Context changes but leadership qualities endure

I'll still be cheering from the sidelines and remain hugely interested and invested in high-quality support for children and young people to have the best possible experiences growing up.

Inevitably, I've been reflecting on how things have changed, and on how things haven't changed at all really. Yes, the context varies – I'm a pre-internet babe after all. However, people have always been and always will be complicated and messy beings. Some people are delightful, others are cruel, thoughtless and only out for themselves; local services have always been up and down, riding the waves of investment and disinvestment. There's never been enough resource – human and financial – and there will always need to be prioritisation, fair decision-making and enabling people and communities to support themselves. Political and societal swings happen, some scary, some not. Everything is a pendulum.