The Munro Review has been published here. I have yet to read it, but understand it proposes the removal of “red tape” to enable social workers to focus on the needs of children and on outcomes rather than process. Pointless regulation ought to be chopped, but it’s as well to think about why the regulation was introduced in the first place – in the case of local authority social work teams much of it arose from previous reviews in order to tackle other problems. On the basis of mainstream press coverage today I’m a little twitchy – for example about the idea that social workers won’t have to complete assessments within a set timescale, for fear that this may convert into social workers not having to complete them within any timescale. But I’m not going to be critical of the proposals until I have actually read them. Reading press summaries of lengthy and detailed reports is no substitute for the real thing. My reading pile is getting precariously high.