A busy day for the Association...

Wednesday was a big day for me.

As well as my presidential reception in London we also had meetings of the ADCS Council of Reference and our Board of Directors, all on the same day!

Our Council meeting was first up, it was a lively one and we had a really good working session to review the recent, and current, work of the Association.

At our last meeting in February, which doubled as our annual policy planning seminar, we talked about how to marshal our resources to ensure we were best placed to influence all political parties as they formulated their election agendas. We also considered our approach in terms of advising and influencing the new government post-election and agreed our key priorities as we move forward.

Since then we have published three policy position papers on education, early years, leadership as well as a tri-partite one on inspection with SOLACE and the Local Government Association. Alan Wood, our immediate past president, has done a great job promoting these really important papers and influencing current agendas.

Some of the big areas we are continuing to work on are: a range of child workforce issues; child sexual exploitation and missing children; and redefining the social contract between citizens and the state.

We also plan to bring together work being done on leadership for local safeguarding children arrangements at our next Council meeting in June, so that we are ready to contribute strongly to this important debate.

This is just a snap shot of some of the work taking place, there is so much going on that I couldn’t do it all justice here in a single blogpost. If you want to know more, take a look at our Policy Committee updates for a great overview of the depth and breadth of the work we’re involved in.

After the Council meeting it was time for my Presidential reception, where Alan formally handed over the presidency to me. I made a speech and was really grateful for all the support I received. It was great to see so many friendly faces and quite overwhelming to experience the palpable sense of shared purpose in the room for the things we are trying to achieve together for children.

A Board meeting in the afternoon completed the business of the day. This included agreeing some increased capacity in the ADCS support team to help us to connect the work in our regions together more strongly with each other and with the work happening nationally in policy committees. We also shaped the content of our July conference which I think will be really good…watch this space!

All in all a good days work for the Association.

I rounded off the day with a trip to the pub with family and friends and a very nice pint of beer in the evening sunshine. A pleasant end to a lovely day.

---