This week, Sarah and Louise are joined by John Pearce OBE for a wide-ranging and deeply reflective conversation about the state of children’s social care and where it may be heading next.

John brings decades of experience at the forefront of children’s services leadership, including his time as Director of Children’s Services in Durham, and is widely known for his clear-sighted, often challenging analysis of system design, practice realities and reform.

Together, they explore a central tension running through children’s services today: a system built for a different era, now stretched by the realities of modern childhood. The conversation moves beyond surface-level reform to ask whether we are repeatedly redesigning the same structures rather than confronting the deeper questions about demand, sufficiency and purpose.

They discuss whether fostering, in its current form, has a natural ceiling; what recent reforms like Regional Care Co-operatives reveal about how policy translates into practice; and why systems so often behave differently in reality than they do on paper.

The episode also looks forward, exploring whether new models of family-based care may be needed to meet the needs of today’s children and young people, and what a more honest conversation about markets, providers and leadership might look like.

A thoughtful, challenging and at times uncomfortable conversation about what it will really take to build a system that works for children today.

If you'd like to chat about this episode or any of our past episodes, feel free to reach out to us at info@fosterwiki.com. We’d love to hear from you!

All views shared in this podcast reflect the personal opinions of the hosts alone. They are not intended as factual assertions about any person or organisation, nor do they represent the views of any employer or professional body.