Thursday, 5 July 2007

For the fourth time this week, Bobby came into work with me. I dropped him at the office and hurried off to the local Ramada Jarvis hotel for a Children’s Trust Partnership stakeholders event. I was only able to be there for the morning, but several things impressed me strongly.

From the presentations, the Watford Children’s Trust Partnership seems to be a model of inclusion, with a progressive outlook and a clear focus for its work. By contrast, the Three Rivers partnership seems to be struggling to get to grips with the agenda.

Watford Children’s Trust Partnership is headed up by Phil Willerton of YMCA (one of my trustees). I was generally impressed with the engagement of the voluntary sector, and particularly impressed to count four of my trustees amongst the participants.

The final strong impression is of a group of professionals almost unanimous in their belief that targets, assessments and league tables are destroying our education system.

Sadly, I did not find an answer to my one key question: how can WCVS meaningfully support the work of the eight Watford Children's Centres?

I left the event at lunchtime to collect Bobby and drive to Brighton to help him move out of his “digs”. Stopping for a break, the journey took less than two hours. We packed and sorted his stuff, and then left Brighton at 5:00 for the return journey. We arrived back at Watford at 9:00 pm and got home exhausted shortly after 10:00 pm.