Private bin collections, vulnerable people and the funding of local councils

I'm going to be very careful here because I don't want you all to think I've an issue with the concept of 'vulnerable' people or indeed our obligation to support them. But we need to look at how two factors are throwing a spanner into the works of local government (and the local delivery of services):

1. We're getting better at keeping people alive, which is great, but we're also getting better at giving those people a real life

2. We've realised that year on year real terms increases in the cost of government are unsustainable in an era of (relatively) low growth rates

The consequence of these two - somewhat contradictory  - factors can be seen in stories like this:

Some householders in Greater Manchester are paying a private firm to empty their bins.

Many are angry because some councils have reduced rubbish collections in an attempt to cut costs, and to motivate people to recycle more.

A local businessman who bought himself a truck eighteen months ago is now emptying up to 800 bins a week.

Collecting the rubbish is, as far as most people are concerned, the main - they'll say "only" - service they get from their local council. Yet nearly every local council has now moved from weekly to fortnightly collections (all wrapped up in nice weasel words about recycling) and some are now creeping from every other week to every third week - even once-a-month.

Many of you will have noticed how local roads are getting worse too. There's a simple reason for this - to maintain roads in Bradford over a 25 year cycle, we currently need between £10 million and £11 million spending on them every year. We're actually spending £7 million to £8 million. Even with efficiencies and new technology, those roads will deteriorate.

It's easy to blame austerity - "the cuts" - for this parlous state of affairs. After all that's the second of the two points above. But what you should appreciate is that, even without 'austerity' (which I'll define as spending by local councils remaining at 2010 levels) there would be huge pressures on those general services as a result of 'vulnerable people'.

To illustrate this, I'll talk about the police. Recently I met with a couple of senior coppers to discuss policing challenges in Bradford. For the police (even with, now, a relatively protected budget) there's real pressure on basic frontline service - 'bobbies on the beat' as we most often call it. This is because, quite understandably, the police have been told to give more attention to child sexual abuse, missing people (especially children) and getting better at dealing with people they encounter who have serious mental health problems. These new priorities - usually just added onto the old priorities - are very resource intensive. One missing girl takes up a great deal more police time than one house burglary meaning that more and more resource is redirected to this work with 'vulnerable people'.

For local councils (and here I'm talking about unitary authorities like Bradford) approaching 50% the spending we control is now directed to dealing with these 'vulnerable people'. And there aren't very many of such folk. Looking at the numbers in Bradford, between adult social care, children's social services and programmes in public health (drug and alcohol rehabilitation and so forth) we work with about 15,000 people out of Bradford's half-a-million population - that's 3% of the District's population taking up nearly 50% of the money spent by the Council. And the looking after is expensive - one out-of-district placement for a child with special support needs can cost up to £200,000 a year.

As a result of this, small changes in predicted numbers have a huge impact on budgets - 900 looked after children rather than the 850 we expected and there's a multi-million pound overspend. And other support extends too - we seldom used to get situations where learning disabled adults ended up as carers for their physically disabled parents but this is now happening because we've helped those learning disabled adults have a better, longer and happier life. I could go on - more old people living longer in their homes, disabled children who used to die in their teens are now living into their twenties and thirties and we've rightly decided that children in care shouldn't just be dumped in kindly but crowded children's homes.

The result of all this is that, in one way or another, we're going to end up paying more for things we once considered free. And, while taxation is one way of doing this, I'm not sure I want the council tax of a young family struggling to pay the rent or mortgage to go up and up so we can provide care for an older person living in a house worth £250,000 or more. Unfortunately the debate about funding local services is trapped in a model of property taxes plus grant that precludes alternatives - even in places trying radical approaches like Swindon the solution is based on taxes rather than charges.

Regardless of national funding settlements, local council spending will continue to shift onto personal support services and away from the universal visible services we tend to think of as what our council does. This rather brings into question both the purpose of the local council and also the means by which we fund local government. Property taxes make sense when the services are primarily directed to place rather than people (emptying bins, sweeping streets, fixing potholes, running parks and so forth) but make much less sense when those taxes are overwhelmingly directed to personal support.

I don't know the answer to all this but I am sure that our national debate needs to pay attention to these trends. As a conservative, I'm in favour of personal responsibility with a safety net - where people are able to pay they should pay - but I recognise that we've somehow got the "I've paid into the system, I'm entitled to free stuff" mindset to deal with if this is going to change. In the meantime, Councils will continue to scrimp with the result that you probably won't get your bin emptied so often, the roads will be poor and the park will be tatty.

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Secret courts protect social workers not children...

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There may be a case for having secret courts - I can't right now think of what that case might be but someone made it and we have them. And if we are talking about being offended, then we should be offended by the government hiding behind children in order that we can't know what they are doing or saying.

A grandmother was hauled out of a comedy show and arrested on the orders of a family court judge – simply for hugging her granddaughter.

Kathleen Danby, 72, was sentenced in her absence to three months in jail by the secretive Court of Protection in April after a judge heard she embraced the vulnerable girl, 19, against the wishes of social services.

So, without any right to a defence or any warning an elderly woman has been sentenced to time in jail. I'm not concerned here with the merits or otherwise of the case but with the wrong that is imprisoning someone without their knowledge or them being able to defend themselves.

It seems to me that these cases - filled with people old and young who can't be named 'for legal reasons' - are an offence to justice. And the only beneficiaries from the secrecy are the social workers. The reason why secret courts exist is to allow social workers and other local authority staff to prosecute their actions free from scrutiny. As a local councillor - in theory a 'corporate parent' to these children social workers are 'protecting' through the secret court system - I am unable to challenge the work of those who, in theory, work for us 90 Bradford councillors.

The secrecy, protectiveness and evasiveness of social workers involved in these cases results in many people mistrusting - even fearing - social services. People make jokes that involve the social worker as some sort of bogeyman, a child snatcher who will drag little Johnny off kicking and screaming at the drop of a hat. And when you read reports such as the one above, it's easy to see how the prejudice of social workers and the courts destroys lives and wrecks families. It may all be for the best but we don't know and what little seeps out from the secret courts doesn't inspire confidence that they act in the interests of children rather than the interests of social workers and local councils.

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On the accountability of public sector management

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I don't make a habit of quoting Labour MPs (they have a depressing tendency to spout nonsense) but this from Simon Danczuk is spot on:

We’re also starting to see a worrying cult of leadership. Highly paid managers are seemingly untouchable and distant from front-line workers. The rise of the unsackable, unaccountable and unapologetic public-sector manager is a trend that will only see services continue to deteriorate. And let’s be clear about what that means. It won’t be just missed targets or a poor Ofsted rating. We’re storing up huge social costs. 

I saw an article the other day, from an organisation called Democratic Audit UK, that argued (in a defence of modern politics) that accountability was greater today:

It is heresy in Britain to suggest that anything in its public life may have got better, but in terms of accountability it most certainly has. It is scarcely too much to say that over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in accountability. From human rights to freedom of information, with much else along the way, governments have been held to account in a way that was previously not the case.

Simon Danczuk's article and the reality of government, the experience of all of us trying to hold social services, police and planners to account for their decisions, is that too many of the decisions government takes are beyond the reach of that accountability. Moreover they are the result of activist government extending its regulatory and management reach ever deeper into society - chasing the shades and demons of modern society and feeding the industry of professional 'experts' that lives on the back of those broken and dysfunctional bits of our society.

We have a semblance of accountability, select committees, scrutiny panels, freedom of information requests and endless teams of inspectors, but with this comes a feeling that what those organisations do makes little difference to teflon-coated managers protected by a library of HR rules. So we aren't surprised - disappointed, even shocked, but not surprised - when David Nicholson, the bloke in part responsible for the scandal of deaths at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital crops up in ever more senior roles. We shrug our shoulders and sigh when we see Lin Homer lurch from one procurement or management crisis to the next. And we cry angrily at the pay out given to Sharon Shoesmith, who led Haringey Social Services at the time of the 'Baby P' death.

I could go on with this and I know you can add dozens - maybe hundreds -of names to the list of people who simply weren't accountable for the actions of the organisations they led. I'm not arguing here for lynchings, heads on poles or even summary dismissal but for a sense of duty and responsibility and for the idea that failure shouldn't, as if in some dark version of Dilbert, be rewarded with promotion. And for the idea that the people we elect to represent us - to make decisions on our behalf - should be able to do so and, so they can, for the activities of police, social services, courts and procurements to be open and transparent to those people.

There's a dangerous view out there among professional public sector 'leaders' that we've moved to some sort of 'post-democracy', to a world where what they are doing is too detailed, technical, specialised and private for elected politicians at any level to merit any say over those decisions. Much of the promotion of this 'post-democracy' comes from the social democratic left, from the inheritors of the Fabian mantle - they claim that far from promoting an unaccountable technocratic governance they are seeing how power has shifted to 'business'. Except they dismiss liberal, local and participatory solutions as 'populism' preferring instead to fall back on the belief in their own inherent rightness and fitness to rule.

To return to Simon Danczuk, he illustrates this problem perfectly:

Last week I received a text message from a current Labour MP saying she was disappointed by my views on this issue. I was only elected in 2010 and already I’ve found that politicians are sometimes discouraged from exploring and investigating complex issues because they’re expected to stay tethered to a dominant ideology and not stray far from the stock replies to difficult questions. This does nothing to strengthen democracy. It weakens it, and creates cynicism. The public want to see matters like this discussed and they want politicians to come up with answers, not just endless hand-wringing. 

Yet when we do what Simon suggests, too often we're told either that it's terribly complicated and involved and not quite what we're saying or worse still (and as a Conservative this is more likely) accused of racism, sexism, class prejudice or some other sort of discriminatory practice. There are a few brave souls out there (I'm not sure I qualify here, for what it's worth) but perhaps too few to crack open the edifice of modern government and shine some light into it's interior - to bring a little more accountability.

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Why do people hate social services?

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At a meeting yesterday we heard a presentation about the impact of welfare reform. The presenter, a housing officer, explained some of the issues and challenges facing families as well as some of the successes. In this presentation one comment stood out - speaking of the client group in question the officer remarked that:

"...they all have a fear of social services."

These very poor families often with huge challenges are utterly terrified of social services and the social worker because they believe that they'll take the children away. These are families where the only 'abuse' is not having enough money and the problems going along with that condition - malnourishment, ill-health, cold and so forth.

The families are happy to deal with the housing association, with outreach workers from Job Centre Plus, with any number of voluntary organisation but suggest social services and they will run a mile.

It may well be that council social services departments have real problem, one they perhaps don't fully appreciate. How do you support a family that lives in fear of you and what you might do? That considers you to be just a child snatcher?

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The culture of social work (and the arrogance of the law).

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None of us know the whole truth about the tragic case of the woman forced into a caesarian only to have her baby taken into care and put up for adoption. We will have seen the original story, the related comments from Christopher Booker and John Hemmings MP, assorted clarifications from within the system including Essex County Council and a selection of writings from legal bloggers explaining why those criticising the system are wrong (or even suggesting, without evidence, that the facts are so very different from those printed in the newspapers). Plus latterly the interviews with the woman herself.

Because I don't know the whole truth, if I comment as a non-professional (i.e. not a child protection social worker or a specialist lawyer) then what I say can - and will be - simply dismissed by the system's defenders. Indeed, the easiest option for such defenders of the system is to attack the writer's credibility. You know how this turns out when the author (who is no more able to assess the "facts" than others but believes, also without evidence, that they are more able in this regard) starts with this sort of line:

So who are Christopher Booker and John Hemming?

This is followed by criticism based on unconnected matters (Booker's views on climate change, for example) and selective quotations from cases where either Booker or Hemming - or both - had been involved or had made comment. This isn't to say that Booker or Hemming are right or wrong but to observe that using anecdote (and a selected quote, albeit from a judge, is just anecdote) to destroy credibility is a classic tactic in ad hominem attacks.

The problem here is that the writer in question is, for all his attempts at being right-on, essentially an insider to the system - a government lawyer:

I’m a barrister, and worked as a government lawyer for twelve years, advising ministers and government departments on a wide range of public law issues from tax to terrorism, from freedom of information to pensions, from discrimination to health and from defence to broadcasting. My career in government included stints at the Cabinet Office, where I advised on the EU Constitution negotiations, and at the Attorney General’s Office where I advised Lord Goldsmith on a wide variety of legal issues. I have advised nearly every government department, from the Home Office to Health and from the Treasury to the MoD.

I note with interest that the author is emphatically not a specialist in family law, social work or issues relating to mental health. Rather he is concerned to defend the system whereby social services, health and the courts were able (again whether this is right is not the question) to force a woman into a caesarian section, take her child into care and subsequently put that child up for adoption.  And when journalists, MPs or other lay people challenge or question the system it is imperative that it is defended - and especially that the cultural assumptions of, in this case, social work are not opened up for examination.

I've written before about the ideology of social work - the assumption of societal guilt, non-judgementalism and rejection of heterodox, or seemingly hetrodox, choices - but here it is the culture that is more important. In one respect this is a culture of self-protection, closing ranks and hiding in process and paper trails - things that are not surprising in a large bureaucratic organisation of any sort (and child protection systems such as closed courts make this much easier). However, there is a broader cultural factor - social work, like the law and medicine, presumes that only it is qualified to decide on a course of action and that any options from non-professionals are quite simply wrong.

Moreover, the culture is reinforced by the very familiar form of words in response to enquiries about specific cases: "(name of organisation - usually a local council) does not comment on individual cases". Thus the organisation can plead protection of privacy (for the subject of a case) in order to prevent any questioning of its decision-making. Indeed, in nearly all child protection cases, the actual decision-making process is not subject to any lay scrutiny and the secrecy of the courts inevitably leads to problems for reporters - such as Christopher Booker - in reporting concerns.

Even where there is a formal opportunity for lay enquiry within the system (such as is afforded to me as a local councillor), we are strongly advised that our remit is with the proper administration of the system not with the decision taken. A councillor is able to question whether the council has conducted the process correctly (and there are routes for action if this is not so) but, in essence, if the paperwork is correct, we are unable to challenge the basis of the decision.

Finally, the system of non-identification is used to protect the names of the decision-makers as well as the names of social services clients. This makes it more difficult to have adequate lay scrutiny at a departmental level and provides a strong incentive and opportunity to cover-up. Here in Bradford, the full Hamzah Khan serious case review is so redacted as to provide little practical value to us as councillors. We are forced to rely on the report summary  - and the assumptions it inevitably makes - rather than have the ability to review the actual data upon which that summary is based.

It may be (although I doubt it) that the actions taken in the Essex case were the only reasonable options available to the Council and other agencies. But so long as we cannot know (and 'we' does not have to mean full disclosure to the public merely disclosure to individuals or organisations that are not instruments in the decision-making itself), there will remain doubts about why certain decisions are made, the professional ideology of the decision-makers and the secretive organisational culture that engulfs social work.

Perhaps, rather than engage in ad hominem attacks on those struggling to expose possible flaws in our care systems, great legal minds - the full arrogance of the law - would be better directed to finding ways of allowing proper scrutiny of social services' decision-making and the operation of the family courts without unduly compromising the necessary protection of client identities.

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Hamzah Khan: what we're told...

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...does seem a little complacent. I will await the publication of the Serious Case Review before drawing any judgement about the case. But this first comment to us Councillors from the Council worries me:

That report (the Serious Case Review) will be published in the next few weeks but I can advise you that there was limited involvement from statutory agencies in this case as mum did not want to take up offers of help and no serious concerns were reported to the statutory agencies. This is not a case where lots of agencies were involved and didn’t see the signs, the question is how can this happen and professionals, neighbours, communities not be aware of it.

It also seems to me that the Council are preparing the ground for any response to the serious case review - indeed Cllr Berry's press statement indicates just this:

Serious case reviews lead to learning and action to make children safer, in our district and across the country

Maybe they do but the public would like those reviews to lift the lid on failings and to see those responsible held accountable. Is that not too much to ask?

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Potholes...

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Every Councillor needs to be on top of the pothole issue and pointing out how the council needs to act and act now to do something (specifically fill in the pothole being pointed out). We are assiduous in performing this vital task, keeping highways maintenance folk busy filling in said holes.

Then we troop into the council chamber and vote for budgets that cut spending on that vital task of highways maintenance. Local council's spend less than 5% of their revenue budget on looking after roads, pavements and footpaths. Which is down from 11% (and in actual cash terms more) in 2008.

This reflects the priority of government - national and local. The idea that looking after roads is an important function of government has long passed - even in the transport field the focus (and the spending) has been directed to railways. While we subsidise heavy rail to the tune of over £13 billion, national revenue spending on roads languishes at a mere £9 billion. And this priority - as ever - is reflected in the choices of local councils.

The odd thing is that most people, most of the time simply don't use trains. Even in London. Yet we all - whether we're drivers, bus users, cyclists or pedestrians - use the roads. Perhaps we have (in our obsession with hating the motor car and disliking the lorry) simply forgotten that it is roads that carry the lion's share of freight, that allow us to get from our front door to where we wish to go and that are the real lifeline of our economy.

That our roads - suburban, urban, trunk and rural - are riddled with potholes represents a colossal failure in government priority. We've allowed ourselves to be lulled by those green dressed sirens into accepting the wholly false premise that railways present any kind of solution to the transport needs of a modern economy. Railways merely take us from one place we don't want to be to another place we don't want to be - it's the roads that complete the journey.

Potholes are a symptom of misplaced priority not a failing of any system. We simply stopped spending money on roads. New schemes are evaluated on the basis of unwarranted environmental impact assessments meaning that, in almost every case, new roads don't meet criteria. And councils faced with tight budget settlements choose to spend on social services for the minority of residents rather than roads for everyone. And there's a reason for this of course.

Those social services carry an enormous risk - whether we're speaking of the terrible child death or the dreadful story of elderly neglect this always trumps you or I getting a broken car as a result of a pothole. So we pour money into social services - as it happens nearly all of the grant we get from central government (education aside) ends up being spent on social services. And the result of this is that we spend less and less money on looking after the roads we all use.

With the result being potholes that us councillors can point at, take action about, get sorted!

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A thought on Council budgets and social services...

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Councils spend a lot of money - £1.3 billion in Bradford's case - but the bit that matters is the "net revenue budget". This is the bit that remains after we take account of fees and charges, remove money that is simply passed through the books (e.g. the money that goes to schools) and adjust for things we do on behalf of government like pay benefits.

In Bradford this figure is £425.9 million of which 38% comes from the Council Tax with the remainder (bar around £6 million taken from reserves) coming from central government grants. Between friends we can call this a 40/60 split. And, assuming the finance director's guesses are more-or-less right, future reductions in grant will mean that this split will be approaching 50/50.

Which brings an interesting observation - the Council's spending on what we used to call social services (children's services and adult social care) is now some £203.3 million. This is around 48% of the net revenue budget. In simple terms, the grants we receive from government pay for social services.

All this rather begs a question - since there is a national debate around adult care and a move from council commissioned block grants to personalised, individual purchase, there is little justification for this being seen as a necessary council service. The private and voluntary sector are more than capable - as is the case with housing - of making this provision. Local government is superfluous except perhaps as a quality regulator (much better and fairer when the council is not also a major provider).

Children's services remain a problem but, given the nature of these services and the limited scope for any meaningful councillor input, there is perhaps an argument - I would need convincing - for child protection and services to be run by a government agency. Service provision - children's homes, adoption and fostering services and so forth - could be commissioned (perhaps from the big children's charities).

If this were the case then nearly 100% of Bradford Council's funding would be raised locally.

It's thought...


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Accountability...

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Sharon Shoesmith, who was Director of Children's Services in Haringey at the time of the 'Baby P' case, won her appeal against being sacked as a result of the case. I am not concerned with the details of this case - it was a terrible and perhaps avoidable tragedy and I'm sure Ms Shoesmith acted throughout as a professional officer.

My worry is that Ms Shoesmith's denial of accountability for her department's failures serves us, the public, poorly. Let me draw a comparison - and a contrast:

Dear Margaret, 

The Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands has led to strong criticism in Parliament and in the press of the Government's policy. In my view, much of the criticism is unfounded. But I have been responsible for the conduct of that policy and I think it right that I should resign. As you know, I have given long and careful thought to this. I warmly appreciate the kindness and support which you showed me when we discussed this matter on Saturday. But the fact remains that the invasion of the Falkland Islands has been a humiliating affront to this country. 

We must now, as you said in the House of Commons, do everything we can to uphold the right of the Islanders to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. I am sure that this is the right course, and one which deserves the undivided support of Parliament and of the country. But I have concluded with regret that this support will more easily be maintained if the Foreign Office is entrusted to someone else. 

I have been privileged to be a member of this Government and to be associated with its achievements over the past three years. I need hardly say that the Government will continue to have my active support. I am most grateful to you personally for the unfailing confidence you have shown in me. 

Yours ever 

Peter

That is accountability.

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Super-injunctions and the media missing the point

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After perhaps six or so weeks of discussion in various corners of the 'blogosphere' - notably regarding the efforts of John Hemming MP to raise his concerns in Parliament - the big media boys and girls have finally noticed. Or rather have fixed on one aspect of the problem - its use to protect the 'privacy' of footballers, actors and politicians who don't wish for their sexual adventures, peccadilloes and misbehaviour to be paraded across newspapers and TV screen for the public's titillation and entertainment. As the Daily Mirror puts it:

The people who are granted injunctions that prevent the media revealing things of which they are ashamed have two things in common.

They are all rich and they are all men.

These injunctions aren’t just creating a privacy law, which should be the prerogative of Parliament, but can be an attack on women who ­understandably want to reveal how they have been treated.

All very righteous but, I feel, missing the main point. The place where John Hemming started wasn't with some footballer's sex life but with the family courts. With the gagging of people through threats to remove children, with the seeming tendency of the courts to protect the professional rather than the child and with the byzantine - even Kafka-esque - processes within these systems.

The person in question could actually be jailed for telling his MP that he had been in court case No. 773. What is so sensitive about that? In practice, even family court proceedings are not that confidential. I think this case was in the Commercial and Admiralty court. My first question is not just how the hell this could happen – I apologise for the non-parliamentary language, Mr Bone. How does this happen? How many more of these cases are there? How many secret cases do we have in this country, with people being banned from even saying that the case exists?

This is what we should be concerned about. It is not enough for us to be told by some lawyerly opinionator that:

Hemming seems to discount the possibility that the professionals involved may actually be genuinely trying to do what we pay them to do – protect young people like this. 

I know from experience that professionals do try to do their jobs well and to maintain their duty to the child. But that general observation - along with ad hominum attacks on John Hemming and others - is not sufficient to answer the specific charge. And that charge is that the family courts do not always behave properly and that these hyper-injunctions can be used - just as they are with footballers - to prevent the public knowing what the public should have the right to know.


By obsessing about the sins of celebrities, the media are providing a smokescreen for a substantive examination of these issues and, at the heart of them, the use of gagging orders to cover up the failings of public servants.

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Corporate Parenting - or how to dump poor kids on life's scrapheap

Yesterday, while idling away some of my precious time on twitter, I chanced upon the comments emanating from Kirklees – where the full council meeting was in process. And the assembled councillors were receiving a presentation on ‘corporate parenting’ – including no doubt an outline of the duties and responsibilities placed on local authorities in looking after children place in their care. The idea of corporate parenting is that we – the councillors collectively – take on the role and duties that go with parenting a child.

And what a success we are making of the job!

Figures recently published in the Prison Reform Trust's Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile report, show 71% of children in custody have either been involved with social services, or in care, before entering custody, while 75% of children in custody have lived with someone other than a parent at some time in their life.

And

Every child in care is capable of success in learning and in life, yet in 2008 just 14% of these children achieved 5 A* - C grade GCSEs, the level which is increasingly seen as the basic threshold for employability.

What a brilliant job we’re doing as parents.

And this is further compounded by anecdotal evidence that children in care are being given no obvious moral foundation to their life – in fact we struggle even to keep them home! Here’s part of the report from a recent sexual exploitation case in Derby:

A number of agencies were involved in helping the two girls, but did not work together to build a comprehensive picture of them. One girl was looked after by Derby city council from April 2009 and the other from October 2008. But as their behaviour spiralled out of control, staff did not realise there were signs of abuse and dealt with them as "rebellious adolescents".

I could go on with this – citing example after example of how the care system fails children – either by allowing them almost complete free rein or else by providing no input to helping the children do better at school.  During discussions with health workers recently, I was told that some care workers even refuse to give girls contraceptive advice - which might explain this:

Looked-after young people are at greater risk of teenage pregnancy and are 2.5 times more likely to become pregnant than other teenagers.

While I appreciate that the care system inevitably picks up the more abused and vulnerable children, I do wonder whether we need to re-examine the way in which we actually deliver the ‘care’. For there can be no doubt that, no matter how many presentations us councillors receive about corporate parenting, the real ‘parenting’ problem lies with those delivering the care. And – as councillors – we have very little say over the way that care is provided other than issues of funding, management and trouble-shooting.

Yet ‘corporate parenting’ tells us we are responsible. Perhaps we might start to insist on a little parenting rather than the value- and judgment-free approach that is failing these poor children at the moment? And perhaps we’ll stop talking about ‘corporate parenting’ as if it has any reality and begin to realise that the young people are being failed by the system we have at present.

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