 I want to start really by telling you a story. I have tried to persuade Paul to mind this story as I tell it. But he has refused which I think we're all sad about, Paul... So it's a modern-day fable. So if you are sitting comfortably... Once upon a time there was an orchid... With trees with wide branches... It gave shade to everyone and it supplied the farmer with apples. Sometimes it didn't do everything that was asked of it well and sometimes it seemed to make it so mind of about what it was going to do. But the farmer coped. The farmer died and his son took over, the son was firmer, tougher. Said we don't need all these trees, they're too shady, they're too unpredictable. So the farmer burnt the trees on a big bonfire. Then he quickly planted some high producing trees. Trees were little shade but met the need for apples and he knew that the local villages who needed the shade might get cross so put up some umbrellas. After a couple of years the umbrellas broke in the wind and the trees couldn't actually guarantee the number of apples that were needed so very cross. The farmer took down the umbrellas and told the trees he was going to cut them down by the end of summer. Now no one knew where to get their shade or their apples but the farmer was fed up with the trees and apples causing him problems so he decided the answer was A to redefine the need for shade and say it didn't any longer belong to the orchard and to pass a law about the need for the number of apples. And today the farmer now makes all the decisions about the type of shade and the number of apples allowed. The villagers who rebelled have moved to another land. The orchard's bear and barren and waits for fertile days to return. So why this fable? Well those of you in the UK may recognise in this our sorry tale of professional regulation in social work. We have had three different professional bodies established or terminated in three years and the medicine is killing the patient. We've seen the demise of a social work that profession vision for our profession and the narrowing but intensifying of a blame driven regulation structure. Why social work shouldn't questionably have high standards of practice and service provision meeting these aspirations has proved to be a wicked problem and as the farmer found with the villagers we're in the danger of the profession leaching out the good people who originally set out to work with others and make a difference. So we need to think relationally and restoratively about the issues facing us in terms of regulation and professional identity and I want to suggest today that the critical themes for regulating social workers are actually ones where we share common ground with those who need or use our services and I think it's by dwelling on these common concerns and working collaboratively with families that we might arrive at a different path and I think there's general learning today from that. Indeed we might create our own thriving orchard and may get pulled to mine a thriving orchard towards the end of this talk. So what are these common themes? The first one is the poverty of resources. Our rate of intervening formally in family lives directly maps across to rates of poverty and deprivation. The families we work with simply don't have enough resources to lead dignified lives. Likewise our practitioners face unparalleled cuts. The working officers detach from the communities they serve and they've become highly skilled in saying no. The experience of inequality must bind us currently at fragmentuses. Secondly culpability has become a critical factor. Did you mean to hurt your child? Did you know you failed to keep your records up to date? Did you knowingly have your violent partner back? Did you tell your manager about the home visit that went awry? Spending time determining blameworthiness does not take us towards a just and humane culture. Allowing for mistakes, the opportunity to learn and put right wrongs will support safer learning cultures but social work has a great distance to travel to arrive at that. Thirdly shame is a primary human emotion. It generates multiple consequences which we haven't got time to go into today. But the shame of being found inadequate as a service by your professional inspectorate results in an exodus of staff. The shame of having your parenting investigated and found wanting results in putting up barriers to help and change. In some areas in the UK over 25% possibly 30 to 35% of families will experience a child protection investigation before the child is five. In the UK some local authorities have had three improvement notices issued by central government and four inspections in five years. Now why would this cycle of investigatory activity for families or professionals produce the collaborative work that's necessary if we're going to achieve high quality services? And my final area of common ground draws on the work that suggests we're engaged in a process of removing a sense of common cause and the desire to reaffirm our own status and identity. We've created a welfare culture that uses stigma and in so doing justifies the economic and social policies that are demeaning and controlling. The UK government has described social work as immature as unready for the responsibility of driving its own professional standards and results in regulation. The families we work with are described by the same politicians as creating lives for children that are scummy without moral guidance. The professions and the families are both found wanting and families and professionals are demeaned and othered in these discourses. So, we need a different way. If we form meaningful alliances across the service use of professional divide to address our common causes we can think carefully about why regulation is needed, what form it might take and how humane just cultures can be supported. We can collectively work out for ourselves what shade and apples we need. We can nourish the land, grow the trees that are appropriate and if we manage this collaborative process I truly believe that we will find as a result a capacity not only to be proud of ourselves but also to offer hope to others. Thank you.