My Week - I'll never get used to children dying

The week begins late on Sunday night with one of those calls. I've had too many of them in my senior career. No choice but to absorb the news clinically and prepare the response as if it's any other piece of management business. Two infants found dead, with their father, in a neighbouring authority, are actually ours: Hampshire children. That's the nub of the new order of children's services: the sense that all our children are just that - our children.

We hardly knew them but some of our staff had some contact. The event is so sudden, so calamitous and there's no question of any service fault. But try telling that to the dedicated professionals who may have had brief involvement and are wondering, against all reason, what if? The day and the week are taken up with police liaison, member briefings, offers of support to family and staff. For all the hectic efficiency, our offices are tainted by an irredeemable sadness. Children aren't supposed to die.