The Lost Child

Star Rating: 4/5

I hope this DVD is an indicator of just how far on-a-shoestring, role play-reliant social care training has come. The fact that this is a DVD for one blows the cobwebs off the technophobe perception of top-loading VCRs, writes Graham Hopkins.

Back in the early 1990s, I remember having to use a video of Monty Python's parrot sketch on my courses on social care complaints just to have a visual break. But it is the top-notch quality of this professional production that stands out. Happily, it is a quality that training resources - often themselves the neglected child of social care organisations - are increasingly now providing.

Bravely commissioned by Lancashire social services to explore child protection and parental mental illness, the 30-minute film for the most part convincingly traces the relationship between Alison (Anita Parry) a make-the-best-of-it mum and Nick (Mike Berenger) a mentally-ill study in smouldering tension.

It is seen in flashback through the eyes of their 16-year-old daughter, Tina (Frankie Waller), the acting star of the piece - despite her accent occasionally wandering up and down the M1. Her line, "I'm not a child - don't think I've ever been a child," is the film's sound central message.

Unfortunately, the mental health social worker (Ben Tinniswood) comes across as an embarrassing parody, preferring procedure manual-talk to everyday English.

For example, when Alison says she can't make Nick take his pills, he replies, "Well, he is a free individual with rights and as such we must respect his liberty to choose at all times".

Nonetheless, in my social care days I would have loved decent stuff like this. And if it signals that the make-do approach to social care training is no more, is deceased, is pushing up the daisies, and has finally snuffed it, well hurrah for that.