Angie Mason (Producer/Director), gives behind-the-scenes insights into the making of our two-part BBC Panorama special ‘Crisis in Care’ about the deepening crisis in Adult Social Care – due to be televised on BBC One on Wednesday 29th May & Wednesday 5th June.
The Making of Crisis in Care
by Angie Mason – Producer/Director, Rogan Productions
Making programmes for current affairs usually goes like this:
1. Have an idea. Get it commissioned by a broadcaster
2. Find contributors
3. Film them at home or work, usually once.
4. Approach experts to provide testimony
At Rogan Productions we wanted to do things differently.
We knew that social care was fertile ground. It had cropped up in an earlier Panorama programme of ours, ‘Life at 100‘. Important as the topic seemed, it was not getting onto the political radar.
Using the technique of unobtrusive observation of a subject (used in earlier programmes by my colleague, Roger Graef) this would be the way, we thought, to get intimacy and naturalness into a potentially dry social policy area. Plus filming people over a long period, with repeat visits, would allow us to witness their struggle for care. Personal stories were to be the heart of the film making.
There was another struggle, though, to be captured on film. Local councils up and down the country, responsible for delivering social care, were faced with budgets cut over the years by central government.
Our stroke of luck came through Alison Holt, BBC Social Affairs correspondent. With her contacts in the local authority world she was able to locate a couple of councils willing to consideropening their doors to our camera. Somerset County Council was one. They would be a good case history – growing elderly population, greater demand for care from working age adults, set against a diminishing pot of money. Their Director of Adult Social care took a brave step in granting us access to his social work team and political colleagues and, most importantly, to himself.
We now had a strong proposition. We approached Panorama. Over the course of a couple of months and several proposal documents the project was green lit.
On the road
Social workers, with the blessing of the senior team at the council, approached families with care needs to see if they were willing to speak to us. We contacted about 10 families/individuals. Eight of them agreed. They now play a major role in our two programmes.
Over 10 months of filming in Somerset we were generously allowed into the homes and lives of our contributors being cared for or needing more care. Hardly any limits were set by them on what we could or could not film. A case in point – our Assistant Producer/cameraman did a night shoot with one young couple observing the heroic efforts of the husband to care at various times in the early hours for his permanently bedridden wife – having put his 3 year old triplets to bed in the evening.
Another 84 year old lady allowed us to film her at her lowest ebb on her own.
And a 78 year old man, the main carer of his wife, gave us a detailed (and humorous) account of the technique he uses to change her three or four times per day after the visits of the care company.
Somerset Council staff too opened their doors to us – though one or two initially wondered about the wisdom (and risk) of granting access to a television crew. Meetings, large and small, private and public, were filmed at length. We now know – and hope this is conveyed in the film – a lot more about the many pressures on a local council. The hard decisions being made by senior staff of where to make cuts are palpable and sometimes hard to watch through a camera lens.
Expert free zone
From the start we were determined to let the subject and our contributors portray care in the real world. We deliberately set out not to use any experts or national politicians. As my Latin teacher used to say ‘Res ipse loquitur‘ i.e. let the thing speak for itself.
Impact
There were many moments of sadness and some of astonishment at the lengths some people go to help others. Having seen at close hand a member of my own family suffer from challenging dementia, I was particularly moved watching the hours of footage of one lady struggling to look after her mother at home with advanced dementia. It was hard reviewing that material.
On the other hand, we had a joyous day filming our elderly couple having an afternoon at the seaside. Seeing the devotion of the husband to his disabled wife – and his constant stream of jokes, good and bad – gave my assistant producer and me a thrill. Boy, did we come away happy with our filming that day!
We thread a few startling statistics through the programmes to show that our contributors are not alone. There are many, many like them in the country. Hopefully these and the grim personal stories will help bring this crucial subject into the public arena for discourse and action.
Having spent well over 15 months immersed in this area of social care, I hope that these two films from Rogan Productions will prompt politicians to get on with sorting out the obvious injustices and confusion in the system. But also that viewers themselves will take note. One day they might be in the same situation as the folks in these films and be brave enough now to stand up for change.
Tune into BBC One on Wednesday 29th May at 9pm to watch Episode One ‘Crisis in Care: Who Cares?’.
