When I joined Sunderland in 2018, I had a list of priorities to address. They included everything you would expect in terms of economic regeneration, shaping our future workforce and improving service delivery alongside ensuring we were doing everything we could to protect and support the most vulnerable in our city.

Fundamental to this was supporting Together for Children, the alternative delivery model for children’s services in Sunderland, to secure a significant improvement in the quality of the service. That was not going to be easy, given initial Ofsted visits in 2019 indicated continued concerns about the pace and scale of change.