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Edinburgh is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the northern hemisphere and is renowned for its International Arts Festival. Tourists may visit its magnificent castle or go on a Scotch whisky tour, but they don't see its other side; the deprivation, sink estates, drug abuse and poverty. Few visitors realise that the outskirts of this prosperous city contain many disenfranchised inhabitants.

It was this contrast that attracted the documentary unit of BBC Scotland, resulting in a series of six half-hour programmes on the city's social work department filmed between August and December last year.

Jo Roe, series producer, says that making a programme about the other side of Edinburgh was based on the desire to look at the role of social work and what social workers actually do.

"I suspected that the world of social work was far more complicated than publicly perceived," she says. "Social workers have such a negative reputation as child snatchers or conversely people who fail to protect children."

The idea behind making the film was to examine and, where possible, to dispel some of these perceptions. After being approached by Roe last April, Edinburgh's social work department agreed to take part on a "warts and all" basis.

Not everybody was happy with the idea. Some social workers were worried that a television programme was bound to result in further negative exposure. They feared that the programme makers would choose to sensationalise or selectively edit material which would disadvantage both workers and service users. To allay some fears, the decision for individual workers to take part in the programme was optional. No one was to be filmed without agreement.

Six themes were agreed, each one to be the focus of a half-hour programme. These included emergency and hospital social work, the homeless access point, a young people's residential unit and young mothers in crisis.

The programmes follow a handful of workers from each of these locations. But the decision to feature service users caused the most controversy. Understandably, many workers felt the exposure of clients was a risk.

Roe says: "We spent a lot of time talking to workers about how we would protect clients, that there is a hard and fast policy of consent. Social workers represent people who in the main don't have their voices heard and this was an opportunity to address that."

Those who agreed to be filmed believed they should seize the opportunity with both hands. This was a brave decision as social work is not usually conducted under such closer scrutiny.

"Put simply," says Francine Rule, a social worker at Southhouse Young People's Centre, "I've got nothing to hide in my work. I enjoy my job and what I do."

Graham McPheat, unit manager at Southhouse during filming and now a lecturer in residential child care at a Scottish university, agrees: "We hoped the programme would provide a realistic sense of what we do and some of the demands placed upon us. And that we would be able to open people's eyes to the situations that children find themselves in."

Another worker willing to be filmed was Gavin Thomson, from Craigmillar social work centre: "Social work is more about supporting and maintaining families rather than going in and breaking them up - the opposite of what the public think we do."

Staff who were filmed say the programme makers were sensitive to the needs of both workers and service users, and that any initial misgivings were quickly dispelled. Workers were given the opportunity to explain their role, why decisions had been taken and, crucially, put the circumstances of each situation into context.

Gill Lawrence, one of the shift managers filmed at the city's emergency team, says it was essential that the opportunity to show the department's work was used to advantage. It is important, she says, to show that social workers are professionals who take their job very seriously, not people who make things up as they go along, or do things for the sake of political correctness as is often believed. The programme makers, she adds, were keen to explore issues, and understand the social work process.


Three months into filming disaster struck. The inquiry report into the death of Caleb Ness was published in October. It found that Edinburgh social work department had failed to prevent the death of 11-week-old Caleb at the hands of his father. Social workers were stunned as criticism of the department and social work practice reached an awful intensity. It was particularly difficult for those involved in filming. What on earth could we say? Would the BBC be asked to stop filming while things were sorted out? Would those who had feared negative exposure from the programmes be proved right?

In October, Edinburgh's social work director Les McEwan resigned, taking personal responsibility for his department's failure. Shortly afterwards Roe met head of operations Duncan MacAulay and was told filming could continue. It was the right decision: now more than ever the work of social workers across Scotland needed to be explained to the public. The problems of families with drug and mental health problems, not unlike Caleb's family, and the work of social workers in protecting the children of such families needed to be shown.

However, during filming it became apparent that the hope to film "warts and all" social work was not possible. Permission for filming service users could not be given in some cases, the most obvious being child protection inquiries and mental health detentions. The programme makers were always sensitive to this.

This means, ultimately, that the programmes will demonstrate the difficult nature of the job, and even the variety of the work, but will not stretch completely to all its complexities and demands.

That said, the hope that a series of programmes about the reality of social work will change public perception has been heightened rather than abandoned in the wake of the Caleb Ness inquiry. The fact that not all situations can be filmed, no matter how sensitive the film-making, limits the scope of any project. However, it does not detract from the opportunity to show much of the work in its complexity.

The belief that the job they do is valuable, and that it is time to set the record straight, has resulted in a small number of social workers being prepared to expose their work to intense scrutiny in an attempt to dispel negative myths about social work. Equally, the service users who were prepared to tell their side of the social work equation deserve praise.

Hopefully the programmes will achieve what they set out to do: to show that social work is complex and that the negative image of those who practice it should be challenged. We wait with baited breath.

- The first of the six programmes is expected to be broadcast on BBC1 Scotland on 25 February.