As I hand over the ADCS Presidency to Alan Wood, Director of Children’s Services for Hackney, I thought I would reflect on the challenges that are in the system at the moment.

This week we saw the NSPCC declare that the child protection system was at a crisis point and had essentially become an emergency service, and Action for Children reported that only a small proportion of children suffering neglect were picked up by the ‘formal’ safeguarding system.

Whilst I don’t disagree with the fact that services are facing some of their most pressing challenges ever, I do disagree with the premise that children’s services only help those at crisis point.