Improving children's services has been high on both the local and central government agenda recently, from the announcement of the Children and Social Work Bill, to the Ofsted Social Care Annual Report, to the publication of Putting Children First, the Department for Education's vision for children's social care.

Of the local authorities that had been inspected by Ofsted by the end of March this year, a quarter were judged to be ‘inadequate' in their provision of children's services.