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Yvonne Roberts says that standards and targets are preventing social care staff from helping clients.

A Question of Trust is the subject of the 2002 Reith lectures, the first of which will be broadcast on BBC's Radio Four on 3 April. Over five lectures, Dr Onora O'Neill, principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, will examine whether we are seeing a crisis of trust in our professionals - politicians, scientists, doctors and social workers - or the creation of a culture of suspicion. In the first lecture, recorded earlier this month, she argued that whether distrust is real or perceived, it is having a debilitating impact on society and democracy.

Dr O'Neill went on to ask whether informed trust can be restored by making people and institutions more accountable. Or do complex systems of accountability and control only do more damage? Do they create a potentially crippling culture of blame and compensation, the end result of which is a greater level of deceit delivered in the name of transparency? (A situation similar to the description of the regime which has emerged from the Victoria Climbie Inquiry.)

How Dr O'Neill expands her arguments over the weeks remains to be seen but the territory she is exploring has a resonance in social care in particular. Last week, for instance, in The Guardian, the newspaper revisited more than 150 public sector employees whom it first interviewed a year ago. What marks out many of those on the social care front line who gave their opinions is their concern with the increasing demands attached to being seen to be accountable.

Part of the problem, of course, is that improved efficiency has also become entangled in the drive for economies. So, many of those endeavouring to satisfy the panoply of inspections, audits and Best Value targets begin to feel more as if they are lost in a management maze instead of extending help to those who are most vulnerable.

Julia Neuberger, director of the health think tank, the King's Fund, argues that: "Fear of failure against performance targets constrains innovation, encouraging a production line approach to delivery".

Genuine accountability will continue to be unattainable as long as many professions are allowed to regulate themselves. The so-called compensation culture is important because the penalty of paying a high price can often expedite change which would otherwise take decades. At the same time, we need to look again at how we deliver good management without making many professionals feels so constrained that one of the most important tools in social work - trust in their own judgement - is dangerously undermined.

- A Question of Trust, 8pm, 3 April, Radio 4