Will the MacAlister review improve the lives of children in care?

‘Children and families receiving social care and the staff working in the sector are seen as an inconvenient nuisance,’ says Peter Riddle. Photograph: Jack Sullivan/Alamy

I had first-hand experience of the residential care system for children in the 1960s and worked with children in care in a number of settings until I retired in 2007, witnessing changes including the privatisation started in the Thatcher era. Initially, good childcare workers set up homes to provide needs-led services without local authority bureaucracy. As venture capitalists saw profits to be made and assets to be stripped, they moved in by buying many small providers and establishing new homes in areas with cheap labour and property.

There have been previous promises from government like those coming in the wake of Josh MacAlister’s report (Children to be housed closer to family in overhaul of England’s social care system, 2 February). If driven from the centre, they will meet the fate of previous initiatives.