We told you so....

As things continue to develop, there is a level of this being as anticipated.

Management and I have watched as this situation has developed. For years, there has been a switch from taking children into care to leaving children at home.

This has a lot going for it and I really think that many of the children in care could do a lot better by being at home and their parents helped rather than whiped into care and their parents demonised.

All that said there is also the key indicators, things that really should get people moving.

Trouble is individual social workers are less and less able to make decisions on the spot, most often they have to run it past a manager and they in turn might well be more interested in the figures on the balance sheet than children.

That is the challenge in social work, getting those higher up the ladder to connect to "the coal face" the reason why their department is there.

It is not until those like the director of Harringey lose their jobs and their pensions because the department they run has presided over a death that anything like real change is likely.

R