The first part of the Munro review has been used to clarify the known issues (already discovered in the Laming and Social work taskforce report) and to place a systemic framework around understanding and intervention.  It demonstrates how the last ten years of policy making could have got it wrong despite best intentions, looking at what it calls 'ripples' - unintended consequences of change that become part of a vicious cycle that has contributed to social workers finding less and less satifisfaction with their day to day roles and outcomes for children being harder and harder to achieve (or at least evidence in tangible way).

It made interesting reading and I have always enjoyed reading Munro's work as she presents complex ideas with elegant prose and an reasoned manner that seem to suggest change is achievable.

However, for Local Authority leaders, and social workers and front line managers, I think it will continue to beg the question - what can change? It is one thing to identify that perfomance indicators, forms, processes and IT have come together to create the 'perfect storm' - it is another to empower the Local Authorities, who remain bound by the legislation that states the Assessment Framework must be used to assess children and their families in need, by the inspection regime that measures performance in timescales, process and quantity rather than quality outcomes, and statutory guidance that states which records should be used to record actions to safeguard children, to make the changes necessary.

Centrally, undoing legislation and all its ties, including the Public Law Outline, and the Common Assesment (which is based on the Assessment Framework) to name a few,  scrutinising and changing the performance Indicators and the management information schedules that are required by the DFE each year, the inspection regimes that are based on these PI's, and the records that are used to gather the information and assess in accordance with all of the above mentioned, will take time.  It took ten years to create.  A system that may seem when examined critically to be piece meal, but when it comes to pulling it apart, will seem inter dependant and tightly tied together.

Central changes hit the Local Authorities rather slowly really - rippling out and not always making it to shore first time round.  If the system really is as broken as all the media reports and the government indicates then it will be crucial for Munro to get her 'tipping point' right.