I was pleased to read in Children and Young People Now that Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson, has
announced an innovation programme for children’s services.
He is reported as saying that he wants people to come
forward with ‘adventurous’ ideas and that he wants to 'confront head-on' the barriers
to innovation in the sector.
“It is a call to frontline staff and experts in the field to
develop better ways of constructing and managing services,” he said. He offered
those who were experiencing difficulty in getting an idea off the ground help
in taking it forward.
I think this is a really promising initiative. I hope that
it will be responded to widely. After years of stultifying top-down poorly thought-out
change, the sector is crying out from some bottom-up,
innovative thought, built on experience of actually delivering services.
“If you always do what you always did, you will always get
what you always got,” said Albert Einstein.
My advice to those who respond is that the best ideas will be modest proposals, capable of being trialed or tested and based on experience of successful implementation elsewhere.
Let's see what happens.
