With extraordinary access to developing case histories, this powerful and moving series shadows children and their social workers, as difficult decisions are made by, for and about children in trouble.

Dodger is 15, often in trouble with the police and hasn’t been to school for 6 months. He has lived at home for the last three years having spent 6 years in care. Social services have legal responsibility for him due to a care order imposed eight years ago, but they haven’t been allowed in for eight months. Now the family have 3 months to improve the situation or he will be taken back into care. A youth justice worker seems to be making progress, but will it be enough to keep David at home?

Hayley is 15-years-old, pregnant and having her four month scan. Her mother doesn’t approve and wants her to have an abortion – and after a huge argument, Hayley runs away from home, the fifth time she has run away in the last two years. Now she’s running out of friends to stay with, wants nothing to do with the baby’s father and nowhere else to go, turns to Social Services for help. Both parents are unwilling to take Hayley in. It appears that the only solution is for Hayley to go into Care.

10-year-old Jermaine has been happily settled with a foster family for three years, after Social Services removed him from his natural mother. But now he’s about to be uprooted again and adopted by a family he doesn’t know and has never met. Social services have been looking for a family to adopt him for several years, but being male, mixed race and labelled with mild autism, he has been hard to place. The Decision follows Jermaine as he finds out he is to leave a family he has come to love and as he makes the difficult transition to live with somebody who may become his new mum – Esme, who already has two adopted children.