Foreword

Summary

I take it as a privilege accorded to the writer of a foreword to an edited collection to make a personal response, a privilege lightly claimed since the editors have in their opening and concluding chapters so fully drawn together and reflected on the individual chapters. Having started my social work career as a child care officer tasked with setting up ‘preventive services’ in the heady days of Section 1 of the 1963 Children and Young Persons Act, I greatly appreciated being welcomed into the Care Review Watch Alliance, a ‘loose collective of care experienced people, care professionals and academics’. With the MacAlister Review published but government intentions not yet known, some members of this collective, along with other fellow travellers, have taken the opportunity offered by this book to move beyond commentary and critique of the Review's processes and conclusions to address the risks of hasty implementation of some of its ill-thought-through recommendations, and to share hopes for the future.

Some readers will, like me, have been on a social media journey with the authors from even before the Review was announced. Though each chapter author is clear about the inequities and harms of the ‘care system’, and the need for considerably more resources as well as changes, when the government announced an ‘independent’ review of ‘the children's social care system’ we were not all at one about the scope of the review that was needed. Should the focus be on children in care and care leavers, or was the ‘care system’ to be taken to include the full range of child and family services as legislated for by the 1989 Act? I recall a Twitter exchange where I expressed concerns that this broad-based review, commissioned by a neoliberal-minded government, that had been seeking for some years to weaken rights to quality, publicly provided and accountable services, could result in harming the balance required by the 1989 Act. Then, as now, balance is essential between helping families within the community, intervening when protective services were needed, and providing good quality care for those whose needs could best be met by out-of-home care.

The writers of the chapters in this powerful book, as researchers, activists and advocates from across children's services, and from personal experience of the ‘care system’, came together in pointing to pitfalls as the shape of the Review emerged.