ABSTRACT
We started out, five years ago, wanting to transform children’s services. But ‘transform’ carries with it ideas of transcendence and magical powers, images of the alchemist and Cinderella, the search for and revelation of the one and only, the true way, the essence of the matter. There is, too, an implied dualism, as we move from the bad old days to the good new times through the benign sorcery of modernisation and managerialism. Five years on, our discussion has become both more cautious and more ambitious.
