THE MANIC Street Preachers performed their enduring anthem, If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next at Glastonbury last weekend. The anthem, first released in 1998, is as relevant now as then. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care Services report was published on Wednesday 21 June 2023 revealing “systemic and endemic” difficulties within the region’s Children’s social care services. We are tolerating this and as such “a higher proportion of its (NI’s) child population (are) seen as ‘children in need’” than those in the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
The head of the review Professor Ray Jones made 53 recommendations on the back of reflections amassed since the commencement of the review in February 2022. But the most revealing part of this review for me, was not the problems within Children’s social care services, but the author’s lack of faith that the review would bring about the much-needed changes he and his panel were recommending. Chapter 18 of the report titled, What next?, begins with a quote of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “I am not an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope”.
This review is just the latest in a long list of reviews, gathering dust at Stormont. The authors of the report acknowledge this, “review following review with un-acted upon recommendations waiting to be read by the next reviewer”. The report continues, “there is no Minister, no Executive, and no Assembly to take strategic political decisions. The political vacuum has and is creating a strategic desert”.
The initial budget set for this review was £879,494, the actual cost was £729,360, but the report notes, “3/4m is still a lot of money to have spent if the outcome of this review is another report on another shelf waiting to be read by the next reviewer”.
I wasn’t surprised, that despite this damning review of both Children’s social care services and reviews in general, the little coverage it got mostly thanked the authors. Why are we tolerating this? Why are we tolerating this ‘political vacuum’, what is it going to take to get our representatives back to work? If it’s not our ‘children in need’, or “the burning platform” of the health service noted in the Bengoa Review, 2016, or the 2018 Gillen Review of Family Justice, then what?
The Bengoa Report 2017 is quoted in this report, describing the ‘review fatigue’ felt by those within the Health and Social Care system. What is the point of these reviews? Why do we look for what is broken with no intention of fixing it. No wonder there is a growing number of public sector employees resigning, they have to look at the problems up close every day and know that those who can make changes aren’t going to. With information in spades from experts in their fields of what needs fixing, how much longer will we tolerate this “strategic desert”?
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