Chapter 6: Good news about social work.

The article reports that bad news about social work, far from spotlighting every seeming failure of every type of agency with every client group in every media outlet is, in reality, highly discriminating. Its epicenter is policy failures and practice errors in local authority social services. Even these are covered very selectively, only getting into the national press when the issue has aspects, which tie to the wider news agendas of particular newspapers. For local papers the threshold of relevance is far lower, but the standing of the department as authoritative source accordingly higher. In considering how social work might be good news, it is useful to distinguish not only between media, and between agencies, but to consider the relevance of the work itself. This chapter will fall into three sections. Evidence about the potential of local press coverage from previous chapters will be reviewed and expanded. The symbiotic relationship between voluntary organizations and the news media will be explored, using NACRO, the NSPCC and ChildLine as illustrations.