I have been looking for her seven months and I have found her, and now I can't get in through the door

"I have been looking for her seven months and I have found her, and now I can't get in through the door.

"It means, of course, that I will have to go back, and it means less time for another child, or another couple, because I have got to come all the way back here again."

Understaffed

The Children and Families team at Norfolk Social Services is understaffed.

More than one in ten posts is vacant. That means each social worker has a heavy caseload.

"It means that children are harmed before we can get to them, that there is less preventative work being done.

"We can't get to them before something has happened - the child has got the bruise, or is already being neglected. It is very hard."

If you do have a recruitment crisis, then you will have more child deaths without a doubt, and that is very sad

Christine admits that her job is so trying, that sometimes it can be very difficult to keep her temper.

"Some of the mums feel that the child would be better off looked after by somebody else and they cannot get themselves together for some reason or another. Those ones I don't get cross at, I try and help them.

"But then there are others - especially teenagers - who phone us up and say, 'oh, take, him away, I can't cope with him'.

'I get angry'

"They think that social services departments have loads of time and can just take over their responsibility for their child because they are fed up looking after them - I get angry with those people."

Next Christine makes a home visit. This time to a family where there's concern that the mother's alcohol problem could be putting her three children at risk.

"I find that children are the experts, they always know when mum's drinking, and they know better than adults."

The job that Christine does provides vital support to some of the most vulnerable members of the community.

But people like her are in desperately short supply.

"I think the good that social workers do is unseen in society. All people do hear about is the child deaths when things do go wrong.

"If you do have a recruitment crisis, then you will have more child deaths without a doubt, and that is very sad."