All I want for Christmas is...

It’s been yet another busy year for the Association as we continued to press the government to both recognise and act on the pressures children’s services face. In the spring, we published a paper on the wider children’s workforce, in the summer a discussion paper on serious youth violence and most recently a paper on how the health care system works for children, or not.

These things will all roll forward and ADCS will continue to take every opportunity to raise these issues, and others, with the new government. My biggest concern remains the lack of coherent focus on children and families. I don’t think I’m the only one who was disappointed to see children’s services getting very little attention during the recent general election campaign. I sincerely hope that this is not a sign of things to come because the priorities that have shaped my presidency remain unchanged: over a third of children in this country are living in poverty, the majority of whom live in working households; more children and families than ever before need our help; and support and funding for vital public services continues to fall in real terms, at least in local government. The NHS, police and schools have all secured new funding pledges this year and, while we welcome this, we still await a sustainable funding settlement for local government. Delivering improvements in children’s outcomes in these circumstances is, to say the least, very challenging, but we try; 2019 was also the year we formally launched our Regional Improvement and Innovation Alliances.