Gov approached review as a symbolic battle with "producer interests" (social workers.) Same approach as with teaching unions: take them on, and face them down. Fine, but this is far bigger than social work review. Battle picked includes care leavers and care experienced families.

My personal experience of social work practice is that too much of it is shockingly bad, fails children and leads to the unnecessary permanent removal of children, where rigorous early help could have saved the whole family. A review into social work would have been a great idea.

But government put it all in together: care homes, social work, role of schools, lack of therapy, CAMHS, addiction, removal of children, intergenerational impact of care, I could go and on. This area is *vast*. Current proposed model cannot meet the needs of this issue.

If you are going to lift the lid on this pandora's box of misery and pain, make bloody sure you do it properly.