Council sees social work recruitment boost after Channel 4 documentary airs

Coventry City Council’s Kids follows six young people over three episodes as they prepared to leave care in the city.

The documentary examines challenges faced by children in care and staff at the council – which is rated “good” by Ofsted - including transitioning to independent accommodation, young people becoming parents themselves and the work of family links teams.

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Speaking to CYP Now, director of children’s services in Coventry John Gregg, said the local authority held a recruitment evening shortly after the third episode of the show aired which led to the recruitment of six experienced social workers.

“The key point of the documentary was always to give our young people a platform to tell their stories but it led to people seeing that and thinking Coventry is a really great place to work and that’s an added bonus,” he said.

Gregg added that the West Midlands is an “extremely competitive” area in terms of social worker recruitment, which also led the local authority to increase salaries and adjust job descriptions before the show aired last month.

“It's very easy to commute between the West Midlands local authorities but we don't want to just keep poaching off each other. We want sufficient numbers of social workers in the region so that there's enough to go around, so to get six appointments on the evening is incredibly strong, and a great reflection on the team on the ground that do the work,” he added.

Gregg said that plans for Kids have been in the works since pre-pandemic after Coventry took part in Channel 4’s 2018 documentary Super Kids: Breaking Free From Care. Executive producer Patrick Barr worked on both shows.

“Initially, we thought we might be doing something in the exploitation space, and over time that evolved into something around adolescents and teenagers getting ready to leave and how that looked for them," Gregg explained.

“I was always very clear about not wanting to produce something with cameras just following social workers around. We wanted this to be the child’s story, through their eyes, looking at their support network and bringing in the various characters involved in that.”

Episode one of the series follows Xorin, who, after being exploited in his early teens, was returning home to Coventry from a children’s home in Wales to rebuild his life with mum Kelly while episode three follows Havana’s story as she seeks to connect with her birth father, supported by her best friend.

Gregg added that sector colleagues had described the documentary as “brave” and said the council has received praise from foster carers and members of the public.

“I was very well supported by the council leader and the council was keen to do it," he added. "We all thought it was more important to do the right thing for children than necessarily to do the right thing for the council because we are their parents.”