Every so often, a woman heaves into view with such elan, one can merely gasp in admiration even if, as is the case with Dame Margaret Anstee, that admiration is posthumous.
Anstee, the former UN and Foreign Office diplomat, died at the end of August aged 90. To call her a pioneer for senior female public servants would be like calling the poet Stevie Smith a secretary who lived in north London. Both women had breathtaking vistas of imagination. Anstee was also a model of social mobility, rising from childhood poverty to become one of Britain’s first woman diplomats and the first female under-secretary-general of the United Nations.
But the line I liked best in Anstee’s obituary was not about her work; it was that in retirement “she divided her time between her beloved Bolivia, where she built herself a house on the shore of Lake Titicaca, and her mother’s home county, Herefordshire”.
As Edward Mortimer writes of Anstee, she rebuffed attempts, of which there were many, to confine her to roles considered appropriate or “safe” for a woman, and proved again and again that a woman can succeed without sacrificing her principles or her sense of humour. “She knew she had far more to offer than that, and no glass ceiling could long hold her down.”
And talking of not being held down, there was a welcome reminder recently from another Margaret, Margaret Hodge MP, who became chair of the influential Commons public accounts committee at the age of 65, that life, particularly working life for women, is a marathon, not a sprint.
Young people deserve better commissioning than this
In his excellent analysis of the collapse of children’s charity 4Children, my colleague David Brindle writes that one lesson for chief executives is knowing when the “game is up” and the business is no longer viable.
It’s a tough call for any organisation to make, particularly one whose entire ethos is serving children. But the fate of 4Children, which expanded over a decade from a turnover of £5m to £30m, on the back of contracts, also highlights the need for local government to take a long, hard look at its commissioning strategies.
Councils have been caught in the trap of lower-price, “best value” commissioning for decades now, but it’s time to think about whether using a business model hoicked over from the business world, with short-term, low-price contracts now the norm, is really the best way to provide services to vulnerable young people.
This is not new. A year on from the collapse of Kids Company, it’s clear that local councils have a vital role in identifying need, supporting young people at risk and coordinating provision. As Jim Minton, director of membership and comms at London Youth has noted, those are all things Lambeth and Southwark delivered when Kids Company went bust.
It’s tough for councils. But there have been too many examples like West Berkshire council, which slashed all funding for children’s services provided by local disability charity Mencap and then branded the charity “utterly despicable” for cutting services rather than using up its reserves. Maybe this is a good moment for council leaders such as Gordon Lundie, at West Berkshire, to pause and and start thinking about what kind of partnership will best support local young people, not just in the long term, but here and now. Hint: it’s not pissing off the organisations who deliver those services.
Handy guide to domestic policy
If you’re wondering whether there’ll be any game in town for the civil servant on top of Brexit, then look no further than the Institute for Government’s handy guide to what’s on the agenda for Theresa May and her government his autumn – in addition to working out a Brexit plan.
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