Editor's blog

The second episode of the BBC's social work documentary Protecting our Children airs tonight.

Like last week, the Community Care team will be online from 8.30- 10.30pm for a live chat with our panel of social work experts.

I'm looking forward to it, but conscious that the programme will reignite debate about the actions of social workers.

We saw this after the first episode, where inevitably there was much chatter about what professionals should and shouldn't have done.

This provoked much soul searching among the Community Care team over what is and isn't responsible journalism. What reaction merits a story, what doesn't? At one end of the scale, it's easy.

@LiquidPersonnel alerted me to this deeply irresponsible comment piece by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph - "The BBC's party line on our brave social workers". His view of "social workers as child snatchers" is so inflammatory I am not willing to dignify it by re-quoting the insults he throws at the profession.

But as this thoughtful blog by @Andrew_Ellery shows, the debate about critical articles is much more complicated than this.

At Community Care, we took the decision not to publish this comment piece by @mwilliamsthomas, which is currently on the Twitter retweet circuit. That's because we felt that it was unfair to criticise Bristol's social work practice based on a one-hour TV programme.

And that's the problem. Protecting our Children is a TV programme - it can never show all the decisions professionals made, nor all the support the family received. It's a snapshot designed to highlight the challenging, complex world of social work.

Social work professor Ray Jones warned against quibbling about practice, about whether you'd have acted similarly. This is an important point; we should be proud of the Bristol social workers.

This is why Community Care has focused its coverage on giving a voice to social workers and the people involved in making the series.

This piece by series director Sacha Mirzoeff, for example, highlights how much thought and care went into protecting vulnerable contributors.

We've also teamed up with our colleagues at Community Care Inform to offer expert-written guides to the professional issues raised by Protecting our Children, such as this one on alcohol and drug use in pregnancy.

I'm told that tonight's episode of Protecting our Children is even more thought-provoking than the first, but let's focus the debate on the complexity of social work intervention in chaotic families - not on what Bristol should or shouldn't have done when for very good reason we don't know all the facts. 

Community Care's live debate during episode 1 of the BBC's powerful social work documentary attracted record traffic.

Our guide to Protecting our Children received nearly 20,000 hits, with 500 comments in just two hours.

The social work profession is clearly excited about the series, and the way it's helping explain what you do to the wider public.

I haven't had a sneak preview of episode 2, Expecting Trouble, but the producers tell me it's even better.

In this programme we watch Bristol City Council social workers as they work with a couple living on the edge of society.

Shaun and Marva's past has been blighted with homelessness, violence and alcohol. The cameras follow Annie, their social worker, as she works with them during Marva's fourth pregnancy. The couple have already had three children removed after social workers decided they were not fit to care for them.

Hospital-based social worker Annie has to make complicated decisions in order to protect Shaun and Marva's unborn child. Meetings are difficult because their previous behaviour means she has to be accompanied at all times by two security guards.

Remarkably, Marva makes progress that no one thought possible. She stops drinking, splits up with Shaun and is housed in a woman's safe house up until the birth. It's a twist no one would have predicted but whether she can bring up her own baby hangs in the balance.    

Community Care will be repeating our popular live discussion from 8.30pm on Monday 6 February.

I hope you will join us for what promises to be another important step forward in educating the public about the importance of social work.

Check out Community Care's special Protecting Our Children page and see how you can get involved in our live discussion

Next week, social workers from across Bristol City Council's child protection team will become famous as the BBC airs its documentary Protecting Our Children: Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

More than three years in the making, viewers will follow the day-to-day life of social workers as they seek to protect children.

At the recent press preview, I was impressed. The Bristol social workers do the profession proud.

In the first episode you will see a newly qualified social worker work through her first child protection case and just how stressful and emotionally draining that is.

You see the support she gets from her managers to evidence neglect, how complex that process is and the risks that must be assessed and managed.

You watch as social workers remain calm and professional as the father they're working with gets increasingly hostile. And you watch with admiration as the team work late to ensure a little boy's safety.

Protecting our Children is sensitively shot and edited. You see the reality of neglect, but it is responsible TV, with the producers demonstrating an exceptionally high level of care to the families and professionals featured in the series. Everyone who was filmed had the right to withdraw consent at any time.

I hope that the series will help the general public understand more about the reality of social work and its value. The impact of poverty, poor parenting, poor housing, depression, domestic violence, inter-generational cycles of neglect - it's all there.

Community Care has gathered a panel of social workers to discuss the programme live on Monday night from 9pm. I hope you will join us for what is an important step forward in raising the profile of a much misunderstood profession.

Check out Community Care's special Protecting Our Children page and see how you can get involved in our live discussion

Essex council paid damages of almost £1m to four siblings it failed to protect from years of parental abuse, Community Care revealed this morning.

The chronology of the family's involvement with social services over more than 10 years makes a sobering, shocking read.

It may be tempting to dismiss this case as historic, to ameliorate our concern for four traumatised children with the thought that this wouldn't happen these days.

While it's true that child protection procedures have been overhauled in the last decade, that standards are much higher, this case should prompt us all to question whether we're doing everything we can to uphold the very highest standards of social work.

For the truth is, social workers are still forced to leave children in danger as cuts hit child protection

Community Care's poll of 170 frontline workers last year found that 58% believed pressure had been placed on them to reclassify child protection cases as less serious child-in-need cases.

More than four-fifths of respondents felt child protection thresholds had increased in their area over the past year.

Half had experienced increased thresholds in cases of neglect, 44% in emotional abuse cases, 24% in physical abuse cases and 15% in sexual abuse cases.

Budget cuts, increases in child protection referrals and a lack of social workers were given as the main reasons for the rise in child protection thresholds.

Of course, within these challenging circumstances, we must not lose sight of the outstanding, unsung social work that happens every day.

But today's case reveals why budget cuts now can be a false economy.

You may also be interested in:

Parenting assessment reference manual

Guide to managing risk in social work

Guide to understanding developmentally appropriate sexual behaviour

(Pic: posed by model, Nigel R Barklie/Rex Features)