Written from life experience and ringing with authenticity, Known to Social Services follows Diane Foster, a dedicated social worker, into the grim, grey world of the Deacon Hill estate in Millbrook and the tormented lives of its inhabitants. Domestic violence, child abuse, serial paedophiles and ex-convicts proliferate in the daily lives of most of the children, but Diane enters deeply into this world of misery to help the victims and keep together the fragile structure of society. Hampered by an administration inhabited by paper-shuffling and uninvolved, uncaring bureaucrats, Diane fights unremittingly to protect the children of Deacon Hill from rape, horror, random violence, female genital mutilation and murder, within the context of a horrifying barrenness and desolate existential reality.