This week the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care published its final report, setting out its recommendations to ‘reset children’s social care’.
There is little doubt that the system needs something of a reset; too often there is insufficient support to help families resolve their problems before they reach the family court. Despite the best efforts of dedicated and hardworking professionals, it can be easier to initiate proceedings than secure the intensive support that parents need to resolve their long-standing difficulties, whether for their mental health, addiction, poverty, trauma or family violence. We have ended up with a children’s social care system with a strong gravitational pull into the family courts. Something has to change.
