Care Review: Critics claim Case for Change ‘misrepresents’ key legislation

In the review’s first report, chair Josh MacAlister describes the children’s social care system in England as “a 30-year-old tower of Jenga held together with Sellotape: simultaneously rigid and yet shaky”.

He adds that since the introduction of the act numerous reviews and legislative changes have each made “incremental progress” but “we are now left with a high stack of legislation, systems, structures, and services that with their sheer complicatedness make it hard to imagine something different, let alone address foundational problems”.

"We must avoid increasingly piling bricks onto an already wobbly and fragile Jenga tower. We need a clear purpose for children’s social care and recommendations that return to and strengthen the bedrock principles of the Children Act 1989, so that children and families get the support and protection that they need and that professionals want to provide,” the Case for Change states.