SOME of the most difficult and sensitive constituency surgery cases that I deal with are those involving children. I’ve sat and listened to parents in floods of tears because their children have been removed from then and put into local authority care.

The distress and anguish is all too real. But in other cases I’ve had visits from grandparents, neighbours or parents who have lost custody of their children following a divorce, in which they have argued passionately that children are being left in a home where they are at risk of neglect or even abuse.

Getting judgements right in these cases is an incredibly difficult task and the responsibility that we place on social workers is huge. Get it wrong and you risk either, on the one hand, another appalling tragedy like that of baby Peter or, on the other, a distraught family whose children have been unjustly removed.

We’ve all seen press reports of both such outcomes. Earlier this year, the government appointed England’s first Chief Social Worker, with a mission, like the NHS’s Chief Nurse, to drive up professional standards.

But we also need improvements right through the system. Part of the answer lies in expecting the professionals – police, social workers, teachers, NHS staff- to share information more readily. Part lies in insisting that Family Courts and social services departments reduce the delays in deciding what needs to be done.

But it’s also about raising our expectations of what can be achieved by children who are in care. Despite some encouraging progress in recent years, the prospects of looked-after children continue to lag behind those of other children.

The figures are dismally familiar.

Only 15 per cent of children in care get five good GCSEs, including English and maths, compared to nearly 60 per cent of other children.

Looked after children are three times more likely than others to end up unemployed and three times more likely too to suffer from mental illness. Children who have been in care make up a disproportionate share of our prison population.

Too often, the care system heaps further uncertainty and upheaval onto children who have already had to contend with more than enough of this in their short lives.

Too many find themselves on a conveyor belt of care: being shunted from one placement to another; being returned home too quickly to once again face the dangers that originally demanded their removal, and being forced to leave care at 16 - much earlier than most young people would be left to fend for themselves.

Almost a third of children in English children’s homes have been through five or more placement breakdowns before moving into the home.

But it’s not just a case of moving home. Children often have to move schools, adjust to new carers, new social workers, entirely new surroundings. To repeatedly see the plug pulled on everything that has become familiar.

The fallout from being uprooted so often is profound. The more times placements break down, the more rejected a child feels, seriously corroding emotional resilience.

Local authorities can learn from each other how to improve their performance on placement stability and secure a stable, supported transition to adulthood, preferably at eighteen rather than sixteen.

None of this is easy. But getting it right is important for our hopes of a more secure and cohesive society.