I was reading one of those ads for a fairly senior vacancy
in a local authority children’s service department. They were willing to pay
nearly £110,000. That seems an awful lot to me for a third tier post but I
suppose it might be worth it if they found someone who matched their Utopian
specifications.
They said they were looking for “a new breed of individual”
to deliver “real change” “in a dynamic, fast-changing borough”. They wanted “an
inspirational leader”, a “collegiate player” a “problem solver”. They wanted someone with “exceptional
interpersonal skills”.
Yuch!! I wonder
how many senior children’s services managers across the nation are part of this new
breed? How many deliver real change? How many are inspirational leaders? How
many are problem solvers with exceptional personal skills?
I wonder how many are bureaucrats? How many pursue
manageralism rather than management appropriate to a challenging professional
service? How many just deliver the latest political fix? How many are out of their depth?
Let’s get away from these hollow sounding echoes of the
naughties and stop pretending that working with children is a branch of
financial services. The kind of people we want running children’s services are
the kind of people who understand children and their needs, who know how to
communicate with children and to build and deliver services that children will
value.
That’s what I call a “new breed”.
