Having spent yesterday digesting the interim report my first practical thoughts were about time.  I have been practising in this country for 10 years and spent five of it trying to implement a system and the next five trying to make it work for children and identifying where it was not.  Not all of the current system is bad but taken in total it is clearly not working.  None of what I read yesterday was news to me, working as I do with hundreds of social workers across a dozen local authorities.  None of it will be news to the social workers on the ground or the families and children they work with. 

I am wondering about the timetable for change.  It is clear from the report that a lot of the concerns that social workers, managers and children social care organisations have been raising for the last five years, have been heard, understood and placed within a useful context.  Munro is not a simplistic thinker and therefore the great complex loops that bind the system together are well identified.  These include legislative, performance and audit, organisational infrastructure and social work skills hurdles - none of which can be overcome easily.  Having said that - they are all fixable.  The 'wicked' problems centred around the skills of the people managing the sequencing of the fixes, the resources and time allowed for each fix, and how to keep the focus on vulnerable children and their families whilst doing so.  The other 'wicked' problem touched on by Munro was that of working with the media to assist the public to understand the profession and what to expect in terms of proportional and reasoned responses to child deaths.

This profound cultural change to a more confident, highly qualified and professional work force, proud of their status and their learning and skills is welcome.  The journey needs to be laid out clearly, even if a thousand schools of thought are to be allowed to bloom, so that children do not become the last in line beneficiaries of this new world.