A few weeks ago, I sat with a group of social workers in a cramped council office. They spoke about the people they had supported that week: a man with dementia whose wife was exhausted beyond words: a young disabled woman whose independence depended on a single morning care visit that kept being cancelled and a family in crisis after months of trying to get help that never came.
For those working in local government, none of this is surprising. They live it every day.
