The economy has slumped over the last 20 years. And as we all know, local services are on their knees, putting pressure on other parts of the system and failing our population.
There is a stark choice… 1) a managed decline in the standards and outcomes we expect, or 2) we do something different. The risk of standing still is now much higher than the risk of change.
The reason all of us got into this job was to make a difference for children and families. That’s why we have to choose the second option… to redesign our system of services, partners, community and families, and win the argument for early help. And there is a great argument for early help — not only the Supporting Families evaluation that looked at just a few outcomes and proved a £2.28 return on every £1 of investment. But also the 14-year austerity experiment that left us with stripped back early help and led to much higher acute costs and worse outcomes.
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