Yet - if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of thousands of social workers up and down the country, I really shudder to think what sort of society we'd be living in.

True. And I have a nasty feeling that it might not be too long before we'll increasingly be living in that sort of society, because there won't be too many people queuing up to train and work as social workers. In some places we are already living increasingly in that kind of society.

We've got a vicious circle in which inadequate staffing means increased risk of mistakes, leading to increasingly complicated procedures when things go wrong, making the staff shortages even worse, meaning increased risk of mistakes, increasingly complex procedures, loss of staff, difficulty in recruiting...

There are ways of doing social work which actually do help people deal with difficult circumstances, and which make it much less likely for vulnerable people - children, old people, disabled people - to be hurt or worse. But increasingly those ways of working have been marginalised and abandoned, and systems based on form-filling and buck-passing have been imposed by managements which may have no real understanding of what they are dealing with.

It's worth noting that Sharon Shoesmith, the director of children's services who has been sacked following this case, was not a social worker, but had a background in teaching and in school inspection.