A few years ago I was involved in a proposal about how to enable more children to remain with their families and stay out of the care system and/or the judicial system. In both cases, a critical point seemed to be when the child was about ten.

The research into 500 case studies of children who had gone into care or the judicial system within three London boroughs showed that the families had been known to social services for anything up to eight years before and, on average, each case had had nine social workers.

In nearly all cases, families were described as having "complex needs", but which were often quite straightforward: fundamentally, families needed a wage earner in a job that was secure enough and provided enough money for the family to live on and they needed suitable housing - in one London borough, typically, three generations of a family are living in a one-bedroomed flat.

It is true that families often have other needs as well - for affordable childcare, help with immigration and language, and access to health and education services.

"Austerity" - a political choice not a necessity - has increased the pressures on many of these families, with caps on benefits for families with more than two children and housing benefit. Incidentally, the majority of families receiving these benefits are in work, they simply can't earn enough from a job to keep their families.

Supporting families, keeping children with their parents and enabling parents to stay together is also about changing the political and economic circumstances in which they live as well as tackling a system which is out of control, very costly and doesn't achieve very good outcomes for the majority of families - parents or children. This is a cost to all of us, whether we need support or not.