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It is a sign of the times that it took two secretaries of state rather than the usual one to cover the social care brief at the National Social Services Conference last week. As health secretary, John Reid now speaks only for adult social care, having ceded children and families policy to his education counterpart, Charles Clarke. Clarke was at his emollient best, Reid at his anodyne worst, but their respective speeches had the desired, if unambitious, effect. Nobody had reason to feel that the prospects for social care were any bleaker on leaving Brighton than when they arrived.


Clarke was at pains to reassure his audience that children's trusts would not result in the obliteration of social care by education priorities. But outside the conference hall optimism about the children's green paper was harder to find. While Clarke was doing his best to cheer everyone up, his children's minister, Margaret Hodge, seemed intent on doing the opposite. In one newspaper interview, given on the eve of the conference, she appeared to make up policy on the hoof by saying that failing children's trusts would be taken away from local authorities and given to the voluntary or private sector. This is in spite of the fact that few in the voluntary and private sectors are likely to be interested in the job, or, in the case of child protection, qualified to take over accountability.

Hodge also failed to reassure in her comments on one of the most insistent criticisms of the green paper, namely its apparent determination to rush ahead with new initiatives before they have been tested. Her impatience with evaluating new concepts like children's trusts and identification, referral and tracking (IRT) is worrying, especially when coupled with her harsh remedies for failure. Cracks have already begun to appear in IRT, one of the 10 pilot schemes having failed to negotiate the legal and professional pitfalls of sharing information. Children's trust pilots, meanwhile, are only now being set up. It is essential that the government keeps a more open mind on both of these initiatives, as well as on other points raised during the green paper consultation, than Hodge seems willing to do.

Clarke told the conference that it was important to avoid prescriptive approaches to reform, agreeing the principles and then talking maturely about how to put them into effect. It is to be hoped that it is this spirit of discussion that prevails in the coming months.


Meanwhile, health secretary John Reid came over as a nice enough chap in his first speech to the conference. He didn't display a great grasp of policy, but then he was appointed for his political skills, to be brought to bear for foundation hospitals. His anecdotes were certainly more engaging than Alan Milburn's naming and shaming bravado of two years ago, and last year's "look I'm being cuddly" effort.

But for all Reid's warm words - the favourite one being "values" which he used a mind-bending 34 times - it's hard to get excited about his announcement of a national director for social care.

The social care "tsar" will be on a par with a host of other roles such as the director of primary care, implying social care is one strand of care services rather than a fully fledged profession like medicine or nursing. Social care professionals need reassuring that this is really a powerful voice for social care, not a tsar tasked with eliminating delayed discharges.

We must wait for the details but the initial feeling is that it just doesn't have enough clout. Certainly not enough to allay fears that social care no longer has a voice at the top table. Let's hope that the rumours are true, and the soon to be announced director of children's services at the Department for Education and Skills - which really is a position of power and influence - goes to someone from the social care field who will fight our corner.