like i've been punished for something that i didn't even do. as the government prepares to publish a report into the deaths of two toddlers, we ask, are social workers properly supported to decide who's at risk and who isn't? it's absolutely critical that social workers do their work. it's delicate, it's complex but it's absolutely essential. because, if we don't do it, the stakes for children are incredibly high. my name's louise tickle. i've spent years investigating how and why some children are removed from their parents�* care. the family i'm about to meet suffered the tragic loss of a very young baby a year ago. children's services became immediately involved and removed two other children from the household, which has taken an enormous toll on the whole family. we've got that one. oh, gosh, that's in the hospital. yeah. literally, you had just given birth there. yeah, just after the c section. tiffany lives in herefordshire. in march last year, mid—lockdown, she took her five—week—old baby, noah, to hospital. he was vomiting and quite unwell. we were monitored overnight, he was taking his feed, but they did give him some calpol paracetamol. mother and baby were discharged from hospital the next morning. but five days later, noah died in the night. must have been about half past seven in the morning, rolled over and found him... ..quite stiff and lay there. i think i knew that he'd gone at that point. yeah, i just knew. then, when i touched his hand, it was cold. so, yeah. who's that? are you the white one? tiffany, her three—year—old son harvey and her 13—year—old brother max were all living with her mum, liz. a seahorse! because noah had died unexpectedly, two days later a social worker came to the house. she then returned with police to remove harvey and max. i was shouting, "you're not taking the kids." i and they were saying - i was making it much worse. what state were you in? very upset. i'd just... i'd just seen my grandson go out of the front door, - and i had no idea... no—one, no—one was giving me any answers of why- they were here, why they were removing the children. - i wasjust up here, playing on my xbox, and, erm, tiff, my sister, came up and she was shaking — like, i have never seen her like it. she could barely stand. just said, "pack some things cos you've got to go somewhere." i had to just walk through a bunch of police and everything like that, still not knowing what was going on or anything. right, one more, then. voice-over: it was scary. i had just lost my son and had my other ripped away from under me, straight away. it felt like they were trying to blame me for noah's death at that point. social workers were concerned the house was messy and dirty. there was washing at the top of the stairs and, in the front room, there was a lot of baby things, which took up - a lot of room. the social worker said that if we clean the house up the boys could come back, so that's what we did. liz also told the social workers she was worried about her drinking. so, i'd been open and honest from the very beginning - about the fact that i knew i was drinking too much. i erm, it didn't seem to be an issue at that point. i liz and tiffany, now suspected of harming noah, thought the situation would be sorted as soon as the postmortem showed exactly why he died. but that took almost three months. it says he was adequately nourished, well—kept male infant with no evidence to suggest physical neglect. no significant injuries orfeatures to suggest abuse or assault. i mean, basically, what did you understand this to mean when you got it? that he was perfect in every way apart from the infection that he had. the postmortem showed that noah died from strep b, a common infection that can be deadly in newborns. tiffany and her mum were not to blame. liz was also getting help for her drinking but the children were not returned. i was abstinent from alcohol, because they didn't want me | to drink anything at all. erm, i engaged with my therapy. absolutely everything - that they asked me to do, i completed. they laugh. oh, my god! in the end, it took ten months for harvey, now four years old, to be returned to his mum tiffany. harvs, you going in goal? no. and after a year in care, her brother max simply refused to go back to his foster placement. did you understand what concerns they had about you returning home? i understood the reasons why i was taken away. but i...i never knew the reasons why i wasn't allowed to return, cos my mum did everything that they asked. if they would have handled it in a better way, i would have been ok with it. but they didn't. it's just... this whole process has felt like i've been punished for something that i didn't even do. right. mummy�*s go. i am obviously delighted to have harvey home and we can finally grieve noah now, which has been tough to do. i can...i can do things as a family, like i've always wanted to do. come on. yeah! she shoots, she scores! ten years ago, there were 67,000 children in care in england. now, that figure is 80,000, more than ever before. driving that increase is the fear that not removing children could lead to tragedy. it's incredibly hard to make the judgement, to come to the decision that a child needs to be removed from their family. and children usually flourish best if they stay with their family. but sometimes the decision has to be made because, if we don't, children do die at the hands of their parents. two toddlers, star hobson and arthur labinjo—hughes, were killed by their parents�* new partners in 2020. when it was revealed that social workers had failed to act on warnings from relatives, the secretary of state sent out a stark message. we have to make sure that, if there is any evidence, any inkling, any iota, of harm to any child, the child is taken away immediately. but while more children have been taken into care over the last decade, the number of children in england who've died because of deliberate injury, abuse or neglect has broadly remained the same — around one death a week over the last ten years. every one of those 536 deaths could perhaps have been avoided, but over the same period more than 300,000 children have been taken into care, and for some that may have caused serious harm. the pressures for social workers, in children's social work, are enormous. the fact that we're struggling to attract people to the profession, so there's fewer social workers, higher case load, that can mean less time to spend with families. there's still a whole load of blame around, and in that culture workers will be thinking, we have to be ultra defensive and play safe... ..and the consequence is, we may end up removing more children from their families. social workers make recommendations about what should happen to children. but the final decision to take a child into care is made by a judge or magistrate in a family court. to protect children, it's against the law to report proceedings. but i've been granted rare permission by a high court judge in the family division, mrjustice keehan, to talk to families who have been deeply affected by one struggling children's services department — herefordshire. gemma is now 22 and has a family of her own. she's been given permission to speak to us, but she wants her identity protected so her words are spoken by an actor and all names have been changed. when gemma was three, she and her little sister were taken into care by herefordshire children services, as their mum was struggling with drug addiction. we felt like not normal. i've never felt like normal. i've neverfelt like i had a normalfamily life. i felt... ..lonely, isolated. not like a normal kid. the sisters moved in with foster mum marion in 2009. it was lovely, it was like a dream come true. they had two big dogs, a massive house on a farm. it was like a little palace, really. and we used to play and that, put our clothes on, come downstairs dressed as marion. she used to love it, she thought it was funny. a court had ordered that the girls should be adopted and marion applied. but herefordshire children's services decided they should stay in foster care. we asked her to adopt us. we called her mum, you know, like we wanted her to adopt us. i said, "i want your surname. "i want, i want to be with you, i want to be your family." she loved us. so...yeah. afterfour happy years with marion, gemma and her sister, then 14 and 13, made an official complaint about herefordshire's failure to make a proper plan for their future. gemma also had a falling out with marion over make—up and complained about her to a teacher. i got a bit rebellious and, as, like, ia—year—olds that have hormones, they have arguments with their mums. i wasjust being a naughty child. i had an argument with marion that morning. as soon as i got into school, i said i didn't want to go back to marion and they put me with someone else. and i feel like that was the worst thing that ever happened. gemma was immediately removed from marion's care and separated from her sister. four months later, herefordshire social workers, worried she was at risk of sexual exploitation, moved her to a caravan 250 miles away. iwas 14 and... ..got put in a caravan for a couple of weeks. it was like the furthest caravan in the field. over the next four years, gemma was moved at least five times. she never lived with her sister again. and they didn't care. in my mind, they did not care. they didn't. even when i used to get upset and emotional, they didn't really listen to me, theyjust thought they were the better people, they had, like, my best interests at heart. but they didn't. gemma's case eventually came before high courtjudge mrjustice keehan. he said: he told herefordshire council it must compensate gemma and her sisterfor breaching their right to a family life. but it's notjust the courts that have been critical of children's services in herefordshire. we've spoken to a number of social workers who have recently left the department. worried about their future job prospects, they've asked not to be identified. when i started, i was told 20 - was the magic number for cases. by the time i left, i had . a caseload of 36 children. so, then, you're really cutting corners and ticking boxes. - and the support wasn't there from senior practitioners. - and when that was raised i with management, it was, "well, that's your problem." i witnessed senior managers causing direct line managers to break down in tears. it's a culture of bullying, it's a culture of control. it's not safe for families and it's not safe for social like most councils, herefordshire has struggled to recruit and retain front line staff. last year, the department lost 50 — more than half — of its children's social workers. and we've discovered that three quarters of its child protection social workers are either less than two years qualified or agency staff. it's a national issue at the moment in terms of recruitment and retention of social workers. agency workers come and go and they don't provide continuity. they don't know the communities in which they're working, they don't really get to know the families before they're off again, and they cost a lot of money. so, all the way around, it's not a good way to build or maintain a service. spending on agency staff comes at a time when resources are increasingly stretched. funding for children's services in england is estimated to have fallen by a quarter in real terms in the decade to 2020. it was during this time that three—year—old twins brady and grace were removed from an abusive home in herefordshire. to protect the children, we're using actors and all names have been changed. so, what are you making, then? a court ordered that they be adopted. whoa! catherine was chosen for grace. i'm not sure we're ever going to be builders. when i first met grace, she was sitting at the dining table playing with pop up pirate and, clearly, absolutely loving it. and she turned to me and said, "are you going to be my mummy?" and i said, "do you think that would be a good idea?" and she said, "yes." brady was matched with peter and laura. 0h! hello! ijust remember seeing these eyes peeking through the letterbox, and he sort of squealed... and ran off. yeah! then he rolled the ball out. and we rolled it back to him. thank you. you ready? voice-over: it was only| an hour, i think, that first meeting, and i remember saying to you, "he's perfect, isn't he?" the adoptive parents knew the children were twins. herefordshire should have shared the full details of their troubled early years. it didn't. it became apparent that grace didn't have the skills to communicate how she was feeling. i remember saying that it was difficult being at home all the time because she was so confrontational and very, very aggressive. and this was a pattern that they had seen and they hadn't told me about. and i kept asking what had happened to grace. if i'm going to parent her growing up, i need to know what happened. and they ignored my questions — �*they�* being the social workers. herefordshire also stopped the twins from seeing each otherfor more than seven months. where are you? 0h! grace's early life was so broken up and inconsistent, the only thing she knows is always there is brady. so, to have that snatched away, grace must have thought she's never going to see brady again. but the biggest shock came when herefordshire council suddenly announced it was taking brady back into care. peter and laura got a lawyer and the case ended up in the high court before mrjustice keehan. there, it was revealed that brady and grace should never have been separated in the first place. herefordshire had made that life—changing decision against expert advice, altering a key piece of paperwork in the process. this bit was removed — "however, they are twins, i and the sense of loss in later "years at being separated would almost certainly be more - "detrimental- to their welfare than " placing them together". yeah. and that was deleted. they've literally taken out a sentence that completely changes it. we were gobsmacked, weren't we? it couldn't have been anything other than deliberate. - judge keehan ruled the council's behaviour was misleading and its failings egregious. he said: despite the original recommendation that the twins should stay together, judge keehan decided it was now in their best interests to remain with their new families. brady and grace are back in touch with each other and doing well. with their backgrounds, they were never going to have a great start in life, but any chance they had of becoming happy, successful adults was taken away from them by herefordshire. the whole of the local authority social care department, they haven't looked out for anyone in this case... except themselves. almost half of all local authority children's services departments in england are rated inadequate or requires improvement by the regulator 0fsted. we've been looking into the careers of the people in charge and have found evidence of a pattern. we've identified ten senior leaders who moved from one struggling local authority to another in the past eight yea rs. many have worked as interim temporary managers. we sent freedom of information requests to every children's services department in england. of the 94 that responded, more than half had hired interim managers in the past five years, including herefordshire. that can be expensive. herefordshire spent £133,000 on just two temporary senior managers in the first two months of this year alone. herefordshire has had quite a number of interim managers. is that a good use of public money? no, not at all. partly because you can't do the job that you need to do if you're here today and gone tomorrow. i think people see them as a source of expertise, a source of holding things together at that point in time, and both of those points are right. but they're not the way of building a service which is going to be strong for the future. over the past ten years, the number of referrals to children's services has stayed broadly the same but over the same time period, the number of investigations launched by social workers has risen by almost 60%. chattering and laughter. got it! angeline, a mother of five, has recently been investigated by herefordshire children's services. a family courtjudge has given her special permission to talk about what happened. we're not showing the children's faces. it was clear that they weren't there to support me — the social workers — it was just about building a case against me and removing my children. four years ago, herefordshire social workers accused angeline of harming her children by inventing or exaggerating illnesses and taking them to the doctor's too often. they wrote what they wanted to. even when evidence was presented to them — for example, my son, he's colour blind, and school noticed it with him and suggested i take him to be seen. but they wrote down that i'd made up that he was colour blind. and did you have proof that...? yes — a letter from the opticians. but the social worker wasn't having any of it — he didn't want to see the letter. one, two, three —jump! two, three! one, two, three! angeline found out the local authority was considering removing the children from her care. the case went to the family court. the hearings went on for more than seven months. angeline accepted she was over—anxious about her children's health and agreed to share parental responsibility with the council. child laughs. the judge said the children should stay with angeline but ordered the family be closely monitored for a year. were any findings ever made against you that you had fabricated illness that didn't exist in your children, that you had induced illness in your children? no. three years of interrogations, investigations and the court never made any findings against me at all. it was hard, emotionally. there was times i just wanted to end it permanently, and that was it — take my own life. leave the children without a mum. and that's not because i didn't love my children. that's because i felt attacked, i felt scared. i was being made to be vulnerable. and i couldn't watch them get ripped out of my arms — my biggest fear going through it all. do you want a go? hup! well done! you did it! in 2020, thejudge closed the case. he confirmed the children should remain with angeline and returned full parental responsibility to her. that's it, good, well done. so, who's starting first? me! but at the end of last year, the police were called when an argument between angeline and her ex—husband got out of hand. herefordshire social workers became involved again with regular unannounced visits. deffon's actions were completely wrong, completely inappropriate, shouldn't have happened. unfortunately, he does have mental health issues. but very, very quickly... ..dad wasn't the issue. it suddenly swapped to myself, and again the same accusations that we went through in court. how are you being treated by social workers who come and see you ? not like a mum, not with support. with accusations and judgement. as if i am an abuser. come on then, bedtime. angeline now has new social workers, but she doesn't know what the outcome will be. goodnight then, girls. children's social workers have to make difficult decisions when weighing up the risks of leaving children at home or taking them into care. it's absolutely critical that social workers do their work. it's delicate, it's complex, but it's absolutely essential. because if we don't do it, the stakes for children are incredibly high. with the report into the deaths of star hobson and arthur labinjo—hughes soon to be published, there are concerns that social workers will be under more pressure and could struggle to manage the delicate balance between removing children quickly to keep them safe, while supporting families to stay together wherever possible. the action that we should be taking is let's find out what's happening, let's make a measured judgement about it. if a family needs help, let's try and get that help for them. ok, you ready? the best social work is when parents are supported to be parents and then, the profession has the time to use the skills that they have to do what needs to be done — whether it's removing children or providing support services and keeping children happy and safe in their family. the department for education says it's: it says it's announced millions of pounds of: herefordshire council says it wants to: it says "urgent change is a top priority and it plans to reduce "case loads, recruit more staff and improve leadership, "so children and families get the quality of support "they need." but you've already eaten them, haven't you? i've not! for families and children affected by poor social work, the scars can be long—lasting. some may never fully recover. do you feel safe at home now? yeah. safe in the sense that nothing's going to hurt me but unsafe in the sense that i don't know if i'm going to get taken away again, and i don't know why.

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