The new Children’s Minister, Robert Goodwill,
seemed to have started off not too badly last week by making what seemed to be quite
a sensible decision to scale back substantially the Government’s ill-starred plans for the
accreditation of children’s social workers.
Of course, he could have made an even more
sensible decision – to abolish the scheme altogether. As far as I am concerned there
are no reasons at all for saving an initiative which has so little to commend
it that one wonders whoever thought it up.
Sadly, Mr Goodwill went on the very next
day to blot his copybook and prove himself not to be a very effective ‘new
broom’. Having been reported on 6th July as saying that the analysis
of the recent consultation had led his department to change fundamentally its
plans for accreditation, he was then reported on 7th July as saying
that he had spoken to a lot of social workers in the last four weeks and that
he had formed the impression that they were “up for it”. The accreditation
scheme, he said, was all about recognising the professionalism of social
workers and he now presented the proposed scaling-back as just an adjustment to
the implementation timetable.
Maybe he was got at overnight by some person
or persons who remain intent on pushing ahead with the scheme in all its
awfulness no matter what anybody says. Maybe he is just finding his new brief
confusing. In the meantime, children’s social work is threatened by yet another
poorly thought out policy. It’s all very, very sad.
