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.