EastEnders bosses respond to criticism of social worker scene

The soap took a lot of flak for this.

Did you find the EastEnders episode where Stacey's children were taken away last week a little strange? Carmel recently got in contact with social services to give them an anonymous tip-off after she saw bruises on baby Arthur's arm and wrongly assumed Stacey was to blame. She later realised her mistake but it was too late and many viewers were distressed when a social worker and two policemen arrived at the door during a family dinner to take Stacey's children away. Some took to Twitter to complain about the portrayal of social services. https://twitter.com/kesh_mon/status/916385210077532160 https://twitter.com/LLS_C/status/916403697785212928 https://twitter.com/ClaireWool9/status/916384874608648192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.her.ie%2Fentertainment%2Feastenders-fans-not-happy-portrayal-social-workers-soap-368548 One social worker was also critical of the scene in a Facebook post which has been shared thousands of times.

"Your depiction of the social work profession was dishonest, dangerous and extremely damaging," they said. 

"There was no paperwork, no evidence base, no assessment and no formal agreement at all. The child's father, who has parental responsibility, was barely even spoken to.

"Your portrayal of social work was inaccurate at best and irresponsible at worst."

The soap's bosses have responded to the criticism by saying they had consulted with the relevant people to make the scenes realistic.

"EastEnders takes great care when portraying serious issues such as these and we worked closely with experts in the field including a social worker and police advisors to ensure the storyline was portrayed as accurately as possible," a spokesperson for the show told Digital Spy.

"At no point was it our intention to portray social workers in a bad light, in fact, it was clear that the social worker simply wanted what was best for the children."