Film screening and panel discussion on maternal imprisonment and children’s social care reform, with MPs and filmmakers, just a few days before it goes onto BBC iPlayer.
On Tuesday 13 January, the Birth Companions Institute is proud to be partnering with Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Jess Asato, Lollipop writer and director Daisy-May Hudson, and Project Accountability to bring the award-winning film into the heart of Parliament.
Hosted at Portcullis House, this parliamentary screening and panel discussion will bring together parliamentarians, policymakers, the cast and filmmakers, practitioners and people with lived experience to watch key scenes, explore urgent issues facing mothers and babies caught in complex and often hostile systems, and discuss opportunities for policy change.
Lollipop follows Molly, a young mother released from prison after a short sentence, who expects to be reunited quickly with her children. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a devastating catch-22: unable to secure housing without her children living with her, and unable to regain custody without a roof over her head.
The film powerfully exposes how gaps between systems, including housing, social care, family courts and criminal justice, can create profound and lasting harm for families and intergenerational cycles of trauma.
The panel, chaired by Jess Asato MP, will include Daisy-May Hudson, alongside members of the film’s cast and development team - Posy Sterling, Idil Ahmed, Sherma Polidore, Mandy Ogunmokun and Emilia Porter - as well as Kirsty Kitchen, Director of the Birth Companions Institute, Kate Saunders from the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS), and Molly Ellis, Founder of Project Accountability.
For the Birth Companions Institute, the screening is a vital opportunity to connect storytelling with systems change.
The discussion will speak directly to a number of policy priorities that the Birth Companions Institute is focusing on to improve outcomes for mothers and babies. It will highlight the urgent need to end the imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers of dependent children, and to invest instead in community-based responses that protect babies while addressing the root causes of offending.
The event will also highlight the need for housing policy reform that ensures women are not released from prison or displaced by safeguarding decisions without safe, suitable accommodation in place. Too often, housing insecurity becomes the single biggest barrier to maintaining contact with children or achieving reunification.
Panel discussions will reflect the importance of coordinated, compassionate care across systems, including support for the delivery of a National Care Framework currently being co-designed by the Birth Companions Institute and partners, alongside timely mental health support for mothers separated from their children, whether temporarily or permanently.
Crucially, this screening and discussion creates space to discuss how policy and practice can better address the underlying drivers that shape women’s contact with the criminal justice and care systems including poverty, trauma, abuse, homelessness, unmet mental health needs, and the lasting impact of children being taken into care.
By bringing policymakers together with filmmakers, practitioners and people with lived experience, the event will use this ground-breaking film to highlight real opportunities for change.
As Kirsty Kitchen, Director of the Birth Companions Institute explains:
“We’re incredibly excited to be taking Lollipop into Parliament because of the important stories it tells about mothering in such difficult and hostile systems. This film is a hugely valuable tool, to help politicians, policymakers, practitioners and the public understand the devastating impact current criminal justice, housing and social care policies have on mothers and families. By partnering with Jess Asato MP and the film’s creators, we’re working to motivate tangible policy change and create more holistic, caring systems that break, rather than perpetuate, cycles of harm.”
Lollipop world-premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, it played in UK and Ireland cinemas across the summer of 2025, and will air on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 16 January. The film is backed by BBC Film and the British Film Institute.
