About

About this site

Being a Lead Member for Children's Services is one of the most rewarding — and one of the loneliest — roles in local government. The statutory weight of it, the breadth of the brief, the pace at which policy shifts beneath you: it's a lot to carry, and there are precious few places to turn for honest, practical conversation with people who've been there.

This site is my attempt to help fill that gap.

I'm Jon Hubbard, an Independent Councillor and the Cabinet Member for Children's Services, SEND, Education and Skills at Wiltshire Council. Before taking on the Lead Member role, I chaired our Children's Select Committee for twelve years — long enough to see policy cycles come and go, reforms land and unravel, and to develop a fairly clear-eyed view of what actually makes a difference for children. That scrutiny background shapes how I approach the executive role now: asking the awkward questions, testing assumptions, and refusing to accept that "this is just how it is" is ever a good enough answer.

My route into all of this wasn't through politics. I came in through the classroom and the youth club. Years of teaching and youth work taught me that the children the system finds hardest to reach are usually the ones it most needs to. That conviction sits behind everything I write here.

This isn't a Wiltshire site. It's a peer resource — written for Lead Members, lead officers, scrutiny chairs, portfolio holders and anyone else carrying responsibility for children's services, SEND, education and skills. You'll find policy analysis, speeches, campaign material, lessons learned (often the hard way), and honest reflections on the dilemmas the role throws up.

This is a shared space

One person's experience, however broad, is still just one person's experience. The real value of a resource like this comes from many voices, many councils and many perspectives — and I'd genuinely welcome contributions from others.

If you're a Lead Member with a campaign you're proud of, a policy critique worth sharing, a piece of practice that's working, or a hard lesson others could learn from, I'd love to hear from you. The same goes for scrutiny chairs, councillors, officers, headteachers, social workers, youth workers, parents, carers, young people themselves, charities, academics, or anyone whose experience could help colleagues elsewhere do the job better.

Contributions don't need to be polished think-pieces. A short reflection, a useful template, a speech you gave that landed well, a campaign that didn't work and why — all of it has value. I'll happily edit, format, or simply publish as-is, and contributors keep full credit (or anonymity, if that's what's needed to speak freely).

The aim is simple: build something genuinely useful for as many people as possible. The more of us who pitch in, the better it gets.

If you'd like to contribute, get in touch — details are on the contact page.

A final word

I won't always get it right. I won't always agree with you, and you won't always agree with me. But if this site helps even a handful of colleagues feel less alone in the work, ask sharper questions in their own councils, or find a useful argument for their next Cabinet paper, it will have done its job.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jon