In this Perspectives piece, Tanya Tracey, Birth Companions’ Director of Services, reflects on what Baby by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti can teach us about hope and change in the criminal justice system.
Written by Birth Companions Ambassador Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and co-produced by Clean Break theatre company and Brixton House theatre, Baby offers an unflinching portrait of a woman navigating trauma, the criminal justice system, and separation from her baby daughter.
One of the most powerful aspects of the play is the way it weaves real women’s experiences into fictional drama. Honouring lived experience was embedded into the writing and performance of this play. Members from our Lived Experience team offered guidance in the rehearsal room, ensuring that Baby does not stray far from real life. While a single actress performs the play, her words carry the experiences of many other women.
Birth Companions has supported women with similar stories to Baby for over 30 years, in prison and in the community. The play confronts difficult topics with equal parts care and force, particularly in its depiction of maternal separation. Maternal separation is a traumatic experience for Baby. After leaving prison, she is forced to live in inadequate shared accommodation—a consequence of which is being denied the opportunity to care for her daughter. This is a common occurrence in the lives of women released from prison. Women released from prison need practical and emotional support, but so often they are released into homelessness, or to unsafe or inappropriate accommodation, which then becomes the reason they can’t be reunited with their child.
In our work we see and hear women experiencing separation from their child as a terrible grief. It’s not just the actual separation that leaves a lasting impact. Fear of separation shapes everything, even before it happens, or even if it’s unlikely to happen to them. Women hide distress, mental ill health or abuse because they fear it will be held against them. Baby’s guardedness and defiance make sense in that light; they shelter the fear and pain of potential separation.
When this threat becomes a reality, Baby’s performance is at its most vulnerable. She narrates her urges to self-injure in the wake of losing care of her daughter, compelling her audience to confront the traumatic reality of maternal separation. We know that support after separation in the current system is inadequate and sometimes punitive. Women’s experiences of suicide and self-harm monitoring in prison compound this lack of support: such monitoring is commonly experienced as surveillance rather than care.
The worst thing I could say I’ve ever experienced in this life, is the separation. It’s like you literally take something from inside of me and take it away... They literally take a piece of your heart… It’s like they leave enough to keep it beating, and the rest of it has gone - The Lost Mothers Project
As the play progresses, Baby becomes increasingly anxious and distressed when she arrives at probation appointments. An ever-shifting rotation of workers results in Baby’s needs being left unmet. Baby is not alone in her pain or frustration. At Birth Companions, women frequently tell us about social workers they’ve never met recommending separation; about signing Section 20 forms just after birth without legal advice; about Mother and Baby Unit decisions that feel opaque. The Chief Social Worker’s findings in 2022 substantiated all these claims, and little has changed since then.
Despite the difficult scenes on show in the play, the audience is left with a powerful sense of hope.
There has been real progress in sentencing, bail and support in prison. The Sentencing Council’s guidelines recommend that judges and magistrates avoid custody for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth.
The Sentencing Act 2026 created a presumption against short prison sentences and requires courts to consider pregnancy and caring responsibilities when deciding whether someone can remain out of custody on bail. In March 2026, the Women’s Justice Board called for legislation to end the imprisonment of pregnant women and a framework for probation support during the first 1001 days of a child’s life, from conception to their second birthday. Government is funding social workers in every women’s prison during the 2026/27 financial year.
But we are not there yet. The Government’s July 2026 policy statement made no commitment to implement the Women’s Justice Board’s recommendations. There is still no law to end the imprisonment of pregnant women. HMPPS still doesn’t count how many mothers are separated from babies by prison. Moreover, the new 56-day fixed recall could keep mothers away from their babies far longer than before. As we’ve seen repeatedly, we must not assume that policy changes will translate into practice.
There are many organisations and collectives working to keep women with similar experiences to Baby safe. One thing Baby makes clear is the impact of remand on mothers. Women awaiting trial on remand are legally presumed innocent and yet can be held in prison for months or even years. After spending prolonged periods in prison awaiting trial, many women go on to be found innocent, receive a non-custodial sentence, or are immediately released having already spent more time in prison than their sentence would require. Because women can lose their homes, jobs, and children while on remand, it can be more damaging than an actual prison sentence. Together with The Remand Collective, we are working toward ending the unsafe and unfair remand of women.
As part of policy and influencing work at the Birth Companions Institute, we are working toward putting the first 1001 days—the critical period from conception to a child’s second birthday—at the heart of the entire criminal justice system. Not just prisons, but also policing, courts and probation. Alongside other charities and women-led groups, we advocate for fixing the release gap, which means reforming the transition phase when an individual is released from prison into the community, ensuring they are fully supported and therefore less likely to reoffend. No pregnant woman or mother of an infant should be released without housing that is safe, appropriate, and supports their care, contact or reunification with their child wherever possible.
Throughout the play, Baby looks at us directly in the eye, urging us to remember her words as we work towards a better future for women and mothers. Every separation of a mother from her child is a decision. Many of those separations are avoidable with different justice pathways and better support. We can break these cycles that Baby and Bliss—and so many other women and children—are caught up in.
For more information about the issues faced by women who have contact with both the criminal justice and children’s social care systems during pregnancy and the first two years of their child’s life, read our Spotlight on Dual Contact.