The Future of Looked After Children's Services

Polly Toynbee wrote in the national Guardian on Tuesday that the some in the Government were looking at reducing the provider role of local authorities for looked after children services and focussing on its commisioning role.

I agree with her and believe such a debate is throughly premature in an area that is still developing. Surely we need the full roll-out of children's services to occur by 2010, before we can even start to review its strengths and weaknesses.

I worry that positive new policies announced this week that will enable looked after children to be supported up to age of 21, will be damaged if we are also having to change the only recently set-up structures.