The Unrealistic Depiction Of Social Workers And Legal Proceedings On Television

In her debut Timms blog, Family Law Solicitor, Lauren Richards discusses legal proceedings on tv dramas and how close they are to what really happens….

As a Childcare Solicitor I quite often find myself shouting at the television where programmes, quite often soap operas, are broadcasting a story line involving family proceedings. I find they are so at odds with reality and usually not at all what happens on the ground.

So, lets dispel some myths…

A social worker will never attend at a family home and remove a child

I am thinking specifically here of EastEnders in 2017 when Carmel called social services one afternoon reporting that Stacey Slater was abusing her children and within a matter of hours a social worker had turned up and took the children away. The portrayal of this story line was wrong for so many reasons.

• Social services can only remove a child from their parents with parental consent (section 20) or with a Court Order sanctioning removal. The Police can also remove children from the home under their own powers if there is an immediate risk to the child.
• The children would not have been removed without some form of investigation by social services. Social Services would not have removed Stacey’s children just based on a report from Carmel, with nothing to substantiate the concern. The Police could have removed the children if there was an immediate risk of harm to the children, but that was not the case here.
• Due to it being an allegation of physical abuse, the children would have been subject to a child protection medical to see if the allegations were substantiated.

Another recent example was in the case of Dawn Taylor in Emmerdale whose son Lucas had recently been returned to her care following years of social services involvement. In one episode we see a social worker and police attend at Dawn’s home due to concerns that Dawn’s step-mum, Harriet had previously looked after Lucas whilst drunk and lost him. Whilst the social worker accepts (quite rightly) that she doesn’t have the power to remove Lucas, she calls the Police who do remove him. Whilst I have no doubt that this incident would have been of huge concern to the Local Authority given the history of this case, I find the way in which it played out was highly unrealistic given that Dawn was Lucas’ main carer and that Lucas was at no immediate risk of harm at the time the Police attended.

Family proceedings are not completed within a few weeks

Another bug bear of mine is that family proceedings are completed within a manner of weeks on television. No sooner has the child been removed from the parent’s care, has the final hearing been held and the child returned.

This is not reality as care proceedings have to be completed within 26 weeks and some will often go on beyond that.

The need to seek legal advice

In both examples given above, neither mother was asked to seek legal advice. In reality social worker’s should be advising parents to take legal advice and urging them to do so.

Lauren Richards
August 2021