I agree a full investigation would be too long and sluggish and a task force may be better. I can’t see it happening - but I can see posts on here in 15-20 years wondering why on earth we kicked the can down the road and deploring the extreme crisis in social care.
I kind of think this now for elderly care TBH. It's been obvious that it would happen for decades but there hasn't been anything put in place to mitigate it, and now there is so much elderly bed blocking in hospitals that ambulance services can't drop off their patients and response times for emergencies are alarmingly dire as a knock on effect.
In terms of child development, it seems really clear to me that early intervention (and I'd class e.g. sure start as a form of EI, though I don't think sure start is magic, I did think it was great) is the model with the cheapest implementation and best long term outcomes, but nobody seems to want to implement it because by design, if you're intervening early enough then you're catching a lot of kids that don't look like they need much support, and definitely some kids who would have done just fine without any support, so it is a bit inefficient in that sense. I remember sure start was constantly under fire because "middle class mums" used it and I kept saying on here that was one of its strengths because it was surprisingly equalising - but it doesn't look that way to politicians who are either looking very short term, or they are looking at a single issue at a time rather than the whole picture. No we can't possibly give out free baby music classes to middle class mums, they need to pay for it.
But I do think that the costs - to the kids themselves and also to their peers, their classmates, their siblings, their parents, ultimately their communities/the services that end up supporting them later on, not just but also the financial costs, are much much more if you just let things go until they are drowning and only then look at offering support and are surprised (or even refuse the support!) when it is more complicated to administer because now in addition to delays which have been compounded by not receiving support in time, this child now perhaps also has trauma and/or they have developed unhealthy coping mechanisms (e.g. they automatically resist authority) and/or they have a totally crap view of themselves (e.g. I'm stupid) and/or other things you'd want them to engage with (e.g. I hate school, I can't do maths), and/or the parents have fallen into unhelpful habits like perhaps too much screen time, because they don't know what else to do and it is the only way to stop the child terrorising their siblings, or whatever.
If you speak to any SEN parents in the UK, they are waiting years for services and diagnosis. There are barely any therapies. A friend's child is three, not speaking and still on a waiting list for speech therapy which seems absolutely bonkers to me. These are such critical periods of development, it ought to be extremely urgent to get that therapy. You wouldn't leave someone walking around on a broken leg for six weeks because there is a waiting list. There seems to be no point to a diagnosis at all, if you even get one, because parents frequently don't get offered anything other than maybe a leaflet, which is a joke, often containing outdated and minimal information, you can find more comprehensive information (and a huge amount of predatory misinformation, BTW) in a five second google or even a scroll on tiktok. People are encouraged (rightly) not to self-diagnose, but then you end up having to look up information - usually online, because this is what's accessible - while on a waiting list, so essentially self-diagnosing, because you still have to support your child in the meantime and the standard parenting things are not working (or making things worse). Or a private diagnosis is looked down upon because it's "buying a diagnosis" but it is often the only way to get a solid answer without waiting years. And not one that everyone has access to, of course.
I really don't see why people are looking to blame parents when the services that are supposed to support them are so shit. When my eldest DS was little (2009-10) there was a 9 month check and a 2 year check by the health visitor plus there were regular weighing clinics you could go to have any questions answered. The one (3 month) premature baby in our NCT group had extra check ups. I remember his mum being concerned as he did not walk/talk until 18 months, but then he did - IIRC he would have been offered physio and speech therapy if he had not.
When I had DS2 (2018) I was in Germany but on my MN birth month thread, I was surprised to hear most areas have gone down to one check up at around 1 year old and some don't even have that. In comparison we seemed to have loads of doctor check ups in Germany at 2 weeks/8 weeks/4 months/8 months/12 months, then every year until age 5.
I know that issues were picked up with DS2 through these checks which totally flew under the radar with DS1 at the same age, because we were in the UK and the only qualified person with an eye on his development was nursery.