I was invited to visit the Huntingdon Youth Center. I had a look around the excellent facilities most of which has been decorated and arranged by the young people. I heard what I think was music coming out of one of the two sound studio’s ( no offence this is generational thing).

I also met with a number of locality team members. During the discussion the locality manager did her best to stick to the timings and agenda but failed on all counts. What we had was a really good debate around many subjects, some of which were actually on the agenda. I over stayed my time and could easily have stayed another couple of hours. Apologies for mucking up the plans.

Again, dedicated, focussed staff entirely devoted to children and their families. One area that I couldn’t understand was the separation between the locality team work and the social care team that I had met in the morning. Combining the two around a locality seems the way forward but I must pause and think that through with colleagues before saying much more.

Having 6 children of my own, all now in their 20’s I recognised what a difficult area this is. The trouble is if parents and children can’t make it work it seems to fall to the authority to sort things. All work we can do on early interventions make a lot of sense and I was pleased to hear about a number of projects that are pushing this.