ADDICTED PARENTS: LAST CHANCE TO KEEP MY CHILDREN, BBC2, 9pm
PHOENIX Futures Specialist Family Service is a large house in Sheffield where parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol can live with their children.
It offers residential treatment for struggling mothers and fathers whilst allowing them to retain custody of their kids, and there’s a nursery, garden and play area to keep the young ones occupied while their parents attend treatment.
This new two-part series follows four mothers who are going through detox at the centre. The charity is hopeful about their recovery, but we hear painful and honest testimony from the women themselves about how they fell into addiction and what it’s doing to their children. The women are damaged and broken, and aware that a place with Phoenix is their last chance to get clean and avoid having their children removed by social services.
WHEN FOOTBALL BANNED WOMEN, C4, 10pm
WOMEN’S football seems like a relatively new thing. Those of us who aren’t particularly interested in the game might only recently have become aware of it, as the BBC and others strive towards equality by being sure to publicise and promote it. But as this documentary shows, women’s football has been around for more than 100 years, has had famous names and regularly pulled in crowds of 60,000. Indeed, it was once so popular and exhilarating that the musty old men of the sporting establishment stepped in to ban it.
Clare Balding presents this show, which looks back to 1921 when the Football Association banned the women’s game, claiming it wasn’t suitable because “the hard knocks on the football field are bad for future mothers.”
Balding tells us who the stars were, and wonders where the women’s game might be today were it not for the FA’s ban.
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