Let practitioners solve today's challenges

The social and economic forces that created those conditions were complex, but government responses to nationalism and a rapacious banking system lay at their heart.

Scroll forward 80 years - families are being forced into poverty and homelessness, early help is falling away, the education system is starved of funds… all of which is linked to government policy decisions that have poured billions into failing top-down change programmes in the NHS, built schools where none were needed, shored up the international banking system and responded to nationalism by signing a blank cheque to deliver Brexit.

Apparently, there is neither the government time nor money to address the fundamental needs that children's services professionals encounter on a daily basis. So what can be done about it in the here and now? There will be no more money and, even if our political leaders could tear themselves away from their tribal obsessions, there is no evidence they would do the right thing to rectify the problems we face. The answer is for practitioners to take more control.

When I used to sit with health service leaders, the atmosphere was generally one of overt enmity and covert blame-shifting, coupled with a deeply internalised need to comply with our regulators and hit arbitrary targets. However, when I took the same issues to practitioners - hospital doctors, GPs, nurses or social workers - the mood was generally positive and underpinned by empathy, a deep desire to fix things, and to work with and for vulnerable people.

So, to state the obvious: there is no point in waiting for leadership from above. If we look at key indicators of collaborative system performance such as care numbers or school exclusions, we can see we are running out of time. We need a movement that can lead from within our systems, accepting that most barriers to innovation are created by ourselves. Three places to benefit from the first tranche of money from the Innovation Fund (Leeds, North Yorkshire and Stockport) illustrate my point as they successfully introduced systemic change.

Yes, they all received additional funding to develop their models, but their innovation had already been embedded in practice before the money arrived. Although they are all different, one thing their evaluations show they have in common is a base built on values.

By fostering collaboration, empowering practitioners, nurturing relationships between professional groups and supporting restorative approaches, they have made a demonstrable difference. Empowering practitioners will not provide instant, comprehensive fixes, but there is a growing base of evidence that it can make for more sustainable and affordable solutions than have been achieved by obsessing over structures or compliance with processes.

• Andrew Webb is a former DCS at Stockport Council