OU/BBC documentary highlights the challenges facing social workers

The complexities behind the work of child protection social workers will put under the microscope in a three-part OU/BBC documentary.

The BBC TWO three-part documentary, Protecting Our Children, follows social workers from Bristol City Council and highlights the life-changing decisions they make on a daily basis for the city’s children.

The series, which broadcasts on 30 January at 9pm, documents a social worker’s job and the complex decisions they have to make, focusing on social work’s most critical dilemma; when it is right to remove a child and when it is safe for them to be reunited. Social work involves a careful balancing act and often involves social workers putting themselves in vulnerable positions to risk assess a child’s household.

The documentary was filmed over 18 months and is about a number of children who are on the frontline of child protection in Bristol.

Open University Senior Social Work Lecturer Dr Lucy Rai and Social Work Lecturer Dr Barry Cooper worked with the BBC to provide expert input into the development of the documentary.

Dr Lucy Rai said: “Protecting our Children witnesses moments of truly inspiring hope as well as chilling stabs of a very cold reality. It very difficult to motivate change, but it is even harder to sustain it both for social workers and for the parents who are striving, against momentous odds, to ‘do the right thing’ for their children. One of the huge challenges for social workers is deciding what constitutes the ‘right thing’; the eternal debate over whether a child is better off with their birth parents or removed.”

As part of its broadcast partnership with the BBC, The Open University has developed a range of free educational resources on social work which accompany the programme. For further information about child protection, free educational resources on social work and the range of social work courses provided by The Open University, visit OpenLearn.

Find out more:

• Study with the OU – Social work

 

Pictured is social worker Louise. Credit: Sacha Mirzoeff