Kiri: Totally Unbelievable

The Channel 4 drama, Kiri, seems to make the assumption that social workers are autonomous professionals who are are free to act on their personal feelings about a child's well-being. The story was about an experienced social worker, Miriam, who decided to allow a 9 year old black child an unsupervised visit to her grandfather. However, it gave us no information about where the idea of the visit came from. From my experience of working with children in the care system and adoption work the scenario presented in the drama was totally unbelievable.

The underlying message from the drama was that social workers are dealing with complex issues about race and identity and it is inevitable that they will be criticised when they get things wrong. However, by creating a story about a fostering for adoption situation the writer should have done more research on the role of social workers in adoption and developed a better understanding of the process of decision-making in child protection cases.

In reality, Kiri would have been the subject of a Care Order and Placement Order and during her period in care a Care Plan would have been drawn up and regularly reviewed. All of this would have been carried out within the framework of the legal process. When the decision was made to allow fostering to proceed to adoption consideration would have been given then to the question of Kiri having some kind of post adoption communication from her parents. Many factors would normally influence such a decision, such as the child's emotional and behavioural difficulties and the precise nature of her existing attachments - but the process of decision-making should have been formal and carefully recorded. It is never appropriate for a social worker to make this decision alone.

In reality, the role of the social worker, Miriam, was essentially to supervise the placement for adoption. If an adoption application had already been registered Kiri would have become a 'protected child' giving the social worker a statutory duty to safeguard her and protect her interests. Since fostering had preceded the decision to adopt it can only be assumed the the placement was progressing well and Kiri was happy to be adopted. In this situation it can be difficult for a child to understand why a social worker still has to visit, particularly if everything is going well. The social worker could therefore have focused more on her support and monitoring duties, recognising that she would shortly be letting go of her relationship with Kiri, and shown a clearer understanding of her primary duty to supervise the placement.

To be quite honest I have to say that I believe the social worker meddled in the family situation inappropriately and it was inevitable she would be blamed when things went wrong. However, we have to remember that this social worker is merely a cardboard, fictional character and the product of the ill-informed writer's imagination.

Hilary Searing

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