This week saw the third and final part of the BBC documentary Protecting Our Children air on our screens.
The programme followed child protection social workers in Bristol and has been followed closely by those in the profession. We’ve also covered the programme both on Twitter and on the network.
Peter Beresford wrote this week that the programme showed that adults in child protection cases could do with their own dedicated social workers, while newly qualified social worker Alison James also believed that some aspects of the programme that certain parts of social work, such as the amount of caseloads social workers have, were not effectively portrayed in earlier episodes.
Bristol’s director of children and youth services Annie Hudson gave gave her reasons for letting cameras into the department.
“We wanted to open up in a public way what the lived experience of child protection social work is like, the ebb and flow of working with families, balancing care and control,” she said.
We asked you in another poll whether you thought the programme was a realistic portrayal. The majority of you thought it was.
But has the programme changed the public’s perceptions of social work? Or is yet another instance of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”
Terry Philpott doesn’t think it did: “Enthusiasm and acclaim do not of themselves realise hopes,” he said.
We want to know what you think.
Is he right? Was the programme successful in opening up the role of social workers to the public? Let us know by voting in our poll.
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