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 th...

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.&#...

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 adult...

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...

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 la...

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...

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 i...

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, st...

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 aro...