Principle Two: Where there’s ruin, there’s hope

It’s often claimed that ‘the system is broken’ – that the current model of welfare, care and protection is failing countless thousands of the most vulnerable children and their families across the UK that it was designed to serve.

The situation is far worse than that. It is not that the system is broken and isn’t working; it is that there is no system. What we actually have is a collection of different systems – social care, education, family support, health, mental health, housing, justice – that are not joined up. Instead, they all operate independently. They function within different frameworks, they are top down and bureaucratic, they are overly fixated on process, they collect different data. They’re ‘output’ obsessed (How many clients have we been involved with/calls have we answered? etc.) rather than ‘outcome’ focused (What difference did we make?) and there’s no effective interface between them, so that any unifying sense of shared and focused vision and purpose is non-existent. The irony in all this is that, in a sense, many of these systems – in their own terms – aren't broken at all. The terrible truth is that although they are dysfunctional, they are all doing exactly what they have been designed to do!

It’s not just that the individual systems lack cohesion, many are not even joined up within themselves. Instead, they’re made up of various smaller, disjointed systems, each run by its own set of managers. Over the last twenty years, part of my job has been to engage with both central and local government departments – a task in which I never cease to be amazed by the level of muddle and confusion, poor communication, institutional deafness to the complexity of need, and the huge levels of unnecessary expenditure. And none of this is helped by the constantly shifting policies and changing targets that go with them, overlaid by the endless churn of staff changing roles and the acute lack of organisational memory that accompanies all this.

It is impossible to solve our current problems with the same thinking that created them. More money might be needed, but the crisis we face is not primarily about underinvestment. Better management may be needed, but the issues we must confront are not primarily about poor management. Instead, we need a root-and-branch revolution. Everything has to change.

Ironically, the mix of ill-fitting statutory systems we have at the moment disempowers the staff working within them as much as it does the individuals and families it seeks to serve – creating a toxicity which is traumatising for all who are touched by it.

Those of us with eyes to see – from those in national or local government, those in national charities or statutory services, through to the pavement-level voluntary sector and individual community members – find ourselves sitting on a social, emotional, mental-health, and economic time-bomb. If we are going to improve children’s life chances or deliver assistance, it’s time to reimagine. We need a mind-set change which will cascade into a better, more joined-up, integrated, holistic and robust approach to building safe communities for children and their families, where all feel safe, have ownership and can thrive.

Where there is ruin, there is also hope!