File on 4 Investigates

The number of children taken into care before they reach their first birthday is at a worryingly and persistently high level, according to new figures. In many of those cases it is unsafe for parents to look after their children - but experts believe that a significant number of those babies might not have gone into care, if the right support was in place.

This programme investigates the support birth families receive and how much of a voice they are given once care proceedings begin. Figures suggest that most children who go on to be adopted are taken into care as babies. Ninety percent of adoptions happen without the written consent of birth parents. It’s led to some using the term ‘modern day forced adoption’ and to calls for a debate about the system.

File on 4 Investigates hears about one project in Salford which has been praised for the support it gives to birth families, cutting the number of children going into care and being adopted. In response to our findings Adoption England say that the process provides "children with a permanent, stable and loving family" adding that "Without adoption, the vast majority of these children will remain in care throughout their childhood and, as extensive research shows" they experience "significantly worse outcomes".

The government says it is putting £2.4bn into “transforming the children’s social care system” in England and say they want to increase support for children to stay with their family wherever possible.

Presenter: Judith Moritz

For details of organisations which offer advice and information with adoption and fostering, go online to bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Image: Jean and Tye, who is now an adult, are back in contact.

"Tinderbox"conditions created by a long, hot, dry summer brought a record number of wildfires in 2026. Dozens of homes were destroyed or damaged, huge areas of land burned, and one man died. But experts are warning there may be worse to come in future as climate change makes conditions for wildfires in the UK even more likely. The Government banned disposable barbecues in the summer, sent out a wildfire alert to people's mobile phones, and is now planning to hold a wildfire summit. File on 4 Investigates looks at whether the country is prepared for the growing threat, and if the emergency services have the resources to cope.

Presenter: Adrian Goldberg

The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light moved into a former orphanage in Crewe in 2021. It’s American-born leader Abdullah Hashem has declared himself the Madhi or saviour. But earlier this year, 500 police officers raided the organisation's headquarters, leading to protests in the town throughout the summer. File on 4 Investigates follows the group’s journey from Egypt through Europe to discover what brought them to the UK.

Presented by Hayley Mortimer & Emir Nader.

Archive: The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light / AROPL Studios.

In October 2015 President Xi Jinping was welcomed to Britain on a state visit, the event was seen as the pinnacle of the so called 'Golden Era' of warm relations between the UK and China. Over a decade later, and despite a cooling of that relationship, File on 4 Investigates discovers Chinese state money and influence reaching far into UK companies and universities as China targets British chip and blockchain technology, and asks whether enough is being done to mitigate the threat to national security.

Presenter: Paul Kenyon

One doctor dies by suicide every three weeks, according to figures from the British Medical Association.

In 2021, Dr Lalith Wijedoru left his role as consultant paediatrician in emergency medicine, to focus on supporting workforce health and wellbeing, including those working in healthcare.

Given rare access to a wellbeing and recovery retreat, we hear emotional testimonies from the four groups of doctors at greatest risk of suicide - General Practitioners, anaesthetists, surgeons and psychiatrists.

Their stories - of workplace bullying, isolation, fatigue and fear of patient complaints - suggest a system in which doctors are made to feel like machines, rather than human beings.

The concept of 'moral injury' is also a factor - where a doctor is unable to provide the care they wish to give to their patient, due to lack of resources or system breakdown.

Many doctors we hear from say they feel intense internalised pressure to do better - to work harder, and to never complain at worsening conditions. All have suffered from fear of failure, and the lack of the opportunity to decompress after traumatic events in the workplace.

These stories take us to the heart of issues being faced by many or most NHS professionals - and by the ‘system’ more generally.

For Lalith, this sharing of difficult stories is an important pathway to recovery, even a life-saving intervention.

Lalith is spurred on to talk to those who seek to help and support doctors, from charities like Doctors in Distress, founded by the brother of a doctor who died by suicide, as well as those who are studying the problem of why - and how many - doctors are dying by suicide.

Worryingly, there are gaps in available data, because statistics are drawn from coroners' Preventable Death reports. In England, these are a matter for each individual coroner to decide on, so death by suicide is not uniformly recorded.

Having laid many of these problems bare, what hope is there of realistic change and improvement?

Presenter: Dr Lalith Wijedoru

Producer: Amanda Hargreaves

Sound design: Joel Cox

Location recordings: Jon Calver

Executive producer: Dave Howard

A Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4

This programme contains reference to suicide. If you've been affected by issues raised in this programme, you can find out more about organisations that can help by going to www.bbc.co.uk/actionline.

There are also specific resources available to doctors and healthcare workers - some links to these below.

NHS Practitioner Health

British Medical Association (confidential helpline with counselling and peer support for doctors and medical students

Department of Health and Social Care (text message service - support available for workers in NHS England)

Doctors In Distress

You Okay Doc?

NHS Employers (Suicide Prevention/Postvention Toolkit)

Coroners are called to investigate sudden, unexpected and violent deaths. In the more complex cases, they open an inquest.

The BBC's social affairs correspondent Michael Buchanan has seen many coroners in action and reported from many inquests.

For this programme we follow the inquest of Daniel Lindsay, who died in 2023 aged 41 in a Surrey care home, as we ask wider questions about coroners courts in England and Wales. Are they operating as well as they could and are there ways they could be better?

We discuss claims the system is ‘chronically under-funded’, even 'broken'. We ask why there is such variation and inconsistency between different coroners – a so-called ‘postcode lottery'.

We hear from Daniel Lindsay’s cousins as we explore what it is like for a bereaved family to go through an inquest and ask whether the interests of relatives should be given a higher priority.

The Chief Coroner in England and Wales Alexia Durran responds to concerns and explains what she is doing to make the service more responsive and accountable.

Details of advice and support with bereavement, or end of life care are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Producer: Leela Padmanabhan

Psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead has spent more than 30 years working with violence perpetrators. In this programme, she visits Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang rehabilitation in the world. The charity, which offers training, education, therapy and other services, was set up by a Jesuit Priest, Father Gregory Boyle. He was responding to the so-called “decade of death,” in the late 1980s, as his neighbourhood was terrorised by gang violence.

"There were shootings all the time. I buried eight teenagers in a three-week period", he said.

But this is a good news story. Today, 40 years on, it’s been called one of the most successful gang rehabilitation organisations in the world. Talking to Father Boyle and several former gang members, Dr Adshead explores the Home Boy model of rehabilitation and asks if something similar could work here?

Presenter: Dr Gwen Adshead

Operation Venetic was the UK’s largest-ever law enforcement operation, following the infiltration of the encrypted communications network, EncroChat.

Among those arrested was Faye Dunn, a former international footballer who had become involved as an administrator in an international operation to supply drugs. After three years in prison, Faye has now completed her sentence and is rebuilding her life away from the drugs trade.

In prison, Faye saw close-up the disastrous effect drug abuse has on users for the first time.

In this File on 4 investigation, Danny Shaw explores the unexpected consequences of the EncroChat operation, as prisons struggle to cope with organised criminals behind bars. Speaking publicly for the first time, Faye tells Danny the story of how she stepped off a plane at Manchester Airport and straight into the hands of the police.

EncroChat was a mobile phone network used almost exclusively by organised criminals. When it was compromised by French and Dutch police, it supplied the biggest windfall of criminal intelligence in British history. It allowed police to view entire chains of communication used to coordinate the international drugs trade.

In the context of the decades-old ‘War on Drugs’, it was a bunker-busting super-weapon, unlikely ever to be surpassed in law-enforcement terms.

Thousands were arrested. Tonnes of drugs and millions in cash were seized. Weapons, ammunition and digital trails stretching across the global drug trade were uncovered. Major players were jailed. The police called it a once-in-a-lifetime victory.

But six years later, has this Hollywood-style policing operation made an impact on the supply of drugs on our streets?

Has it truly disrupted the drug trade – or simply shifted it?

And with law enforcement and custody costing hundreds of millions of pounds, are there other ways of reducing the harm cased by drugs?

Danny visits cities across Britain to look at programmes that aim to reduce demand for drugs - the other side of this most lucrative business model.

Presenter: Danny Shaw

A Romanian Ransom uncovers one of the Cold War's strangest secrets - a covert trade in which Jewish lives were bought and sold for livestock and cash. In 1958, MI5 agents watch pigs being loaded onto a plane in Hertfordshire, bound for Communist Romania. The man behind it, Henry Jakober, was a London livestock trader with hidden ties to Romanian intelligence.

The documentary follows Andrea Bernard and Radu Horaud, two children raised in communist Romania, where Jews faced decades of persecution, from the wartime Holocaust through Ceaușescu's secret police. Both hid their Jewish identity growing up, and both were separated from their parents, who defected to the West. Their reunions, in Tel Aviv and Paris, hinged on a name neither had heard before - Jakober.

Historians and the families reveal how Jakober brokered exit visas for desperate Romanian Jews, paid for with pigs, cattle, and farm equipment, later escalating to cash running into millions. Mossad, alarmed at first, ultimately co-opted the scheme, and Ceaușescu expanded it into an industrial operation, selling around 100,000 Jewish lives for tens of millions of dollars, while his secret police profited from the proceeds.

The documentary wrestles with Jakober's legacy - a Schindler-like rescuer, or a profiteer trading in human freedom? Through testimony and declassified files, we trace the moral complexity of a scheme that reunited families while treating them as commodities.

A Message Heard Media production for BBC Radio 4

The quality of maternity care in hospitals across the country has been in the spotlight following a series of scandals. On File on 4 Investigates families allege serious failings of care at the Countess of Chester maternity unit - the same hospital where neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering and attempting to murder 14 babies.

We speak to families about their experiences and ask what implications the quality of maternity care could have had on the Letby case.

Presenter: Stephanie Hegarty

Details of organisations offering information and support with traumatic birth or child bereavement are available on the pregnancy related issues page at www.bbc.co.uk/actionline