I learned today about a controversial storyline from last night's episode. It seems that there's this character named Stacey Fowler. She has a husband or partner and she has two young children. She has bipolar disorder, which she treats effectively with medications. And she has a meddling mother named Carmel.
Recently, Carmel was caring for the children and found the toddler covered with bruises. She sat down with the older sister and was told that Stacey caused the bruises. Carmel left an anonymous phone call with her local child protective services organization and, within moments, a social worker and two police officers arrived to remove the children from Stacey's home. Where they were promptly placed in Carmel's care.
British-based social workers were quick to speak out on Twitter and Facebook, complaining that it's completely unrealistic that anyone would respond to the abuse report so quickly, much less remove the children from their mother without first interviewing the parents or assessing the bruising.
A lot of social workers are tired of being portrayed as government-sponsored kidnappers. Typically, they receive calls and come out within a certain time period to assess the situation and interview the people involved. Children might be removed, but social workers don't have the power to yank a child from a family's home without some sort of court order. It's generally police who have that type of authority and only in extreme circumstances.
The thing that bothers me is that everyone seems to be getting after Carmel for making the phone call. I don't have any history with Carmel. I don't know what type of drama that she's caused for Stacey or anyone else in the past. But I did see the clip where she discovered the baby's bruises and I did see part of the clip where she spoke to the baby's older sister and was point-blank told that their mother hurt the baby.
What else did people expect Carmel to do, if not reach out to the authorities for help?
Apparently "EastEnders" has a history of perpetuating "social workers as baby snatchers" storylines. From Wikipedia:
In October 2012, a storyline involving Lola Pearce, forced to hand over her baby Lexi Pearce, was criticised by the charity The Who Cares? Trust, who called the storyline an "unhelpful portrayal" and said it had already received calls from members of the public who were "distressed about the EastEnders scene where a social worker snatches a baby from its mother's arms". The scenes were also condemned by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), calling the BBC "too lazy and arrogant" to correctly portray the child protection process, and saying that the baby was taken "without sufficient grounds to do so". Bridget Robb, acting chief of the BASW, said the storyline provoked "real anger among a profession well used to a less than accurate public and media perception of their jobs .. EastEnders' shabby portrayal of an entire profession has made a tough job even tougher."