Children and Families committee

Children and Families Committee earlier this morning - agenda here.

I thought there was nothing desperately seismic up for discussion - until we got to item 8 on 'youngedinburgh' ... the full report is here.

Have a look at paragraph 6.1 in the recommendations, were it indicates that the 'Organisational Review' of the Department (of which 'youngedinburgh' will be a constituent part obviously) is to come back in a separate report in February 2008.

There was to be a special meeting of the Committee set for Tuesday 12th February to consider the output from this Review, so that everyone had time to digest the proposals before the Full Council 'budget-setting meeting' on Thursday 21st February.

It transpires that this meeting has been completely scrapped and that the said 'Organisational Review' outputs are going to the Full Council meeting on 21st February instead ;-(

So; no time to consider the re-organisation of the Council's largest Department in any detail (so much for open-government) and chances of a 'considered discussion' on the proposals as part of the main budget-setting meeting are frankly zero!

All being driven by our Liberal colleagues who said (in their manifesto) that they had "no plans for immediate reorganisation" of the Children and Families Department; and wanted us all "to have real opportunity to participate in decision-making".

Boom, boom :-((