The series on BBC1 which has just ended was bold and courageous, on the part of those responsible for putting the programme on, of Bristol (the authority where it was filmed) and of all those who appeared in it, social workers and their clients alike.

For those who did not see it, the series covered all aspects of social work with children and their families in a busy authority – children being taken into care, children in hospital after physical abuse, children running wild and being placed in secure care, their families, and the behind-the-scenes discussions in the offices.

It was a warts-and-all programme that demonstrated the many difficulties faced in social work and some of the rewards. It was no accident that the team was well under-staffed, that their placement budget was well over-spent, that one of the social workers had to cope with burn-out and that the team leader felt it was time to move on as well. This would be typical of many authorities at present.

The work is very demanding. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Removing a child from its home causes grief, and leaving it to suffer from bad parental care causes grief. Sometimes it is hard to weigh up which is likely to be the smaller. One could sympathise with the pain and anger of the father whose child had been removed from his care, even if his home standards were poor, and one could sympathise with the social workers when a child left with its parents as a calculated risk suffered in consequence.

These judgements are made by gathering all the information possible and then balancing hypothetical outcomes off against each other. Sometimes one is right and sometimes one is wrong, and like Robert Frost in the Yellow Wood, sometimes you cannot tell what might have happened if you had taken the other path.

At a seminar on the findings of the Victoria Climbie inquiry, it was pointed out that one of Lord Laming’s key conclusions was that with basic good practice, Victoria would have survived. Good practice entails careful interviewing, recording, assessing, analysing, summarising, planning and monitoring through supervision. This has been true for the last fifty years in social work with children. Laws, systems, priorities and methods have changed, but the basic process has always entailed these elements.

If you read back through old case files, the same messages come through. Even in the authorities with the best practices, social workers have failed with some children, and even in the worst, some children have succeeded, but it is clear that where basic standard practice was good, the clients in general had a better deal.

As the social worker facing burn-out said, using the plate-spinning metaphor, “I can’t do all the plates”. If children are to have their needs met, they need enough social workers and other resources to have the time and space to sort things out. The staff need the training, professional supervision and support necessary to cope with the stress of difficult cases, the volume of work and the complexity of some issues. A steady flow of burnt-out staff is not the solution.

Saying that the programme was bold and courageous might be considered a euphemism for saying that it was foolhardy and stupid to put on such a programme. This is not the case. People who go into social work need to know what they are facing, and it is understood that following the series there have been a lot of requests for information from people considering a career in social work. These people will have seen the need and the challenge, and the potential to give children and their families a chance to change themselves or their circumstances.

As a footnote, it was also good to see the young woman sorry to leave a secure unit, saying what a good time she had spent there and how much she had gained from the stay, especially when residential care is so often denigrated.

So, well done BBC, well done Bristol, and well done the social workers involved