"We are not starting from scratch or with a blank sheet of paper…."

We have reached the solstice, the turn of the solar year and I am about half way through my Presidency. There is a curious turning point in the principal policy obsession of the year so far that has been marked by the Cabinet Secretary's announcement on the future of social care and health integration on 12th December and the parliamentary debate on 15th December. The year ends with the abandonment of the National Care service idea  by the Labour Party, the abandonment of the SNP ideas about a nationally driven lead comissioning arrangement (38,000 social workers to transfer to the NHS) and a confirmed policy regarding the future of integration - one which closely mirrors the proposals developed by ADSW. I think therefore that it is worth reflecting upon the way in which this has come about, the errors and successes along the way and the issues coming up.

In 2009/10 ADSW developed a series of policy positions which were brief, clear and assembled into a document we called a manifesto. The intention being to have a comprehensive range of policy positions which could anchor our work and guide us when contemplating change proposed by government. Just today, I quoted from the manifesto in offering a statement of support to Scottish government to mark the re-introduction of the Self Directed Support (Scotland) bill which is to be published in January. I didn't have to think twice - we had a position and I could quote it.

The manifesto was published in October 2010 - just as the challenge of integration started in Oban at the Labour Party Conference and in Inverness as the Highland Council and Health Board announced their local proposals. It was readily apparent that these ideas were politically compelling as they appear to offer a quick solution to a range of pernicious problems with the delivery of health and care to older people. Problems such as apparently inexplicable differences in charging policies between local authorities, assessment delays, bureaucratic duplication and - above all else - delays in the discharge of older people from hospital.  ADSW understood the need to engage with this issue, to respond to the felt need and to try to shape policy so that we didn't throw the social work baby out with the problematic bathwater.

We decided on the primacy of local evidence based decision making. We gave support to any locally agreed partnership agreement for integration that sprang from local circumstances and enjoyed local consent. We decided to commission IRISS to provide us with an overview of the best evidence of what works in integrating services and I want to thank Alison Petch for a great piece of work, completed under time pressure, agreed, published and ready for MSPs returning from their summer break on 6th September.

In my speech to Conference on 18th May I announced this commission and set our position firmly and clearly as  "a friend of good government". (ie 'We know what you want to achieve and we'd like to help you avoid the pitfalls we see')

On the back of the IRISS document we published a position statement, sent it to Scottish Government, I spoke about it in London and shared the research with ADASS who took it into David Cameron's Future Forum which was advising on the issue for England. We took every offered opportunity to promote these ideas and took every invitation to attend engagement events. We worked closely with SOLACE and COSLA without ever compromising our particular position and thanks to the energy and commitments of key office bearers, Peter Macleod, Kenny Leinster and our past Presidents, Michelle, David and Alan, a national consensus began to emerge in November.

At this time Cabinet discussions became extended as - we understand - Cabinet Secretaries' gave serious and detailed consideration to the draft proposals and the implications they would have for their interfaces - Justice, Children and Families, Local Government etc.

The announcement when it came contained reference to just about all our points including the challenging ones of dual accountability and a joint financial framework. It is permissive of local variation and allows for the Highland variant without prescribing it, allows for the outcomes framework to be governed through community planning and importantly proposes to replace the CHP as sub committee of health board with a Health and Social Care Partnership accountable to local authority and health board.

Nicola Sturgeon opens the Debate 15th December 2011

The debate on 15th December lasted 2 hours 40 minutes. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/scotland/newsid_9660000/9660309.stm)

In her opening statement Nicola Sturgeon said "We are not starting from scratch or with a blank sheet of paper. There is a great deal to be proud of in Scotland in health and social care provision . There have been significant improvements in recent years in standards and outcomes, with improvements in waiting times, patient safety and delayed discharges from hospital. In a reference to Sir John Arbuthnott's work in the 'Expert Group', Jackie Baillie moved an amendment to "welcome the Scottish Governments acceptance of the need for legislative underpinning following the conclusions of the Expert Group" and in so doing concurred.

The Parliamentary debate was hard on ADSW in charactering our briefing as negative "the tone was less than desirable for this debate" (Denis Robertson Aberdeenshire West SNP),  "goes on to say why social work should stay in its silo" (Richard Lyle Central Scotland) and most worrying of all, "I agree with most of those who have spoken that ADSWs briefing wast most unhelpful. I hope that the ADSW will get round the table and share its concerns. (Sandra White Glasgow Kelvin SNP)

On the other side, Dr Richard Simpson (Mid Scotland and Fife LAB) said "Although the ADSW has concerns about the move, its president, Andrew Lowe said:

"We consider the announcement represents significant progress and we support the clear emphasis on making better use of joint resources."

Finally, I was greatly relieved and appreciative of Minister for Public Health, Michael Mathieson's closing comments:

"Notwithstanding some members concerns about the ADSW's views on the issue, it has been helpful to the government in our dialogue in recent months and weeks and I have no doubt that it will play a constructive part in the future."

So this engagement teaches us all a lot to take into the future. We can have great impact, but we can get burnt. We can engage with ideas, but ideas can be misunderstood.

Coming up we have a three month consultation on the proposal and we have set 12th January for a full day seminar on the issue. I am minded to write to those MSPs who spoke agin us and clarify our position and we must turn our mind to focussing on the detail (where the devil always resides) and understand what is proposed by the "single, senior, locally accountable officer" the parameters of the "integrated budgets" etc.

2012 looks to be equally action packed and the need for clear leadership from ADSW will continue. Peter and I have worked as a team this year and our work has been underpinned by the manifesto, we therefore need to look to you to support us in taking the work forward and continuing to influence the course of events in a positive manner.

Happy Christmas

Andrew

Tough times, good decisions

The title for my October blog comes from the title of the ADASS/ADCS conference which I attended in London last week as the fraternal delegate from Scotland alongside Parry Davies, DSW in Ceredigion and President of ADSS Cymru.

We formed a kind of 'celtic connection' and interestingly took similar positions on a lot of issues. One group I attended - not to gloat, honestly - was entitled 'Moving on from the Riots'. The  workshop was led by Director of Children's Services from Lambeth and the Children's Commissioner for England Maggie Atkinson together with the Leader of Salford Council.

There was clearly a tension between officers who sought not to demonise the participants and in so doing appearing to justify their actions and another group, largely Members, who wanted to continually bring the focus to the people who were victims of the disorder (and by the way, I learned that they were not riots but incidents civil disorder)

I met up with our sponsors, OLM, who kindly invited me to dinner last Wednesday evening (better declare it Sophie!) along with a selection of Directors of Adults and Children's Services from Southampton to Sunderland. We had a useful exchange of ideas.

The best moment for me was the session with Andrew Dilnot on The Reform of Funding for Adult Care. Andrew was of course the chair of the Commission who reported on this topic last summer. To refresh memories the essential proposal coming out of the report was that the current threshold move up from £23,500 to £100,000 and that the maximum contribution  (which is currently unlimited) should be set at £35,000 of individual liability for care costs. In this way he hopes and expects that the market will create financial products - insurance to you and me - to enable people to insure against a predictable risk.
Dilnot proved to be a witty and engaging speaker. He opened by saying he was 'fed up' with all the talk of the 'burden of ageing' and went on to celebrate the contribution of older people and their value to wider society. He then put a perspective on the cost of social care as a part of the cost of funding old age. Something like £85bn cost of Benefits, £50bn of Healthcare and 'only' £8bn is the cost of social care. He set the cost of his reforms at 1/400th of public spending and described the current means test in old age as the worst and unfairest that could be devised.

I asked him a question: There has been a lot of interest in your report in Scotland, have you had any discussions with Scottish civil servants and do you think it would be possible to adapt your findings to our Scottish context. He was clearly interested in the Scottish dimension, said that he had visited Scotland for the commission, that he had had no discussions with the SG but that 'Yes, it would be possible to do the analysis for Scotland'. Given the questions surrounding the sustainability of FPC, I wonder if you would think it worth pursuing this further?

Another highlight for me was the presentation by service user Ellen Goodey who addressed the 2,000 delegates in a plenary session saying "Caring is not another thing you have to do - it is THE thing!" Brilliant!

Finally this month, I was privileged to represent you at the Annual SACRO lecture on 4th October in the Playfair Library at Edinburgh University. The lecture was on  Compassion and Justice was given by Terry Waite. Apart from his long incarceration as a hostage in the Middle East, Terry Waite has long experience of the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom. He was a founder Trustee of the Butler Trust, an organisation that acknowledges outstanding work done by those who work in UK prisons and is a Patron and supporter of many other bodies associated with the criminal justice system. As one who, with my son, campaigned for his release together with John McCarthy and Brian Keenan, I was very pleased to meet him and shake his hand. For his part, Terry showed real interest in Scottish social work and its uniquely comprehensive service to offenders, their children, parents and grandparents.

On Wednesday, 26 October Peter and I had an audience with Cabinet Secretary Nicola Sturgeon and I learned that it will not be long before we have some news on the integration proposals so stay tuned in.

A house of straws

I was in London to speak at an Inside Government conference last week. For my talk I chose to bring this largely English audience up to date with events in Scotland since last May and shared our position on integration. It seemed to be well received and I had a useful conversation with a new contact - Jesse Harris, Social Work Director of the Independent Living Fund. Based in England, the fund is of course UK wide and Jesse is currently planning a consultation on the future of ILF which will bring him to Scotland for two events. He expressed interest in the Self Directed Support Bill in working closely with ADSW and he will give us early notice of any announcements.

Peter Hay was also on the programme representing ADASS and we had a brief information exchange on areas of common interest including Southern Cross and social care and health integration. I gave him a copy of the IRISS report and ADSW position statement and he plans to feed them into his work on the Future Forum. This is the body formed to advise the Prime Minister about health sector reform in England. In his speech, Peter referred to integration as an experience, not a process and certainly not a structure (I could have written the lines myself.)

The conference was chaired by Baroness Pitkeithley (Lab) who is known to some of us as Jill Pitkeithley, chief executive of Carers UK for many years. She explained that she had to dash to the House of Lords for the 2nd Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill. Of course I blagged an invitation and sat near the throne in the south west gallery to watch the debate.

The experience buried a couple of long held prejudices – that the place would be largely empty and that it would be sparsely populated by rheumy-eyed old buffers from the English shires. In fact neither was the case. The House was fairly full and much more diverse than you might imagine. Seated near to me was a local peer, Lord Archie Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LIbDem). He is a noted speaker on welfare benefit issues and said:

“I give the Minister fair warning that I cannot support the benefit cap as it is currently cast and I hope that he will look at it very carefully. There are lots of reasons: for example, 70 per cent of those people are in social housing and 206,000 children will be the people who will carry the can for it. However, for me it is actually a question of principle. We have a system of entitlements in our social security system and, if you have the entitlements, you get the benefit. Here is an arbitrary system coming in and overlaying that by saying, "Well, you may well be entitled to it but we think it's too much". Parliament should not let that pass without some comment because it cuts straight across everything that we have known in the social security system…”

However my most cherished observation was of three peers, three women, three wheelchair users. They were seated side by side in the cross benches and illustrated better than anyone else how the Lords has changed in recent years.

Seated from left to right, Baroness Wilkins (Lab), Baroness Grey-Thompson, and cross bencher and finally Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (cross bench).

Baroness Campbell said:

“I should declare an interest as a DLA recipient. During the past 30 years, DLA, which in the olden days was called attendance allowance and mobility allowance, has enabled me to pass many milestones. Without it I would not have attended university. I used it to pay the cleaner to get me up in the morning and to put me to bed at night. That was the only allowance I had. I used it to get a job and to stop living with my parents-in short, to live independently. Along with millions of other disabled people, I will be affected by this Bill. The allowance was given to me for life and I am about to have my assessments again-I already have 25 other assessments. That is something to look forward to.”

Clearly tiring, her speech was taken over by Paralympics champion, Baroness Grey-Thompson (cross bench) who continued

"My life is like a house of straws. Once you remove one tiny straw, the house collapses. It's taken me years to feel independent and in control, to feel like an able-bodied person, to be human. If I lose out from the changes, I will stand to lose everything. Where's the sense in that?"

Finally from my trio of experts, Baroness Wilkins (Lab) said

“Disability living allowance is a complex benefit because disability is hugely complex and any reform needs to be done with great awareness of that complexity if it is not to leave disabled people more deprived and impoverished, denying millions the hope of living the independent lives that we have come to expect.
That awareness is sadly lacking from this Bill, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, just now. As all noble Lords' post bags and mail boxes have shown, disabled people live in great fear of it being enacted.

I only hope that I wasn’t the only person listening.

“…. we are interested in how to capitalize on the skill and will of communities to assist those who live amongst them ….”

Just back from holiday on Iain MacAulay’s turf in Barra. I had met a social worker and carer from Barra in Glasgow on World Social Work Day and decided then to visit this most southerly Hebridean Island.

The Western Isles were of course beautiful as ever; they always give me a new perspective on life and work but this time the contrast with daily life was heightened. As we sailed across the Minch, the 42” plasma TV in the lounge was fixed on Sky News serving up seven hours of live footage from English cities depicting young people walking away with similar 42” plasma TVs from scenes of dread and destruction.

Whatever your take on these events, I am sure that you will agree that they were remarkable in terms of scale, significance and risk. Thankfully they did not spread to Scotland, and while we must never be complacent about these matters, Scotland has been at the centre of much recent interest in this regard. Prime Minister, David Cameron has said that he wants to build on the success of programmes to tackle gang culture like the task force used by Strathclyde Police.

In 2008, a Centre for Social Justice report found the city was home to more than 170 gangs, more than the number estimated to be operating in London at that time. The past few years has seen concentrated efforts and financial investment by both the Scottish Government and Strathclyde Police to tackle the problem. The force set up a dedicated Gangs Task Force in March 2008, to serve as a specialist unit to identify, find and arrest gang members involved in crime. Meanwhile the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence was established in December 2008 to tackle collective violence in the East End. The government estimated there were 55 gangs operating in the East End alone, involving 700 young men aged from as young as 12 up to 23 years old. The CIRV, based on the success of the Boston Ceasefire project, aims to break the cycle of deprivation which led young men to join gangs by providing them with other options.

Closer to home, ADSW has led a relevant area of work in the area of young people at risk -  ‘Plusone Mentoring’- sponsored by local authorities, the Violence Reduction Unit (police), the Scottish Government and delivered by YMCA Scotland. In recent years we have moved steadily away from a reactive approach - treating problems - to one of identifying early risk in order to support an individual’s healthy development and potential.

Evidence from practice elsewhere (Farrington 1996; Whyte 2004) shows that a diversion from future persistent offending is possible by addressing the several areas where mentoring can have a positive effect, including social skills, self-esteem and independence, emotional resilience, engagement with institutions, school attendance and performance, or arrangements in family and community. The Plusone mentoring programme was developed to target young people most likely to move further into the youth justice system and to do this at a stage of their development when change in behaviour and attitudes might be most easily achieved.

The approach has achieved outstanding results with significant change in behaviour at the six month stage.

·    “improvement was particularly strong in risk factors associated with  behaviour (86% showed improvement);

·    the young people’s attitudes to offending and other anti-social behaviors (86%);

·    the level of risk for the young people presented by their neighbourhood (64%);

·    with developing young people’s skills and positive relationships (64%).”

The evaluations demonstrate that the Plusone mentoring programme combines significant efficiency savings and effective diversion from crime with the re-engagement of the young people in positive development and activity.

Pilot work in the Scottish Borders by YMCA Scotland since 2005 has been testing the optimum age of engagement and change for a vulnerable young person. Intervention should take place only where necessary and only last for as long as it remains necessary for the young person’s healthy development. The learning from the Borders and from a Danish-based approach to youth crime piloted in East Renfrewshire shaped this early intervention approach. It is unusual in its targeting of a wider age group -8-14 years -receiving its participants through the local authority multi-agency referral groups.

“Between them the referred young people had committed at least 104 offences, and the majority had been referred for behaviour problems at home, at school or in the community; for some, their offending appeared to be well established.

‘Plusone was found to have generated social value of over £1.05million for an investment of just under £108,000.”

“The social return from Plusone’s activities for each £1 of investment ranges between £6 and £13, with the most likely return being just under £10.”

Wendy Harrington led our work on this and she summed it up:

“ADSW’s interest in this work is wider than developing a successful youth justice approach, although that, in itself, is no small achievement. However, we are also interested in how to capitalize on the skill and will of communities to assist those who live amongst them and who need their support. We are interested in what kind of working relationships we need to create across the sectors so that we produce a better outcome for individuals and communities. Quite simply, right across the agencies, we need to trust each other as professionals and share our expertise, join up our processes and accept our individual limitations. ADSW is currently ‘unpicking’ the elements of this successful work and considering their application across different service groups, including with older people. Its very exciting…”

So there you have it, as I am always saying, Scotland has so much to commend to the UK and last week it seems people were starting to listen. I hope we can continue to share our ideas and as I mentioned in my July blog, I have blagged my way into two UK events this autumn. The Guardian Public Service Summit to be held in Edinburgh on 22^nd September and before that the Inside Government event Adult Social Care Forum:  Delivering Quality Standards of Care where I shall speak alongside ADASS President Peter Hay in London on 13^th. I will report these events in a future posting.

'Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans' - John Lennon

The tragic events unfolding in Oslo this weekend remind me of the great responsibilities that can fall to Directors of Social Work when we least expect them to.

I can picture some of the terrible activities that some of our colleagues will be doing. Opening up at the weekend, checking registers, sitting with bereaved and a larger number of worried, potentially bereaved, desperate to know if their son or daughter has been found. Helping with the management of the army of families, spectators the worlds press. Providing support for identification of fatalities, counselling of bereaved and practical rest centre management will all be underway as I write.

These terrible duties came my way twice when working for Nottinghamshire in 1989, in a period of four months. First there was the British Midland flight 92 which crashed on the M1 motorway in what became known as the Kegworth Disaster in which 47 died and 74 were injured. It was a Sunday evening and my colleague, David Whitham who ran social work at the Queens Medical Centre, saw the news on TV and drove to work just to see if there was anything he could do to help. He ended up not going home for six days and nights and being engaged with our support, for some three months.  Just as that was standing down, Nottingham Forest met Liverpool FC at Hillsborough in Sheffield on April 15th. I was Area Director for the Forest ground and we noticed in the following days that huge crowds of people were gathering in shock and distress. Apparently many of them had been booing and jeering the dying at the other end of the ground, believing that they were rioting and holding up the start of the match. Realising that this was not the case and then discovering the true horror of 96 dead was too much for many to bear. They came to their home ground, laid tributes and wandered around dazed and bewildered.

I went down to the stadium and talked to Brian Clough about it. He agreed to make some Executive boxes available to us and to open up the ground to us so we could offer a service to these 'dazed and confused' football fans. It proved to be a good arrangement as these largely male, largely unfussy people were able to get a coffee and a biscuit, then sit looking straight ahead at the football pitch and - using it as an analogue for Hillsborough could say "I was seated there, the Reds were over here, we saw them coming down....." and so on. The didn't need to offer eye contact and gradually they could talk their story out to a stranger they were not likely to see again and go home a bit brighter (and safer). For most the service was complete in a couple of weeks but for others the need was much greater and for a small few a clinical need was discovered.
Clough was not an easy man, and unlike Kenny Dalgleish he didn't want to acknowledge what he saw as 'mamby pamby fussin'. But he let us do it and was good enough to acknowledge that it had been important.

That was an incredible period when in 1988 Aberdeen had the Piper Alpha Disaster, later that same year in Dumfries and Galloway the Lockerbie Air Disaster and then in 1996 the Dunblane massacre which occurred within the last month of Central Regional Council's existence. These and other events raised the profile and importance of the welfare dimensions to emergency response and a wider acknowledgement of the damage that can be done by post traumatic stress if supposedly hard men are left to stifle their emotions.

I am sure we are all thinking of Oslo this weekend and I shall write on our behalf to Kari Skive Stuvoy, my Norwegian equivalent this week to share our solidarity and our condolences.

Andrew

"Excuse me Sir, can I have a word?"

When wandering around Glastonbury Festival in thick mud and driving rain last week, I was accosted by a BBC journalist."Excuse me Sir, can I have a word?" Saga, it transpired,  had issued a press release claiming that of 150,000 tickets sold for the festival, 15,000 had gone to over 50s. He had the nerve to ask if I was one of them and whether I would go on Radio Somerset to speak about my experience. Being me I accepted. It got me thinking about how we urgently need to promote a different view of an ageing population as a time of opportunity and older people (yes, like me) as a valuable resource. We need to shift the discourse away from 'demographic time bomb' and 'perfect storm' to a richer, fuller understanding of the largely untapped resource that the ageing baby boomers can offer Scotland as they begin to step down from full time paid employment in increasing numbers.

In Scottish Borders we held an event last week - ‘Made to Measure: Local Needs and Local Services’- using a new place-based model, based upon the Integrated Resource Framework (IRF) from Scotland and the English experience of Total Place. Services are being redesigned across the Borders, area by area, starting first in the Cheviot locality which includes Kelso, Jedburgh and surrounding areas. At this event it was striking to note the demographic of the participant attendance - the average age of those prepared to get involved - yes it was an even higher proportion than at Glastonbury.

July is going to be a very important month for ADSW. On the 14th we hold our first Executive at our new base - Verity House in Edinburgh (the new COSLA office). This will allow any members (up to 3) who need to teleconference to do so - just let Sophie know. The agenda will be out at the end of this week and will contain the Petch Report on the evidence base for effective integration in adult social care. The draft report is rich with examples and evidence - the good and the bad - and should offer you some useful arguments to take forward locally.

What follows is even more important- a report on proposals for our pitch to government on the future of adult social care. We want your careful consideration and support. The ideas within this paper have been crafted by a group led by our Vice President, Peter Macleod and offer, in my judgement, the best opportunity we have to influence government on this issue before ideas congeal into a legislative or policy programme in the autumn.

If the Executive approve the approach it will be road tested immediately when, on 15th July, I attend the Health and Social Care Integration Meeting which has been convened by Scottish Government as a congress of all leading interests to make progress on the issue. We are well placed to exert influence; we have made effective alliances with key partner agencies and I now look for your support.

Finally, I met David Brindle in Cardiff recently when representing you at the ADSS Cymru conference (good event) and berated him for planning a Guardian Public Services Summit in Scotland without seeking our involvement (who does he imagine reads The Guardian in Scotland). The agenda will examine and explore the implications for public services of a period of economic turbulence and severe spending constraint. Some of the many questions to be debated include: how can we foster innovation to reform services; is joint delivery a viable option for Scotland; can social enterprise really be a scale solution?

David was generous when challenged and I will be speaking at the event.

Andrew

What is to be done?

the 'big speech'

Slowly emerging from a weekend of sleepy lethargy following all the excitement of the last week. I hope you enjoyed Conference this year, I was pleased to see so many colleagues there and to see such good attendance at plenary sessions. I hope this means you found it as interesting as I did. I had the conference filmed and I think it would be worth cutting a few 3 minute 'You Tube' type movies to spread the news of some of the good bits - let me know what you think and I will put them on the website (or Sophie will to be fair). All the presentations from the 3 days are now avilable on the ADSW website.

In case the news hasn't reached you yet, Peter Macleod was duly elected as our new VP at the AGM and within 24 hours he gave a barnstorming speech on the ADSW Manifesto and 'what is to be done'. Peter is leading for us on the work to evidence arguments for an outcomes approach to change and he will have been as pleased as I was to hear Professor Alison Petch of IRISS giving a talk on the evidence so far. It was most impressive, especially so as her work has not been under way for more than a month. The session with Sarah Gillinson seems to have fired the imagination with her talk on Radical Efficiency. A diverse series of international examples were given from Sweden and USA to rural India and Rwanda of engaging community enterprise to delivery effective outcomes for communities. Pat Kane challenged us to answer why we have no 'public intellectuals' in the mould of Robert Winston - someone who springs from a given profession, is identified with it, but can occupy a broader public space and enter wider debates. I'm not sure that he's entirely right but there are not too many and this does have a relationship with how we are perceived. (Pat tweeted on Thursday 'Great 2 meet the social workers at ADSW Conf. Crieff.') This brings me to the session with Jon Snow; I don't know about you but he fired me up with renewed interest in new media. We have had a Facebook page for some time - Social Work Changes Lives - and Harriet has been a good contributor but we need to reconsider how we use it. Furthermore, we don't 'tweet' and yet Scottish Govt, COSLA, Holyrood and most leaders in Scotland are getting involved - even Pat Watters is now commenting in this way. I propose that we make this good and encourage our council employers to open up to this technology. Speaking of Jon, he has written to say how much he enjoyed our conference. I have tweeted the Substance Abuse research to Jon at the request of the Standing Committee and he has promised to read it and pass it on to the New Horizons Day Centre in Camden where he has been involved for nearly 40 years.

I received an email from Yvonne Robson bearing good tidings regarding the new Minister for Social Work - apparently she is a social worker - Angela Constance MSP . Angela’s Wikipedia entry says Angela Constance (born July 15, 1970) is a Scottish National Party politician andMember of the Scottish Parliament for Almond Valley (formerly Livingston) since 2007. She was born in Blackburn, West Lothian, and raised in Addiewell and West Calder. While studying at the University of Glasgow she was elected President of Glasgow University Students' Representative Council. Before her election to Holyrood, Constance worked as a social worker and was a councillor for West Lothian Council where she was the SNP spokesperson for children services and lifelong learning. She also stood for the SNP in the Livingston by-election, 2005. This is very encouraging for us and I will be looking for an early meeting. Another interesting change given the lead commissioning proposals lastFebruary, is that Shona Robison is to move from Public Health to Commonwealth Games and Sport. Her place is to be taken by Michael Matheson MSP for Falkirk West. Michael is a registered OT and we have the curious prospect of working with a social worker and an OT as our key contacts! Adam Ingram was a constant supporter of social work and in particular, Changing Lives and I wish him well, but these changes offer encouragement.

Finally, I was particularly pleased to meet three day delegates at Crieff. Bob Grieg, Roberta Christie and Aileen Hutchison. They had travelled from Leven, Fife on Wednesday to support me on the day of my big speech. We first met at Leven ATC in May 1974 when I started work for Fife SWD as a day centre instructor and I have never forgotten the lessons in life that they and their friends taught me.

Bob Grieg, Roberta Christie, Andrew Lowe and Aileen Hutchison