‘Eastenders’ portrayal of social work left me in tears’

By Camilla Pemberton, journalist, on 8 October , 2012 in children in care, looked after children, media

I came into the office this morning to a flurry of unhappy emails, facebook messages and tweets from social workers concerned about the ‘Lola and Lexi’ storyline, shown on Eastenders last week. According to one children’s social worker, the episode, during which teenage mother Lola’s baby Lexi was taken into care by social services, “only served to further damage the already poor reputation of social work services within our communities and placed more children at risk”.

I didn’t see the episode, so I’ll leave it to Andrew Ellery to provide the context, and here are the thoughts of one social worker and BASW member who lodged a complaint with the BBC after watching the soap on Friday. As you’ll see, she was less than impressed with the broadcaster’s response.

A (real) social worker’s point of view:

“I am sure I am not the only one to feel aggrieved by last Friday’s Eastenders social work story line, not least because accurate procedures were not followed [when a character's baby was taken away]. Was it police protection, section 20? Where was the immediate risk to the baby? As a social worker, I was in tears, as was a colleague of mine, watching how our profession was portrayed on television.

As a result, I sent a complaint to the BBC and this was the response from their generic BBC complaints email address:

The BBC’s response:

We understand you’re unhappy with the current storyline concerning Lexi and Lola as you feel it portrays social workers inaccurately. We consulted with the programme’s production team in writing our response and we’d like to assure you our intention is not to portray social workers in a negative light.

While the audience has seen how much Lola loves Lexi and how responsible she can be with her baby, we were careful to ensure that when the social worker was visiting, she generally saw only more worrying behaviour. Lola was often abrasive when speaking to the social worker and casual – sometimes even flippant – in her responses to the social worker’s suggestions.

Given that Lola is a young mother, who has been, until this episode, wearing an electronic tag (for criminal damage to the car lot), with a history of getting into trouble with the police, and is known to have had a difficult childhood herself (indeed, three generations of the family have been through the care system), it was clearly important for social services to be involved with the family in order to ensure that Lola could cope with having a baby. In the last few weeks the social worker witnessed a series of unfortunate incidents, including Lexi wearing a tea-towel as a make-shift nappy, reports of Lola not taking Lexi to the mother & baby group, a messy and unclean flat and the discovery that Billy had lied to her about having a job.

Under the circumstances, we believe the audience will have understood why she had to act to remove Lexi quickly when the allegation of assault is made against Lola by Alexa. There was no suggestion that the social worker’s actions were anything other than a genuine desire to protect Lexi, or that her concerns about Lola were unreasonable, given the picture she and the previous social worker had formed over a substantial period of time. There was certainly no inference that her actions were anything personal against Lola or her family.

“I had actually also commented on the lack of accuracy of procedures, but there is no acknowledgement of that complaint. I don’t think I need to spell out the ridiculousness of this response from the BBC and whether the grounds they claim, such as wearing a tea towel as a nappy, would constitute grounds for emergency removal in real life.

“I work in a long-term care team and take great offence at the suggestion that because Lola was in care there is an assumption that social services should be involved in her care of her child. Not that I am suggesting she doesn’t need some support, but where is her after care worker?

“I am always disappointed at how social workers are portrayed in Eastenders, but this was the last resort. I do not agree that the public will think that this was reasonable and it just makes our job harder.”

BASW has already seen the following comments on Twitter: