Hi MrBo - thanks for the link. I think Martin Narey is raising some very relevant issues here, with which I am broadly in agreement. I will certainly be giving my views on both issues, and hope many foster carers and adoptors and thos holding ROs and SGOs will also contribute to the debate. It's nice to be asked for our views for once, so I think we should not miss the opportunity. I can only speak from a retired SW angle but many of you can talk from your own experiences, which I think can be really helpful in this debate.
I know Cameron was sounding off a while ago about "speeding up" adoptions which I thought was just another PM talking about things of which he knows very little. I think there may be a case for fewer delays in some cases but quite often this is caused by staff shortages. Social services has been under resourced for many years, but now this coalition have come along slashing the budgets of all public sectors (because they want all public sector work to be privatised) they are expecting things to be "speeded up" when there are fewer social workers available to do the job. There are vacancies for sure, nationally, but these posts are "frozen" because the LA cannot afford to pay new workers. Sorry I'm off on my hobby horse, it just makes me so angry that there is no trust in the public services, be they NHS staff, Education, Social Work, Probation, Police,Army etc.
I'd better stop as I've already gone off at a tangent.