The Ferret: Argar in conflict of interest spotlight again

At a recent parliamentary debate on ending child custody, Argar said "there will always be a need for a form of custodial setting".

He had been responding to an impassioned speech by former shadow children's minister Emma Lewell-Buck MP, who claimed that prison is no place for children and suggested that secure schools would be rebranded secure training centres (STC).

Argar said he "respectfully disagreed" with Lewell-Buck, adding that secure schools "are the right way to proceed to ensure we move away from the concept of a prison with education to that of a school with a degree of security".

However, some keen social policy experts told Ferret that his comments should come as "no surprise" considering he was once employed to provide public relations for a company that ran prisons.

Before becoming the MP for Charnwood in 2015, Argar was head of public affairs at Serco, which has a number of prison contracts and ran Hassockfield STC prior to its closure in 2014.

Ferret suspects his background will always be raised by campaigners, but at least he should have a firm grip on the issues in the secure estate.

Pupil scoops award as NHS marks 71st birthday

A 10-year-old girl from Leicester has been crowned national winner of Health Education England's Step into the NHS primary school competition as the health service marked its 71st birthday on 5 July. Daisy Curran produced a booklet saying "thank you" to the NHS, along with a poem and comic strip showing her knowledge about NHS jobs. She joined fellow pupils from Brocks Hill Primary School to show their appreciation for the health service at a special photo shoot. The Step into the NHS contest aims to raise awareness about the breadth of roles in the health service.

Storm in a tea cup or lasting bitter taste?

It's key for any new organisation - particularly one that is aiming to support the development and spread of evidence-based practice - to establish early its credentials among its target audience.

So one can't help but wonder who at What Works for Children's Social Care - the centre set up to commission research into good practice - decided it would be a good idea to commission as one of its first pieces of research a study on whether offering children's social workers free "quality" tea and coffee increased wellbeing and reduced sickness rates?

Through the study, coffee machines will be allocated to social work teams in two councils up to January 2020 to test whether it helps practitioners feel more valued by employers and, in so doing, reduce rates of sickness and turnover.

News of the study raised eyebrows last month. "Patronising", "unbelievable" and "wasteful" were just some of the printable reactions to be posted on social media. Even Professor Donald Forrester from the University of Cardiff admitted he thought it was a "really stupid idea", but said he'd subsequently changed his mind.

"This study quickly and cheaply allows the [centre] to try out some methods and measures that may be useful for those bigger studies," he wrote in a recent blog.

Perhaps there is merit in the study - Ferret can certainly vouch for the beneficial qualities of good coffee - but was this the right time to run it? It is unlikely to have done little to enhance the new centre's standing among overworked and resource-starved frontline staff.

As one ex-director told Ferret: "It was a silly mistake - they should have back-tracked as soon as the reaction emerged. Insufficient humility and lack of meaningful engagement with the academic community will keep tripping them up if they don't change."

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Ferret takes a sideways look at who said what in Manchester

• Ofsted social care head honcho Yvette Stanley's key note speech on children's services inspection was full of anecdotes. She said someone had remarked that her recent blog on funding pressures in child protection services was "a statement of the bleedin' obvious". She revealed she'd written the blog six months earlier when holed up at home recovering from a broken leg. The round of applause her comments received suggest nothing much has changed on the funding front!
• Senior DfE civil servant Graham Archer forgot that if you ask young people for their views, you might not like the answer you get. After a session delivered by Barnsley Youth Council, he asked the participants what message they'd like him to take to children's minister Nadhim Zahawi. One said he'd heard that Zahawi "wasn't very receptive" to young people's views when he'd attended a Youth Parliament session; another chipped in by suggesting he properly fund youth work because it offered good value for money which "he should appreciate".
• The last thing a DCS wants when nursing a sore head after a night of hard partying in Manchester is a Friday morning data session - but that's what Youth Justice Board chair Charlie Taylor delivered. The ex-head teacher had some figures on violent crime and discussed how it linked with social changes - including the rise and fall of the compact disc! He said he'd seen a graph that showed CD ownership tracked that of murders, peaking in 1991 and falling ever since.