Ariel Bruce is a British independent social worker who works as a specialist search consultant for film, TV and documentary makers. Born in Hampstead, London, she is the granddaughter of Marxist economistFritz Sternberg.
''Long Lost Family''
From 2011 until the present day, she has been working as a search and social work consultant on the ITV1 series Long Lost Family. As the series' head consultant, Bruce has undertaken the research into tracing missing family members for all episodes of the series. The Telegraph has described Bruce as "the Agatha Christie of the adoption world". Alongside Long Lost Family, Bruce has worked on a number of other British TV series, including Who Do You Think You Are and The Gift. In the early 1990s she worked on the Channel 4TV seriesCutting Edge, providing research for the episode entitled "Relative Strangers". In 2009 Bruce returned to Cutting Edge to work on an episode called "The Homecoming" which told the story of a former child care home residents attempts to trace their birth family.
Media work
Documentary film credits include 2014's A Tale Of Two Thieves, written by Erin Donovan about the Great Train Robbery's mysterious 'Ulsterman'. Bruce was employed by the film makers to trace Patrick Mckenna. Another credit includes Juvenile Liaison 2 by Nick Broomfield. She has also worked as a search consultant on Hanratty: The Mystery of Dead Man's Hill, produced by Bob Woffinden as part of the True Stories series. Bruce acted as a consultant social worker when Caradoc King of United Artists wrote his book The Problem Child. Bruce undertook all of the background research and facilitated reuniting Caradoc with his family. Katherine Norbury also instructed the services of Bruce when tracking down her birth parents for her book The Fish Ladder, published in 2015 by Bloomsbury. British JournalistKate Adie CBE also instructed Bruce's help when researching her memoir Nobody's Child. In 2018 Genevieve Fox's Memoir "Milkshakes and Morphine" credits Ariel Bruce as the 'super sleuth' who assisted her in a family search. Fox is a former features editor at The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Daily Mail.
Social Work
Alongside television work Bruce and her team, trained social workers specialising in post adoption services, carry out private searches for missing family members. One such private client was the British actressStephanie Cole, whom Ariel helped to reunite with her half sister. Cole went on to name and thank Bruce in her autobiography and in interviews after the search.
