Review: Panorama goes on the frontline with Coventry's child protection team looking at the challenges social workers face
BBC, Monday 2 November
*****
Only a few weeks ago the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, Kim Bromley-Derry, said social care needed a "police, camera, action" style programme.
Obligingly the BBC gave us a taste of what that might look like last night when Panorama went "on the frontline" with
Bromley-Derry is right - it really did help demystify what social workers do.
We sat in on the calls, genuine and hoax; the daily decisions on whether to split families up or try to keep them together; the stress one social worker faces from the juggling act of too many cases, all of them urgent, and the exhaustion as they left the office each day.
We saw Sarb, a newly qualified social worker checking out an anonymous tip-off of child neglect. As she pulls up outside the door she sees something ominously like excrement smeared on the windows. What follows is a harrowing example of the sort of cases social workers on the frontline have to witness every day. Eventually the police have to be called in and the children removed.
Perhaps these kind of high-shock value incidents could be expected. But what was impressive was the fact the programme also showed the more subtle and sometimes far more difficult decisions social workers are faced with.
A single father who struggled with alcohol problems after his partner left him has had his four children taken into care. We see him trying so hard to get his life back on track - cooking for his children, making their beds and tidying the house. We see Lucy, another newly qualified social worker, talking to his eldest daughter, trying to work out if things have really improved and if it is safe to let the children return to their father permanently. As she points out, the stakes are high - the children have already been in care twice. She needs to be sure it won't happen again, for their sake.
But perhaps the most striking element of the programme was Sarah, with two years experience, trying to juggle 39 cases, three times the recommended amount. She is visibly upset that she can't give any of them 100%. When she is asked about baby P and Victoria Climbie the fear is etched on her face. "I just keep thinking, that could be me. That could be any of us".
Well done Panorama for a well-balanced and well researched piece that will hopefully go some way to improving the public image of child protection workers. It is desperately needed.
It was good to see measured reporting on panorama and well done to the Coventry team. It was however sad that a comment was made that social work colleagues transferring to work with older adults looked years younger. This remark discriminates against vulnerable adults, causes hierarchy within the profession and devalues the work of adult care.
It is obvious that in both adult and children social work there are less stressful teams to work in, as not all are working in either child protection, or safeguarding adults and maybe this was the point of the comment.
I am looking forward to a time when government, public,and the media understand that physical, emotional,psychological and financial pain does not hurt any less if you happen to be over 18. I understand safeguarding has increased by 60% since last year but we also have to manage staff shortages, heavy caseloads etc.
It is unfair that adult care social workers working in safeguarding are not valued and paid on the same salary scales as our colleagues in child protection. Social work is a great profession and we should be proud of the work we all do in both children's and adult social work
I was looking around to see if anyone else had blogged about this and me and you seem to be the only ones!
I did like how the program showed the difficulties faced by social workers day to day and showed what us decision making researchers would call the "unkind" enviroment (subtle cues and fuzzy information). Which hopefully will give people an insight into how difficult it is to make these types of decisions.
If your interested at all I blogged a bit about it as it relates to the work I am doing right now for the NHS.
http://andyourelectronmicroscope.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/panorama-the-child-protectors/