Safeguarding the safeguarders

Depictions of the machinery of the child protection system have always taxed the media in general and television in particular. Somehow that system eludes the casual reductionism applied to the standard 30 soapy minutes of detectives or doctors. 

The first episode of BBC2's Protecting our Children was a sterling attempt which showed that, in Bristol at least, two children at risk of significant harm were removed and their life prospects almost certainly transformed by decent, dedicated and determined safeguarding professionals. From Maria Colwell to Baby P this is what the system is surely there for. What of the parents whose anger, distress and despair was so graphically portrayed? Perhaps viewers would conclude that the father, unencumbered by insight, would make a poor subject for enlightenment. The mother found herself in that saddest of all places, where her depression and helplessness collided with the torture of the right kind of insight. She decided that her children's needs would have to trump her instincts. So isn't this an example of the triumph of the system? Well, yes and no.