EastEnders plot sparks complaints
The EastEnders storyline which saw Lola Pearce’s baby daughter Lexi taken into care has been criticised by social services.
Over the past few weeks viewers have seen Lola (Danielle Harold) hounded by overbearing social worker Trish Barnes before her daughter Lexi was finally removed from her care after she was arrested for assault.
The Guardian reports that the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) have criticised the plotline, describing the scenes as “shabby” and “disgraceful”.
“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.
“We regularly give advice to programmes about social work storylines – we would like to know who advised EastEnders so badly.
“Social workers have a difficult enough job as it is. Unlike the writers and actors on EastEnders, they have to step through those front doors that no-one else wants to step through, and they do it on a daily basis, to protect children, not to target families.
“EastEnders’ shabby portrayal of an entire profession has made a tough job even tougher.” – Bridget Robb of BASW
However, the BBC has responded to the complaints denying that the programme set out to portray social workers in a poor light.
“We’d like to assure you our intention is not to portray social workers in a negative light. While the audience has seen how much Lola loves Lexi and how responsible she can be with her baby, we were careful to ensure that when the social worker was visiting, she generally saw only more worrying behaviour.
“Lola was often abrasive when speaking to the social worker and casual – sometimes even flippant – in her responses to the social worker’s suggestions. Given that Lola is a young mother, who has been, until this episode, wearing an electronic tag… with a history of getting into trouble with the police, and is known to have had a difficult childhood herself… it was clearly important for social services to be involved with the family in order to ensure that Lola could cope with having a baby.”
The beeb’s statement continued: “In the last few weeks the social worker witnessed a series of unfortunate incidents, including Lexi wearing a tea-towel as a make-shift nappy, reports of Lola not taking Lexi to the mother and baby group, a messy and unclean flat, and the discovery that Billy had lied to her about having a job.
“Under the circumstances, we believe the audience will have understood why she had to act to remove Lexi quickly when the allegation of assault is made against Lola by Alexa.
“There was no suggestion that the social worker’s actions were anything other than a genuine desire to protect Lexi, or that her concerns about Lola were unreasonable, given the picture she and the previous social worker had formed over a substantial period of time.”
Enders is aimed these days at kids with little intellect so I doubt they’d know what was right and not anyway.
This story line, inaccurately portraying legal procedures and the majority of social workers as it does, appears to be a cynical and irresponsible attempt to get publicity and increase ratings through shock tactics at the cost of social responsibility. Furthermore, judging by the outpouring of vitriol against social workers on a variety of web sites (You Tube, Twitter etc) people do not ‘understand’ the social worker’s actions. Instead she has been viewed in an extremely negative and hostile way that is also likely to impact people’s views of social workers in real life. The repercussions of this are potentially extremely worrying. Uninformed and impressionable young people from the more vulnerable sections of our society, who are often already suspicious regarding Social Services, may be further deterred from seeking support from social care organisations for fear of losing their children. Particularly if Eastenders has given the impression that Social Services’ primary aim is to break up families and remove babies from their mothers. Instead of writing an off pat feeble response to the complaint of a social worker, the producers need to think about what they are doing and the potential impact of the stories that they are portraying in their programme. Regardless of whether it ‘should not be’ the case, many people really do believe that soaps accurately depict reality and act accordingly. What if even one ‘at risk’ vulnerable young mother does not seek support due to watching their inaccurate depiction of what happens when social services become involved? What might the consequences of that be? Then again, perhaps the show’s producers don’t care about the fear they have inspired since they have already got a lot of free publicity through stirring up social services and the public about this. The sad thing is that, as a result of Eastenders boosting their viewing figures in this way, it is some of the youngest, most fragile people in our society who are likely to be negatively impacted by this storyline.
In the real world …..social services do do stupid things like this episode try asking those who’ve had do deal with them.