News: Social workers condemn Eastenders storyline
Social workers have condemned a scene in a recent episode of iconic BBC TV soap EastEnders for portraying their profession in a negative light.
The scene, broadcast on Friday, showed a social worker taking a baby away from a character called Lola Pearce, a teenage mother who had left care. After the episode aired, social workers and charities expressed frustration and distress at the portrayal on Facebook and Twitter.
One social worker said: “I complained straight away to the BBC – because my daughter looked at me with disgust and asked if that’s my job, ‘do I take children off people when they didn’t do anything wrong?’ ”
The storyline had caused “real anger” in the profession, said Bridget Robb of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). “It is disgraceful to see a publicly funded broadcaster deliberately spreading misinformation about the child protection process because it is too lazy and arrogant to get it right.”
The BASW cites a number of abusive comments about social workers from EastEnders viewers on social media sites.
Meanwhile, the BBC has insisted that their intention was “not to portray social workers in a negative light” and said the scene was in keeping with Lola’s portrayal in the show.
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2 Comments
Observer on October 11, 2012 at 2:25 pm
I think that if the SS don’t want to be painted in such a light, they might stop putting their jobs before basic morality and humanity.
Pam Purvis on December 14, 2012 at 3:18 pm
The storyline has not only caused Social Workers to be portrayed badly but has also portrayed that it is very easy to become a kinship carer when in fact the assessments take much longer and are both intrusive and intense to say the least. Phil Mitchell would not have passed the first hurdle in real life….CRB check!!
But now he has been made full time carer for baby Lexie will the BBC mention the finances? Will they let him know he is entitled to recieve the full fostering allowance minus the wage element? Or would that be seen as advertising a fact that many Local Authorities prefer to keep hidden from the ever growing population of kinship carers?