I write as England emerges, blinking and wary, into a slightly more active, slightly less locked down December. We seem to have been sleep walking at times in recent months, though for many of us the dreams concerned have been busy, at times frantic!

I posted my Christmas cards this morning. 2nd day of opening Advent calendar doors, and unusually for me, they're away.  Not because I've wasted working days writing them, but because sleep has been elusive, and somehow filling the time I'm awake feels important.  As we count the days towards Christmas, at our house marked by consuming one small chocolate a day, I have more questions than answers about what's to come.  This is largely because my clients are also wondering and worrying.  I join them in their thinking about eventualities they have yet to face.  It's part of the job I do for them.  

The issues facing public services feel the same as they did before March - but as one senior leader said recently,  "yes, but just a lot more so."  Vulnerabilities in communities are still there.  The needs of children young people and families are no less, indeed for the most needy they are still more, pressing.  There's a sense of frustrated urgency in the air because for some citizens things are far worse now than they were at the start of all this. The clients' lament is, "We want to change the services that respond, we can see what needs doing, we want to be more present, more visible, more driving of the change.  We just don't have the people, the money, the energy or the head space to do that whilst also dealing with all the repercussions of the pandemic.  Not yet.  We will, if only we are recourced to do what we need to do.  Just not yet, and not at all if we are not resourced."   

The same leaders, managers and providers are equally keen to build on what responding to the pandemic has made them do together: things they should have been brave enough to do a long time ago. This is joined up work they don't want to stop doing, even when they are not grappling with CV19.  In every locality I work in, there has been and continues to be the concerted, determined, rapid dismantling of silo walls that previously slowed down their delivery to communities unfettered by too-solid boundaries between public bodies.  There has been a willingness, by their staff at all levels, to step into previous "discomfort zones":  to mix teams, to share resources, to work in flexble, agile ways.  To prove yet again, if proof were needed, that the Town or County Hall knows communities better, and can act for them more impactfully, faster and cheaper, than Whitehall ever could. Those lessons for the nation are ones we will forget "afterwards" at our peril.

We are still in uncertain times, despite today's splendid news that a first CV19 vaccine has been cleared for UK use. We cannot duck other contextual issues though, can we? The lost jobs that will go on growing in number and attendant misery before the economic landslide stops;  the massive public borrowing we will all have to pay back somehow, some time;  the fact our heads have been so full that we have set to one side both climate change, and the December 31st dawn of reality around the UK's parting from the EU.  I will take a break over Christmas and New Year with more uncertainty about what I expect 2021 to bring than I can remember in any turning year in my lifetime. We will look back at 2020 as an extraordinary, scary, brave and resourceful year.  And I hope we will remember and act on what it taught us about how amazing we can be when we work generously together, for a common cause.  

Are we nearly there yet? (posted in late May 2020)

We seem to be living in a liminal space at the moment. Between times. In uncertainty about where we stand, what the real picture is, how we are really doing. What will come next and what will life be like when it does, whatever "it" is? Is there going to be a moment when the sands stop shifting and we are certain things are going to be OK - for everybody? Are we locked down, or aren't we? Does the answer depend on who we are and what place we are considered to hold in society?

My work has continued, at a lower rate than usual, but there. Much of it is perfectly doable online including through any one of a number of video conferencing, document and presentation sharing programs. The consultancy I do, the safeguarding partnerships in which I'm involved, the charity whose Board I chair, the education partnership I also chair, are all still active. We have all met several times since late March, tea cups in hand, joggers on, hairstyles getting just a touch unruly by now. My fitness classes have been delivered to my exercise mat, in my bedroom, by my regular merciless teachers, three or four times a week. Some of my neighbours' children have been in school throughout because their parents are key workers. We have neighbours whose work in and with communities, or in vital industries and businesses that couldn't stop or close, some of whose shift patterns cover 24 hours a day 7 days a week, has never broken stride. You can't get a routine GP appointment or an equally routine blood or urine test for love nor money in my local health economy, but never fear, the vets are all still working in case your dog gets sick. Don't ask.

I have witnessed some remarkable phenomena as this emergency has continued. I've been blown away by the generosity in my community: people shopping for each other, keeping a watchful not obtrusive eye on neighbours and friends, being phone buddies to strangers, putting together treat packs for medics at the local hospital, taken in by one neighbour who works there, deeply appreciated by the recipients. We gathered at the required "shout your greetings and toast the moment from afar" VE75 community afternoon, kept our distance, revelled in being almost but not quite together, then all went home. We are planning a street reunion once we can see each other and enjoy each other's company as much as this close-knit little community is used to. As far as I'm aware, nobody living near me has been silly enough to fight for space on a beach or in a crowded park on any of the bank holidays we have had to date. Many continue to walk in nearby countryside or along the Essex rivers and creeks to which we so close. We have had 2 cases of CV19 among our neighbours, both Doctors, both BAME members of British society. Both are now well, each walking a slow recovery road but well.

...... And yet .....

As I write, a lovely neighbouring family is hosting a party in the sunshine. 2 sets of 2 parents, one single adult, 7 children all under 6, no social distancing I can see or hear. My anxiety levels as I listen to their laughter are not as low as I would wish, given the hosts live next door and a 5 foot fence is all that separates us. They are having a lovely time. Soon, at least two of the children will be back in school, as will two of the adults, who are teachers. They have both worked a rota - face to face days in school for key-workers' or particularly vulnerable children, the other working days including across the Easter holidays and many weekends, to keep their students both gainfully occupied at home and in touch with school, however their families or the school authorities feel about the sudden change of circumstances that started in late March.

The realisation has dawned on us all that at some point, however wary or critical we may be, we are all going back out there. We will not remain in this "between this state and that," "low-water mark as tides change and the land shifts under us" position. Face to face as well as online existences will be picked up again. I hope, given this virus - like colds or seasonal flu - isn't going away, that we will not forget what society can be at its very best. Yes, at the moment that "best" is driven by extraordinary circumstances, but it is teaching us things about ourselves that should permanently improve how we work, with whom, to achieve what; how we travel, why, and to do what when we arrive; and how we prove that we value what those who keep us going actually do. In our shops, at the council with its many unseen but vital services, for the Royal Mail or delivery companies, in schools and the health service, and more. We need each other - in this "between places" place, AND once we reach the end of this journey and start another.

As 2018 gets ever darker and the end of the year approaches I'm reflecting - as all of us do at these moments - on what 2018 has brought and 2019 might hold in store.  It's been a busy year - or as busy as I want it to be!  I chair 2 Local Safeguarding Children Boards.  Both are striving to get partners to see the wisdom of ensuring children'sand young people's issues, needs, wishes, dreams and vulnerabilities are addressed as early as possible, not late and at crisis points.  Both are working to ensure all organisations - not just those closely associated with children young people and families - hold those citizens high on their lists of priorities, in spite of everything that has stripped public finances to the bone.  Both localities are packed with determined, knowledgeable, passionate, hard working people across all agencies.  Both are concerned that children and young people's lives and life chances must be nurtured and supported, through giving all youngsters the chances we would want our own children to have.  I meet teachers, nurses, social workers, youth sector professionals, those working in criminal or youth justice, all clear sighted about what under-18s need, and how complex and challenging it can be to meet those needs.  I find myself thinking "if only I could bring a Minister here; a senior civil servant who sets direction and supports decision makers to deliver, but who has never actually run a service, or met a need;  a critical journalist or film maker;  an arm chair know-it-all who thinks meeting need would be easy if people just worked harder, or tried a bit more."  I want these many commentators to see what I see, day in day out, sometimes in teams working against overwhelming odds with resources strethed to their limits.  I see boldness, creativity, a refusal to give up or give in.  I encounter kindred spirits who, when they are knocked down - as I sometimnes am by events or refusals to play the game - get up again, and get on.  I meet remarkable children and young people who are fearless in their challenges to services across the landscape.  Not only services set up or devised to serve children and young people.  These youngsters are service users across the piece.  They access public transport;  need advice and guidance on how to live a better life, and on their future careers;  are spenders on the high street, in leisure and culture venues, in the economies of every location and every level of society.  Adults who work with and for them are not wasting their time and energy, or ours, telling the rest of us that they face sometimes insurmountable odds in meeting needs with little resource.  We owe them our thanks of course, but we owe them far more.  They cannot do their demanding day jobs AND create change, or new ways of looking at or serving need.  And they are not crying wolf when they say so.  As the new year beckons and these folk go on trying to square the circle of mounting pressures set against ever-falling resources, the policymakers and commentators I'd like to spirit away from their offices into the hearts of the services I encounter should actually venture out there of their own accord.  When they are there, watching everyday magic being done and service users benefiiting from it, they need to take note.  And then they need to go back to those they advise and stop them spouting platitudes that there is enough resource in the system for that magic to be done. Maybe we should ask them to set a resolution for 2019: to go out and find out enough that they know, as the workforce and the children know, what's really goiong on - and that they pledge to act accordingly. 

I'm at the National Children and Adults Services Conference in Manchester. So - as every year - are many hundreds of people - senior Officers and Elected Members from local government, Public Health and other parts of the health and policy landscape, inspectorates, companies with ideas and solutions to sell.  Nearby in the city is another conference looking - from front line and other perspectives - at the future of social care, from my reading of the programme fairly heavily about adults, but with some exciting looking sessions. At both events, networks will be networked. Deals will be done. Practice that works and business cards will be exchanged. Ideas will be set out for us to consider, accept or reject, amend and take away to go on exploring.  Food and drink will be consumed. New and old connections will be made or renewed.  The sector will challenge central government to rise to the challenge of supporting work across the country,done by people who have gone on being encouraged to do yet more with still less, to jump from this grant funding stream to that one, to be patient as the centre tries to be half as creative, half as determined and brave as localities.  It will be a 3 day event that sends people out even more determined, whatever the cost to them, whatever the challenge of resourcing rising demand with diminishing resources.  And yet.......  And yet........  on day 1 I am struck by how, somehow, I feel asked - channelled even - to shrink my professional consciousness to a rather narrow band of high end services, and in doing so to compound the very difficulties localities are facing to square their resourcing and provision circles.  I heard this conference, in the opening speech of the opening session, declared "the National Children and Adults SOCIAL SERVICES Conference."  It absolutely, caterogcrally, is nothing of the sort. As all the speakers, including the first, went on to reflect earlier, if all we concentrate on are services used by those in greatest need or difficulty, we miss the point.  Schools, children's centres, nurseries, youth services - however badly they too have also been cut in recent years - are all children's services. So are libraries, parks, leisure centres. Social care - for children OR adults - would drown if those others weren't still there, whether the others have shrunk or been cut, or not.   One of the biggest trade stands at this event is the National Youth Agency's. It does what its title describes - it  fights the fight, stands the corner, makes the connections, with and for this country's amazing young people. As in, ALL of them, not just those in or leaving care.  So far our young, beyond those categories, have had not a mention.  About their ambitions, wishes and feelings the conference programme is SILENT. The NHS in various guises is here in force.  Mentioned largely on the grounds of it needing to integrate with - you guesed - social care - that's adult social care by the way, in case you were wondering.   Maybe it's me.  Maybe that's all local government does.  Maybe the still worsening budget situation means it's all it can do.  Maybe as an old English and Drama teacher who was a DCS straight out of an education background (shock horror) I'm pining for days long gone.  But seriously? I came to conference, as I come every year, for a challenge about breadth and depth, about the whole child or adult, not the bits.  About services in communities, for children who live with adults in those communities that shape where they live.  In one of my other roles, I have just published a LSCB report.  If there were 100 children in the place, ONE would have a social worker.  One. The other 9? Go to school, shop, go to the library, play out, may need help adaptations for a special or additional need or support from an early help practitioner. (not a social worker.)  This is NOT a social care conference. It's the National Children's and Adults SERVICES Conference. I don't normally vent. But there we go. Vent closed.     

I've had one of those intensely busy autumns that sometimes come one's way.  It has made me ever more mentally and emotionally agile as I move from setting to setting, tuning into each organisation's wave length, constantly adjusting what I think I'm being asked for so it matches what that client, that day, actually wants or needs.  And in every setting, with every group of people I've been working alongside, I have felt myself being challenged to learn. ...... And learn. ...... And learn again.  I have found myself, at regular turns, looking at who I am, what I think I'm doing there, in either a real or a virtual mirror and sometimes under a very bright spotlight.  I have been asked, across a double handful of assignments or challenges, to look at every aspect of myself as a result of what others have had to teach me in this ever-changing bright and breezy season of the year. I am lucky, in this "portfolio" stage of my life and career, to be working in a wide range of settings - as a consultant, as a Chair of the Board, as a volunteer, as a Non-Executive Director, and as a specialist expert or subject adviser in organisations' sensitive, challenging or difficult processes.  I've also experienced, though many who know me see the me who always hits the spot, being one of  the unsuccessful people in competitions various.  I mean that in the widest possible sense: from how fast everybody else runs at my local fit club leaving me straggling, through not being followed up by people earnestly asking to work with me, to not quite hitting the mark in things I thought I wanted, worked hard for but didn't get  -  only to realise I was only in those races for show, or because, old and wily as I am, I don't always say no when that's the very word I ought to use. What have I learned, or been reminded of when I already knew it but had filed it away somewhere at the back of my mind?  That there are others who are so brilliant, so "sorted," such thought or practice leaders or both, that they will always have something to teach me about how better to see things, how better to problem solve, how braver to be in setting out to solve a problem or a puzzle.  That there are very many more brilliant preople, amazing leaders, great contributors, wonderful innovators and carriers of the flame, than I have ever been or could ever be.  Watching them influence people or change situations is an education in itself, and I am in their company to admire what they do, and to learn how.  That I will be a learner all my life - including how to handle that life when something doesn't go my way so that I am not stopped in my tracks by the experience, but take the learning into my life and my work. That one of my strengths is that I am always learning, even when I am also teaching somebody else how to tackle their challenges and achieve their goals.  That life is actually one long lesson that brings rewards, grows me by facing me with what I don't yet know but need to understand and then apply.  In my business, and in whatever I give to others, there is always something new to learn.  Does that all sound ever so slightly "motherhood and apple pie"?  A bit "Pollyanna"?  Sorry if that's so.  Actually, no, I'm not.     

Memories and the lifelong lessons they evoke are powerful influences.  43 years ago this week, I was dropped off at my Cambridge college by my parents - who then drove home, over nearly 4 hours, in an emotionally charged silence, too upset to speak until they were home and dry.  My twin brother and I were my family's first to go to university - and we chose 2 at opposite sides of England, separated full-time for the first time since we were born.  I remain convinced, decades later, that I got into Cambridge by a combination of entrance papers so poor they thought they ought to see this girl who was chippy enough to think she could make it, and the chippy girl's defiance of prejudice at the interview she was asked to attend.  Or because, throughout my schooling I met, almost unfailingly, adults whose key questions were  "Who says you can't?" and "Why would you think that's not for you?"  My family was incredibly ordinary - indeed by today's standards, whilst we weren't living in poverty, there were times when we weren't far off.  But we were also very close, parented by two people whose line was that the sky is NOT the limit, and we were kept busy and engaged in all sorts of pursuits as well as being settled in good Comprehensive schools.  We also lived in a working class community in the South Yorkshire coal field, where we were no different from our neighbours or their children with whom we went to school.  Where I came from, you did what you did.  You kept going. You reached.  But how my parents felt as we took my trunk up to my first-year room at Newnham College, stowed my bike, and they watched me go back inside the college as they prepared to drive away?  I have no notion of what that was like for them, though we did discuss it as the years after my 1978 graduation passed.  My now-long-widowed mum still reminisces about it.  Cambridge colleges are, as is rightly well-publicised, still engaged in a continued struggle to hold fast to very high entry standards yet widen access to people like the just-turned-19 year old 1975 me.  I was part-confident young woman, part-innocent abroad.  I was also, having entered with no coaching, out of my depth with what Cambridge wanted from me until nearly Christmas in my first year.  I was close to giving up then, before I realised that actually, if I let myself go into this place and its learning rather than edging round it out of a lack of confidence in the company of other students who were so much more at ease, I loved the study of history I was given a chance to do.  I loved the phenomenal Cambridge-brain-stretch challenge.  I came to  relish the equal challenge of reading deeply and widely for, and then constructing, a good enough 5,000 word essay, every week for eight weeks a term, three terms a year, then being supervised and quizzed on its contents for 90 minutes a week in sessions led 1 to 1 by a world expert very likely to have been a named author on that week's reading list.  I was equally nervous of, but realise now I also relished, sitting crazily-difficult exams at the end of each of the 3 years of my degree.  My finals almost finished me off however, an experience not repeated until, 30 years later, I was examined by Viva Voce on my Doctoral thesis.  My point in thinking back over the degree experience, as an alumna in ulfilling and ongoing contact with my College?  It's this.  If I overcame my sense that others deserved their place more than me when the fact was they just had more "side" than I did, not more brains?  Anybody can.  If it was for the likes of me in 1975?  It's surely for the likes of any bright determined talented young person now.  Elites are broken into by those who qualify and those who support them, as well as having to break themselves open and admit the unusual suspects.  I should know, I was one.      

I've taken up my opportunity as an Associate to be with ADCS for the second 24 hours of its conference in Manchester.

We were struck into deep reflection yesterday by the "lived experience" testimony of Kerry Littlewood, a care leaver and powerful advocate for services working with women who have repeatedly had children taken from them into care as babies. She challenged us: surrounding a woman with teams of professionals when she's pregnant, then taking the baby and disappearing, only to reappear when she gets pregnant again so you can take the next one, is akin to the dystopia portrayed in "The Handmaid's Tale." It is NOT support. It will NOT change the grief-stricken self-harm such repeated tragedies represent. She reflected that she has made a success of her life, something some care leavers can struggle to do. "I am told I am exceptional. If I am exceptional, then surely the system is still broken." She brought us to tears. The applause was heartfelt. But crying and applauding won't fix the situation. Kerry was followed by a discussion on fostering and adoption. I was pleased Andrew Christie, chairing the Adoption Leadership Board, acknowledged that post-adoption support, long term across the adopted child's life not short term and tokenistic, is a missing piece of the jigsaw. It was also heartening to hear Mark Owers assure us the national foster care review he leads with Sir Martin Narey will untangle the web we have all woven: who does this vital work; the picture on fees; services' and carers' motivations system-wide; who fosters and why; who makes money, to do what, with what outcomes, for whom.

We had some powerful contributions in a plenary on child poverty - projections say by 2020 there could be 5 million under 18s in poverty, most living with 2 parents who both work. Yes, that's in the 5th largest economy in the world. Yes, that's in the streets close to where you or I live. Yes, it's in the classrooms youth clubs and other settings used by the vast majority. Are we ashamed? Well, we all should be - and "we" is policymakers including those who insist this stark picture is a lie. Do these children's plights rebound onto services? Of course. Children from poor families are perfectly able to see, given they actually live out, their situation. With rare exceptions because of family and community protective factors that work, poor children are likelier than their peers to be physically or mentally ill; to do less well at school, even in some truly great schools serving poor areas; to come to school hungry, in physical and personal hygiene disarray, or both; to be a young carer at home; to be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated, rather than treated as a bright but unusual "quirky" child as their affluent peers may be; to be excluded from school either for a fixed term or permanently; to have speech, language or learning difficulties; to be stigmatised or bullied because their lack of resources stands out; to remove themselves from extra curricular activities families can't afford ...... and from a very young age, to KNOW that these relentless, exhausting, grinding disadvantages apply. Here's an illustration: when I was Children's Commissioner, my team and I never met a child in a secure youth justice setting who came from an affluent background. Never. We met a more mixed social profile in secure mental health settings, but not in jail. It's hard to escape a stark fact: if you are poor, the likelihood you will come into conflict with the law and lose is clear!

Are you disturbed by this picture? We all should be. But just being disturbed or upset about it won't fix it, will it? So we heard about really positive action, intervention only a council and its partners can lead, and I think - I hope - we were all motivated to do much more than just be ashamed or upset.

As always,the really tough conversations, the creative moments, the heavy lifting on problem solving and solution finding, have come in sessions where DCSs and their senior teams, or the Associates of whom I'm one, have reflected on and shared change making ideas with each other. The exchanges of examples of great practice, using dwindling resources to offer what's needed long before there's a crisis? The work to turn gazes and actions towards early not late, general not specialist or over-medicalised responses? The accounts of seismic positive change by creative service leaders, managers and staff because change was necessary however hard? The gauntlets thrown down to policymakers to see ongoing austerity, cumulative uncoordinated policy drives that make poor people poorer no matter what their rhetoric? The time-after-time responses by services to yet another cut threatening stability and heightening fragility in some lives? All have been cogently, professionally presented by ADCS members, though sadly in his session the new Minister did not take questions from the floor, from this group that's so determined to work with him and his team. Maybe next year..........

We Associates concluded there is a pressing need to revive the debate on social justice: who gets what chances and who is denied them; who needs muscular, fearless, supportive early intervention to let them start life's race further forward on the track than other runners who'll be fine, because an accident of birth means they will reach the finishing line well, whatever challenges come their way. We make an unashamed plea: that we face the fact that social injustice is alive and well in Britain today, and turn to fighting back against it. That we accept, and then work to counter, the fact that to this affluent nation's abiding shame, policymakers have chosen to make some poor people all the poorer, some horizons narrower, than others who are not poor. Not for nothing do the government's Social Mobility Commission, the LSE Inequalities Institute, Sir Michael Marmot's Inequalities in Health team at UCL, ADCS, the charities and faith groups and others go on reminding us that social inequality is very real, and its effects weigh heaviest on those who can do least about it.

But knowing about it, applauding those who tell us, crying or fretting about it doesn't fix it. I leave Manchester with ever firmer intentions to speak up; to work with clients and their partners whose deliberate interventions aim to fix it; to challenge those who deny the realities; and to help people find ways to make the difference. To do all these things, once the tears have dried.

Enough now of the Shakespearian references. This morning has seen us treated to the Opposition's lines on some of the issues still burning holes in the fabric of strategic thinking and action: policy, ownership, agency, service planning, delivery and effectiveness. Trenchant critiques abound: of the current Children and Social Work Bill, the change in government direction over forced Academisation and all it would have meant had it gone through; the folly, pereceived or real, of legislating in silos not for a holisitc view of society and citizens. Promises of doing differently if the Labour Party was governing. If.  Small word, big implications.  A discussion for a notehr day!

What I find broadly encouraging in a conference that feels as if it is revisiting a lot of the ground we all know well and have traversed before, is how so many sector leaders and managers and those tweeting at this event are asking for an end to breathless speed, to new initiative after new initiative. There's a sense of intense frustration about national policy's tack changing mid stream if what's been said in a lightbulb moment in Whitehall doesnt immediately click into place on the ground, Hollywood "Transformer"-like, seconds after the new wheeze breaks in the press.They are asking for a palpable and lived-out trust in the people who now how to do the job.

Not for nothing is ADCS President Dave Hill urging us to recognise real change, embedded change, change that makes a lasting difference for the people served, takes time, not flighty leaps from one idea to another.

As a consultant, I meet lots of people whose early call is "just come and give us the answers and we can get on with doing the doing, don't ask us for evidence and deep thought about what we face and what we need to plan then do." Of course, in the relationship that goes on to be developed and the work we do together, the realisation dawns that leaping to the end point - like reading only the last page of a novel - means the journey has not been made and the story is unevenly owned or understood and therefore unlikely to see a happy ending. The journey - the narrative you make together - means the destination is easier both to see, and to navigate once you land.  

Readers will by now be used  to the "Maggie metaphors" fashion in which I tend to reflect. As we approach half way through day 2 of this 3 day conference, my musing for the morning would be that we are engaged in a game of master's level - Star Trek's Mr Spock 3D-configured - chess. Focused, thinking, determined, long haul, subtle, assertive when we need to be, but patient. Not a fast and furious, showy, yelling, cards slapping, drinks spilling game of Snap!

I had a lovely chat earlier with an elected member I know well, who is wrestling as they all are with horrors of yet more savings in approaching years. A long time ago, I advised him and his Cabinet colleagues that in appointing and then working with a very senior Officer, there would come a day when that Officer eyeballed members and said "At this moment? In this game? However nervous you and I are, I need you all to refuse to blink. If you are not prepared to do that in appointing to this crucial role, you should appoint somebody you can push around, not somebody who will advise you to stand your ground."  I would say it again many years later, in a heartbeat.

The game is indeed afoot. But it's not a sprint.  It's a marathon. 

Day 1 of the National Children's and Adults' Services Conference (#NCASC2016.) This is the annual think and reflect, connect and learn, challenge and think deeply gathering of policy and practice in these vital service areas. We have had strong and nicely linked inputs, gauntlets thrown and challenges laid down.  Oddly, I find myself reflecting in a different way as reps from these areas of service settle into our debates, coming as they do from environments hard pressed by austerity, struggling to prove the differences they make in society - until they aren't there any more, when their absence hits home.

My thinking has been sharpened by conversations with people who've said "Do you remember in 1999, we were urging the system to see intervening late was foolish, expensive, wasteful, damaging to those who waited until there was a crisis before we got to them? Saying we needed to get in earlier? What's going on that somehow we are doing the late stuff, the expensive stuff, the can't cover the bases stuff, almost as a default, all these years later?"  There's a counter conversation.  It revisits how hard everything is, how there was apparently a golden age before adults' and children's services went under a DASS and a DCS and if we could only go back we'd be OK. Incredulity meets that line of argument. The landscape has changed, the partnerships are different, social care for any age - certainly under a DCS's more rounded role - does not work in a bubble on its own - if it ever did, which I doubt.  Expectations are light years on, the "back to what?" questions therefore being answered by a "well, certainly not what you think!" response.

What I'm musing on now is what we do with the energy generated by worrying about whether we can deliver.  At what point must worrying be set aside because situations require potentially radical action, right now?  What comes to mind is from the start of my career.  I had the pleasure of teaching "Macbeth." Written for a nervous and troubled King who saw conspiracy to murder and supernatural influences everywhere, it is rich in action and characters displaying flaws you would expect in a tragedy.  The lead characters display self delusion, rash action derived from false images of both self and the world, a self destruct button stuck "on" no matter what others try to do to unlock it, and the inevitablity of death and destruction. But look more closely at this story and make the links between even small parts of it, and your own. 

Macbeth, before we meet him, is a feted hero: a leader whose soliders follow him against uncertain odds.  They would die for him, and he for them. His high repute precedes him onto the stage,he is destined for and attains glory.  He is supported by a wife of still greater ambitions, who, as the audience fights the urge to shout "don't listen! don't do it!" quashes his inner uncertainties, with fatal results - for the king they murder, and for themselves. Almost immediately Duncan is dead, the folly of what they have done starts to unravel the pair of them. Ghosts and portents abound. That first death has to be followed by many more for Macbeth to stay ahead of the game, supposedly to remain in control. He tries, before the first murder, to say it is too great a risk, that they might fail. At that moment Lady M looks at him and says "We, fail? But screw your courage to the sticking point and we'll not fail." That their flaws mean they do fail, does not detract from the moment of focus she captures in that line.

I am not for a moment suggesting the sector screws its courage to the sticking point so as to commit heinous crimes. But all day today we have been assured the courage, commitment, foresight, creativity and ingenuity of the people in it, their humanity and reach, are all amazing.  They have been thanked as well as challenged. And they have been told, and told each other, that the courage is in their hands, not those of the people whose ideas and policieis have created the challenges and fears they now face. Over again, as people have tweeted about today, the feedback about bravery, about going out on a limb, about picking up the gauntlet and entering the fray, the will to DO, not just think or worry, has been palpable.  We are, as we have also been told, the people who can make things work for a society that needs the services concerned.  It's the end of day 1.  I wonder what day 2 will bring of people's  courage andthe need for screwing it to the sticking point so they don't fail. Bring it on, is the sense of the day.  So, to end as Macbeth does, staring down his inevitable demise with open eyed and final courage, even as he fails: "Lay on Macduff, and cursed be him who first cries 'Hold! Enough!' " 

I recently turned 60. As always when a significant number rolls around there has been some introspection, not least given how, apparently, turning 60 makes a new "me" appear.  The letterbox has brought some fascinating materials. I have also found my behaviour changing.  

"Me-directed" behaviours first.  I bought a senior rail card. So: if you want to meet me let's time it so I get on a train after 9:30 in the morning because then I save 30% -  but only if I hang around at your end so I can complete the return leg outside peak hours. I have started routinely to ask "are there concessionary prices please?" in all sorts of settings: museums, galleries, cathedrals, cinemas, my gym.  My sense of entitlement has rocketed, so for example I am outraged that I can't have a bus pass until I'm 66. Given I don't use buses I find that outrage mystifying, but never mind!

"Prompted by others" behaviours?  I do object that much of my mail seems to have turned its attention to whether organisations can sell me adaptations that it seems I will need to go on living.  Hearing aids, enhanced specs, late life insurance cover. Who, ME?  However, two things have given me pause for more thought.

First, within a week of my birthday the NHS sent me a kit to let me take part in the national screening programme to diagnose bowel cancer. You don't need the details on how to participate. Instead look at the reasons and results pathway. The problem they are trying to fix is that in over 60s this devastating, quickly-metastasising cancer is common.  Discovered pre-cancerous however, it can be treated. Potential savings are obvious: to the patient as family member, worker, taxpayer, and to the NHS from GPs to oncologists. The trick is breaking the cycle of under-or-late diagnosis, and breaking through the embarrassment people feel about addressing the condition.  The NHS is doing this work through education: with dietary advice, by asking us to talk about things we would rather not, and so on.  But this goes further. The kit comes to you, automatically, through the post.  In an ordinary envelope is a simple kit, with plain English instructions translated into around 20 other languages. All parts of the kit carry your NHS number but the testing organisation does not hold your medical history. A secure 1st class return envelope is included. As a woman, I am used to being called for screenings for breast and cervical cancer, so perhaps I automatically complied, but why would you not do so given this is so simple?  A week after I sent back my kit, the letter arrived declaring me clear and explaining what will happen every 2 years until I am 75.  All also translated into 20 other languages. I am reassured, and they have another patient recorded. The programme is in its relatively early days, so it's unlikely we have population level results or attached savings projections yet. But I am struck by the sheer simplicity of the experience. In the last couple of years, this no-nonsense diagnostic programme is calmly rolled out to those who qualify just by turning a particular age.  It's made clear why it matters. The language assumes you will be a grown up, get over yourself and take part. A classic piece of well judged behaviour change science at work.  Well done the NHS.

Second, I recently worked with the Essex Leadership Collaborative. This is the County Council and the two Unitary councils in Thurrock and Southend, the districts, health, police, fire and rescue, NGOs and citizens.  They have gathered round the challenges Greater Essex and it population faces, to work together to tackle them. Imagine the organisational and small-p political issues and ingrained habits they must set aside to start such shared problem solving. And here's a community leader who spoke about leading an international celebration.  She gave us two illustrations from a day when many communities used a shared space to learn from and about each other, to celebrate similarity and difference. Firstly there were 4 rice puddings: a British one; a Thai one; a Spanish one; an Indian one.  All sweet, all delicious, all rice, all different. Secondly the day ended with a Ceilidh - a Celtic barn dance and stomp, if that term is unfamiliar.  Nobody knows the dances but the caller, who leads you through them, then lets you loose to fantastic tunes and teaches you all again as you go stumbling through the hilarity and eventually get it right. The genius here? on that shared day the dances came from elsewhere than in the communities concerned.  For those of you who have never been to a ceilidh, the real trick is that many dances are "Progressive".  You change partners repeatedly as the dance goes round the room, until everybody has danced with everybody else.  

And with those two metaphors for the challenges we face and the problems we are all tackling, I sign off!