Press

Write to maisie@secretsocialworker.com with “Press” in the subject line.

The book

Title	We Don’t Steal Babies: The Secret Diary of a Newly Qualified Social Worker
Author	Maisie MacDonald (a pen name)
Form	Novel. Contemporary fiction
Publication	Coming soon
Formats	Paperback, 352 pages, £9.99. Kindle edition, £3.99. Kindle Unlimited
ISBN	9798177692265 (paperback)
Publisher	Independently published
Setting	Coventry, September 2015 to August 2016

In one line

People ask social workers at parties if they steal babies. This is the answer.

In a paragraph

People ask social workers at parties if they steal babies. This is the answer. Maisie MacDonald is twenty-five, newly qualified, and armed with a one-eyed cat, a lanyard and the belief that she can save everyone. Told through her diary, her anonymous blog and the case files in between, this is a novel about one year on the child protection frontline in Coventry: funny, then not, then both in the same afternoon.

In full

Maisie MacDonald is twenty-five, newly qualified, and armed with a one-eyed cat, a lanyard and the belief that she can save everyone.

Over one year in Coventry she will keep a boy’s toy car safe until he is ready to stop running. She will wait outside a door while a fifteen-year-old tells a camera the worst thing that ever happened to her. She will watch a young mum she fought for walk back to the man who broke her. She will fall for exactly the wrong barrister, and find out how wrong in open court.

Told through Maisie’s diary, her anonymous blog and the case files in between, this is a novel about the job nobody understands and the people who do it anyway. It is funny. Then it isn’t. Then it is both, in the same afternoon.

The author

Maisie MacDonald is the pen name of a social worker who has spent many years working with children and families in England. The people and cases in this book are invented. The job is not.

Maisie’s column, The Secret Social Worker, has appeared in Social Work World on Saturdays since August 2025. It is the Maisie of the novel, eleven years on.

There is no author photograph. There is a drawing of Maisie, which you are welcome to use, and there is the cover.

Why it might interest your readers

• There are more than 100,000 registered social workers in England, and almost no fiction about what they do. Medicine has Adam Kay. The Bar has the Secret Barrister.
• The title is the question social workers get asked at parties.
• The book gives real room to the people on the other side of the door. The angriest and truest speech in it belongs to a young mother.
• It comes with a free discussion guide that teams and universities can use.

Questions, answered

Any of these can be quoted.

Is it based on real cases? No. It’s a novel. The children and families in it are invented. What’s true is the job: the meetings, the paperwork, the car park.

Why the title? It’s the question social workers get asked at parties. The title is the question, not the book’s verdict. A young mother in the book says the angriest and truest thing anyone says all year, and nobody answers her, because there isn’t an answer.

Why a pen name? Because the book is about the job and the people in it, not about me. I did the job. That’s the part that matters.

Are you Maisie? No. I gave her my job and then I borrowed her name. She gets things wrong that I would not own up to in print, and she is braver than I was.

Does the book defend social workers? It doesn’t defend them and it doesn’t attack them. It shows people doing a hard job with too little time. Some of them are very good at it. They get things wrong all the same, and the book says so.

Why is it set in 2015? Because a great deal has changed since, and I wanted to write about how it felt then. And because nobody can mistake it for a comment on last week.

What would you say to a parent who is angry about the title? That I understand why. The title is the question we get asked, and the book is the long answer. There is a page for parents, and it has the number of an independent advice line on it.

What do you hope a reader takes from it? That the person on the doorstep with the lanyard is frightened as well.

Will you give an interview? In writing, yes, and quickly. Not by telephone and not on camera.

Subjects Maisie can write about

• What social workers do all day, and what they don’t
• The first year in practice, and why so many people leave
• What the file records and what it leaves out
• Writing about child protection without using anybody’s real life
• Why the pen name

To read and to use

• The first diary entry. You may quote up to 300 words in a review or feature.
• The discussion guide for teams and universities.
• Cover image (JPEG).
• Drawing of Maisie (PNG, transparent background).
• Everything on one page (PDF), for booksellers, librarians and editors.