-Hatton. And what an extraordinary human being. What an extraordinary story she has. If you are enjoying this conversation, please do us a favor and subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds. That way you won't miss future episodes. And if you do subscribe, just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on. Because if you've got your push notifications turned on, you will get an alert every time we publish a new episode. And you will never miss out. Back to the conversation with Sabrina Cohen-Hatton.

19:03If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:44This question, this dilemma of what to do when confronted by a homeless person is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon because, and I've got a graph here, which I just want to show you, this is homelessness in the UK. And you'll notice that it's a load of other countries, Germany, the US, Netherlands, Austria, Australia, Finland, which is flat. The UK, it was bigger 10 years ago. It's risen sharply. And the last few years, the rise is very, very significant. And I want to just give our lovely audience a couple of really quite astonishing statistics about homelessness today. Number one, a young person became homeless approximately every four minutes in this country in 2023, 2024.

20:25Number two, there are around 140 ,000 households as of last March who are living in temporary accommodation. That is a record high in all four nations of the UK. And number three, after declining for several years, the number of English households living in temporary accommodation more than doubled between 2010 and 23, from 48 ,000 to 112 ,000. That is the highest figure since records began. So when we're talking about households in England in temporary accommodation, when we're talking about temporary accommodation across all four nations of the UK, when we're talking about homelessness in the UK compared to other countries, and when we're talking about young people, the graphs are going steeply in the wrong direction.

21:13Before we get to what to do about it, how does that make you feel? Not surprised, but I'll always be shocked. and I don't think that we can differentiate actually the impact of not having the security of a home and when we talk about homelessness this isn't just about people sleeping rough you gave some really startling statistics about temporary accommodation there the numbers of hidden homelessness are really difficult so I actually think that the true number is probably much higher than that because people don't always present particularly when they're hidden homeless whether someone is living in their car or in a vehicle or sofa surfing or you know certainly temporary accommodation people aren't always reaching out or are involved with organizations that mean they'll be counted in the numbers so i i think that that's actually a an underestimation of the true reality okay so the brilliant izzy who works on our team dug out some statistics about the reasons for youth homelessness.

22:17And this is all quite policy language, right? So reasons for youth homelessness in 2023 to 2024, just in case it's interesting to our audience. 50 % family or friends no longer willing or able to accommodate them. 10 % is domestic abuse. 8 % is end of assured shorthold tenancy. 6 % required to leave accommodation provided by the Home Office. 5 % evicted from supported housing. So that's why it's happening. What do you think we should do about it? What's the solution here? For me, there is something about prevention. And some of the work that I've been doing with Homewards with Prince William's programme, looking at how we can possibly end homelessness or at least make it brief, rare and unrepeated, really does focus on the prevention work.

23:01How do we get upstream of this? We talked earlier on about child poverty. The impact of child poverty on your life chances is enormous. The biggest predictor of whether or not you'll get an A at GCSE, it's not your aptitude, it's not your IQ, it's not even your personality, it's your socioeconomic status. That's the biggest predictor. And actually, data shows that if you're on free school meals by the time you're 25, only 18 % of women and 28 % of men go on to earn more than the national living wage. Poverty becomes a cycle. You get trapped under a glass bread line that is incredibly difficult to try to permeate.

23:47So it becomes something that traps you. It becomes a lifetime trap that you experience. So trying to get ahead of homelessness and prevent it from happening in the first place is crucial. Some of the work that's happening that we're seeing through Homewoods, I think, is potentially a game changer for that. Just explain, so Homewards is the name of a charity of which Prince William is the founder or the patron? It's a programme for which he's the founder. Right. And it's his programme that aims at looking at how we can end homelessness within the five-year term of the programme. And some of the stuff that he's doing is bringing together people who all have a stake in ending homelessness, who might already be involved in the sector, who might not be involved in the sector, but absolutely have something to contribute to being part of the solution and bringing them together and asking them to look at homelessness in a different way.

24:44And through that, some programs are coming out of it that I think are going to be really, really effective. Some of which are looking at programs where people go into schools and identify risk factors. They give young people surveys and they identify risk factors that will be able to predict their likelihood of experiencing homelessness. Is there a risk factor here? Is this family at risk of homelessness? And that means that family can get the support to prevent falling into homelessness before it actually happens. And I promise you it's much easier to prevent it happening than to deal with the after effects and the repercussions and the recovery from homelessness.

25:23So what you're saying, other than poverty, which I want to come to, what you're saying is this is all bound up, often bound up with a housing crisis, right, which is a lack of decent accommodation. But you can't disentangle, it sounds so banal and obvious, but you can't separate the rising prevalence of homelessness from the fact that in this country for decades now, we have not built enough houses and we've not built enough affordable houses, whether that's for social housing or private accommodation. The affordable homes is the key to this as well. And it's really challenging. I can remember when I was rough sleeping, I think I put my name on a housing association.

26:01For all I know, I might still be on it because I never ever heard anything again. so you know being able to get accommodation that becomes stable accommodation is really crucial but look it's not just about having a roof over your head it's about skills and employability it's about how you move on from the experience of homelessness to be able to achieve your potential you know when we look at you take the young people for example these are the these are young people that have got huge amounts of potential. These should be the next generation of lawyers, of parliamentarians, of policymakers, of doctors.

26:39They're not limited by potential, just their access to opportunities. So how do we change the game? And actually, as a country, as a society, we can't say we're getting the best of the best if actually the elite professions are driven by socioeconomic status above someone's potential. So, you know, you just have to look at the figures in terms of the impact of child poverty on your life outcomes to be able to see that we haven't got that piece right. So there is something about not just how we fix the housing issue, but about how we fix the entire framework that sits around it. For me, it's not just about a safety net.

27:15It's how we create ladders to provide opportunities for social mobility. The fire service was mine. It gave me the kind of social mobility I never dreamed I would be able to achieve. So I want to talk to you about that. Just before we talk about how you achieve social mobility, I should say to you in a spirit of fullness and frankness, this is a subject very close to my heart. So a few years ago, I made a documentary called How to Break Into the Elite. I made a follow up series called How to Crack the Class Ceiling. I think it's worth saying that one of the issues about social mobility that we're beginning to see emerge is people saying that by focusing on social mobility, which is about people's relative status in on the ladder of opportunity, sometimes that can distract us from the real problem, which maybe it sounds like you're getting at, which is that the real problem isn't obsessing over social mobility, it's obsessing over poverty and opportunity.

28:01If you fix poverty, then you fix kind of everything else. And it's sometimes a danger in the talk around social mobility. And amazing charities do great work in this area, and employers from KPMG to the Bank of England are all doing really interesting stuff. Poverty is the issue, isn't it? Fix poverty and the other solutions will follow. It is. And look, people, I think it's really easy for people to think, well, that's a problem that's too big for me to tackle. What on earth can I do on my own to be able to contribute to solving poverty? That's massive, right? And my appeal to people would be to say, look, there are things that you can do.

28:38And this is about how you view the world. This is about the lens that you see people through, your perspective on things and how you can perhaps reframe the way that you think about things like homelessness, the way that you think about things like poverty the way that you think about things like social class so for me well what about how you think about firefighters indeed indeed but for me when I first got into secure accommodation I started to think about what else might become a reality for me and that's when I started to think about the fire service and what I wanted to do with my life honestly the first few years were incredibly hard because I felt I was carrying such a huge amount of shame.

29:18I was ashamed to talk about what happened. I tried to forget about it. I didn't tell people what had happened. I tried to run away from it, even in my own mind. But I'd walk into a room and I'd always be feeling like I didn't fit, like I was some kind of other. Even now, even now I've got a PhD. I'm in such an amazing position to be able to advise the prince on things like this. I got a medal from the king. I run a fire brigade and I walk into a room and I still feel like the smallest person in there. It doesn't go. Even now? It doesn't go. Even now. Oh, come on. Even now. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton.

29:56Honestly. One of the most decorated figures in the fire service in this country. Multiple selling author. Dr. Sabrina. Sorry, doctor. My wife who's got, who would tell me off of this. Dr. Sabrina Hatton with your PhD. You still, you still got imposter syndrome now? All the time. All the time. And, you know, I shake someone's hand now and they greet me with respect and, you know, we have great conversations and they're the same hands that I was using to sell big issues for when people were spitting on me and kicking my stuff all over the ground and shouting at me for having a dog because clearly I was only using that to try and, you know, garner some kind of sympathetic response from people.

30:34Why the fire service? The fire service? Because I think it's an intense privilege to be a firefighter because you're trusted by people to know what to do when they're having the worst day that they've ever had. You're trusted by people to know what to do when they don't know what to do. And I feel like I can kind of relate to it because I had, you know, the best part of two and a bit years of feeling like it was the worst day that I was ever having. So I guess I wanted to help other people in a way that no one was able to help me. Did you say a moment ago that you basically hid from them that you'd been homeless yeah I didn't want to talk to anyone about it you know it was a really hard thing to be able to to talk to people about you know this why do you feel shame yeah massively so even now even today even though I I work with charities I do as much advocacy work that I can to try and change the narrative and change the perspective I still feel a sense of um I still feel a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I talk about it and I have like physically like a wave of shame that comes over me but even now yeah and it's look it's not logical it's not logical and it's not lost on me that theoretically in principle I have nothing to feel ashamed of but look when you have an experience like that and people make you feel ashamed of yourself people judge you.

32:03It's, I could rationalise to myself a billion times over and say, look, there are, what, seven, eight billion people in the world. You don't know me. What does your response matter to me? Your opinion doesn't matter. But the reality is we're human beings and we're hardwired to absorb the way people respond to us as social information. It informs the way that we expect the next person to respond to us. Then it becomes part of our inner narrative and how we speak to ourselves and how we see ourselves and that can be a very difficult thing to to try to shake because it becomes very formative it's part of your lens and you know I can remember at the time I might try and rationalize it and you know I'd I'd try and take my grandmother's influence and you know I might have someone that was really really abusive I can remember one time there was a guy I was I was um stood outside a shop selling the big issue and I had my dog my dog's lead tied around me menaces tied around me and he started to shout abuse and he was like you know the kind of same thing you've only got it for sympathy and like I remember feeling my eyes burning and feeling really upset but the way that I would deal with situations like that I tell myself look we're all human and we're all more complicated than we see on the outside so I might have seen the worst bit of you on the worst day at the worst time I don't know what's happened in your life before you could have just had the worst news you could have lost somebody that you love there are people that you love there are people that love you so I've seen a I've seen a tiny facet I've seen a tiny slice of the perspective from one angle there's more to you than that and I would use that to to kind of try to think that that person was bigger than the interaction that I had and that actually people are inherently good and that was a better person than I'd experience and it helped me of course well it helped you but you helped yourself because in not that much time you became the chief fire officer of uh west sussex fire and rescue service how did someone who felt a profound sense of shame who'd been homeless who didn't have a stellar academic um cv but was clearly exceptionally bright how did you rise to the top so fast well i wouldn't say it was that fast there's certainly others that have gone much faster than me um how long did it take so i joined when i was 18 i was a chief by 36 that's pretty fast come on that's pretty let don't be one of these people comes into the studio and is humble when you've got nothing to be humble about of all people i know you're feeling like an imposter it's ridiculous that's extraordinary and i think in that time you fit in a phd didn't you i did and having a daughter goodness me right that's pretty right that was busy what was the secret let's let's just be look let's just do it let's just be completely raw and transparent with each other what was the secret to your professional success?

34:49For me, it was always about what I could do to make it a better situation for other people. When I was going up through the ranks in the fire service, I used to see others who always seemed to know what to do. They always seemed to know what to say. There were these kind of amazing people who seemed to be completely impenetrable. Many of them were very physically imposing, big guys, and I'd look at them and I'd think, oh my goodness me, I feel so vulnerable in comparison because I've had this stuff that happened. I feel like I can't be open about it. And how can I ever aspire to be like somebody like you?

35:24And what I realized very early on is actually, actually, all we see from people in those kind of positions is, it's a bit like the, it's a bit like the highlights of somebody, right? It's a bit like the Instagram pictures, not the kind of 50 selfies that end up with a double chin and kind of like halfway up your nose. That's the reality of your life, right? We all want to show our successes. Of course we do. It's human nature, but it's not the reality of what happens. We all fail. We all have things that make us feel vulnerable. And the key for me is if you have an environment where people feel psychologically safe enough to be open about their failures, their vulnerabilities, things that bother them, then actually we're going to push further because we're not going to be afraid to fail.

36:05So we're likely to innovate more and we're going to create an environment where we can really be a tight team. That requires confidence. And maybe some of these imposing blokes that you saw who are older than you, bigger than you, more obviously fit, more of a sort of cultural fit with the fire service. Maybe they had a confidence, which, you know, I would know what you mean if you said I found that kind of intimidating or imposing to begin with. But you're now their boss. Where does confidence come from? I think for me, confidence comes from a quiet knowledge of your quiet confidence in your own ability.

36:41for me it's about what's important to you what do you stand for what's what's key for you inside what's your what is your values what do you stand for and having confidence in that and for me there is something really important about thinking that everything that I do has an impact on someone or something whether it's a an off-the-cuff remark or a word or a even a glance in ill-timed glance that the clock can have an impact on somebody that is trying to share something with you that's kind of difficult or they want to bring a good idea to you that they've spent ages thinking about and you kind of go oh gosh not because you're not interested but because you're worried about your next meeting you want to make sure you've got time for them what you do matters it has a really big impact on people so being cognizant of that and trying to create an environment where people are more conscious of their impact on other people has been a real driver for me as I've gone through the ranks as well as trying to keep people safer so a lot of the research that I've done has all been based on how we can make better decisions to keep people safer.