Monday 21 October 2013

“Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.” [T. Dewar]

I was pleased to read in Children and Young People Now that Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson, has announced an innovation programme for children’s services.

He is reported as saying that he wants people to come forward with ‘adventurous’ ideas and that he wants to 'confront head-on' the barriers to innovation in the sector.

“It is a call to frontline staff and experts in the field to develop better ways of constructing and managing services,” he said. He offered those who were experiencing difficulty in getting an idea off the ground help in taking it forward.

I think this is a really promising initiative. I hope that it will be responded to widely. After years of stultifying top-down poorly thought-out change, the sector is crying out from some bottom-up, innovative thought, built on experience of actually delivering services.

“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got,” said Albert Einstein. 

My advice to those who respond is that the best ideas will be modest proposals, capable of being trialed or tested and based on experience of successful implementation elsewhere. 

Let's see what happens.