It's good to see one national newspaper running an online comment piece in defence of child protection social workers, in the light of the Nottingham baby case.

The piece, by the London Metropolitan University social work senior lecturer Liz Davies, unpicks the misrepresentations in media reporting of the case and defends the conduct of the practitioners involved - albeit on the proviso that the full facts are not in the public domain.

She ends all too poignantly: "The social workers had to implement a decision that will remain with them for the rest of their lives and for this difficult professional task they have been vilified through the distortions of the media and public prejudice. It is no wonder that only 3% of my social work students choose to pursue child protection work."

The piece, you'll be unsurprised to hear, was published by The Guardian. What chance its competitors doing the same?

There's nothing the media like better than an easy target and social workers are a very easy target. What they do is little understood, most people will never have contact with them and they are often prevented from standing up for themselves. Much of the media in this country is very simple-minded and lazy and reaches for easy stereotype, prejudice and cliche and any account that will paint a story in terms of black and white rather than trying to come to a full understanding of an issue. Its distorted coverage of crime is another good example of this, as Keith Hassell described in his recent blog.

I sometimes read US newspapers and their broadsheets are far higher quality than ours in terms of responsible, accurate journalism. Having said that their TV journalism is infinitely worse than ours, although ours is heading in that direction. I don't know enough about the European media to comment much on that but I would be interested to hear from people who do.

there was an interesting piece of research a while back about how young offenders were viewed in Finland - which has one of the lowest numbers of kids in custody anywhere in the world. this was linked to the lack of media hysteria ie the stuff about yobs we are always bombared with. apparently in finland the media host proper informed discussions about youth crime using people that know what they are talking about. and newspapers are mainly subscription based which means they dont have to compete to be sold on the back of the most lurid headline. the UK government always deny they make policy on the basis of "what the Daily Mail is thinking" but of course they do....the correlation between public hysteria-mongering in the press and policy-making is as old as the hills.

 

on the subject of social workers in the media, they need to represent themselves in a more effective way. councils spend shedloads of money on their PR departments, why not have some that know the real ins and outs of social work and can contribute something balanced?

The thing is, the general public are less likely to come into contact with a social worker than say a doctor or nurse and as a result son't have a clue what the profession does. They believe the "child snatching" stories splashed across the tabloids and the negative way in which social workers are portrayed in soap operas. We've had Doctors, Flying Doctors, The Bill, Holby City, Casualty - is it not time for a drama around social work showing the profession as it really is?

It is strange that there is no soap set in a social services department as it is full of human drama at the highest level. Something like a cross between Holby City and Shameless would be fantastic

It's just the age-old issue that most people don't ever come into contact with social workers, so programme makers might consider it would not have a very wide audience. Also, if you look at the other professions commonly turned into TV programmes - law, medicine, fire service, police - they all have a certain glamour about them which social work probably never will!

I don't know. If they shoved a few good looknig actors in the lead roles I think glamour can be injected into most things!

I think grit is the selling point of a drama to do with social work, not glamour. I would be intrigued to know if anything was being commissioned. why dont a few community care journos put together a script and see what happens? A child protection drama would go down fantastically, looking at the intense moral dilemmas that face social workers....dont know if you recall the ken loach film Ladybird, Ladybird, which is a graphic and painful portrayal of the experiences of a mother whose children are repeatedly taken away by social workers...I seem to remember though this was very much from the perspective of the mother. I would assume that for social workers taking children away must be one of the hardest parts of the job, and I dont think there has been any media portrayal of this from their point of view. Now there's a challenge. over to you, Channel 4 commissioners!

I actually studies script writing as part of my media course at university so you never know Muriel! I just think it might put across the REAL social work - not the poor excuse of a portrayal of social work we get once in a while on soap operas!

Muriel correctly tells us that the age of criminality in Finland is 15. This may be one reason why there are fewer young offenders per head of population in Finland compared with in England, Wales and Northern Ireland where we criminalise young people at age 10. Perhaps to reduce our levels we should increase the age of criminal responsibility to 15 and see how the numbers compare then.

Bizarrely, there was a drama about a probation officer a few years ago on BBC1, Jack of Hearts, starring Keith Allen of all people, which might be the nearest equivalent to a social work drama in recent times. However, I don't think the Beeb commissioned a second series (correct me if I'm wrong) so that may tell its own tale.

On the grit versus glamour question, each seems to work in other public service areas. I guess Holby City and Casualty are on the gritty side, and Teachers and No Angels were more glamorous (well, sort of).

 

well what you need is a hard-hitting gritty script with lots of black humour and glamourous actors.  I think Kate Winslet and Jude law as the rookie social workers chucked in the deep end, and of course got to get one of them to fall madly in love with a service users (Frank Gallagher of Shameless springs to mind) and get struck off the register...

there was a US sit-com called the Norm Show about a social worker (i think he was forced into doing it) but it was at about 2am. 

 a serious drama would be good. ten episodes with a few overarching themes and