The government reponse to Munro states that "the changes will not be tinkering around the edges" but a whole new approach to working with vulnerable children and their families.   It goes on to say that there will be changes to Working Together in terms of the timescales for completing assessment and the need for both the initial and core assessment.  I am sure that these will be changes welcomed on the ground and that social workers will see these announcements as the start of allowing them to exercise their personal judgement. 

Some of the things that are occupying my mind are around how each Local Authority senior and political teams will implement Munro in a way that will support this call to professionals to exercise their judgement.  De-coupling the inspection regime from the workflow that currently feeds it, counting the things that matter instead of the things that are easy to count and finding ways to assure accountability without tying the workers into elaborate reporting regimes will be the operational challenge.

I have been asking social workers to think about what they would want to be renummerated for doing and how they would evidence the quality of those actions.  Many times we end up with a list of relational behaviours that matter to both the child/young person and their families and the workers involved with them.  Understanding how best to link these 'critical skills' ( captured well by the social work taskforces work on standards) to an sound evidence base that can support the management of individuals and the organisation and continue to improve service delivery is the challenge we all need to be thinking upon. 

Operationalising Munro asks us to look outside the systems we are in and imagine a place where social workers and managers believed each other to be competent, where partner agencies respected each others roles and work, and where children and family believed that being involved with children's services meant that they had the chance of a better life. 

I look forward to the challenge.