little room for manouevre

Another of the house works. 

Under what had been our small family room - but which will now form half of the new kitchen - it was rumoured that there was a crawl space.  I was not so sure and the lifting of the floorboard confirmed it!

i had called in to the house after a meeting locally with some young people - some of them care experienced - from Jersey.  

They and other colleagues are on a visit to Scotland to better understand our approach to children and young people and whether they can learn any lessons from what we have here.

Some years ago Guernsey visited Scotland and, after comparing may other systems across the world, elected to adapt our approach of the children's hearings system to fit their circumstances.  Over the years I made a couple of trips there to speak with their teams,  But volunteer colleagues made many more to help prepare their training, operational and guidance programmes.

It was a good discussion with too many people crammed into too small a room and, as often happens, we overran time.  It was very helpful to have some panels members from Edinburgh and South East Scotland speaking about their experiences and how and why they became panel members.

Back to the office after lunch and all my good intentions of writing some papers went out the window as a series of urgent issues required attention.  The weekend bag is therefore more bulging than ever!