2025-05-11
36 分钟BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.
Lauren Laverne here.
We're taking our Easter break, so until we're back on air,
we're showcasing a few programmes from our archive for you.
As usual, the music's been shortened for rights reasons.
This week's guest is Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock.
I cast her away in 2021.
My castaway this week is Dame Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock.
Now a crossbench peer, she's worked under five prime ministers,
tackling the country's thorniest social problems, homelessness,
poverty, crime, antisocial behaviour and family breakdown.
Baroness might be the grandest title she's earned in her career, but it's by no means the first.
She's been known as the homelessness czar, the respect czar,
the ASBO queen and, on occasion, the czar of czars.
Her outspoken style and pragmatic approach have always set her apart.
As one former colleague put it,
there's no other civil servant I've ever met that's gone down a crack alley to find out why someone's homeless.
But then she started at the sharp end, behind the counter of the DHSS.
The poverty she saw there in the late 1980s moved her to find a job where she could offer hands-on help.
She began working for homelessness charities and by 1992 was the Deputy Director of Shelter at just 27.