Hilary Cottam: Social services are broken. How we can fix them

"Well, the first thing I learned is that cost is a really slippery concept. Because when the government says that a family like Ella's costs a quarter of a million pounds a year to manage, what it really means is that this system costs a quarter of a million pounds a year. Because not one penny of this money actually touches Ella's family in a way that makes a difference. Instead, the system is just like this costly gyroscope that spins around the families, keeping them stuck at its heart, exactly where they are."