When I’d worked for social care for a while I became an independent reviewing officer. I was separate from the management of a case and reviewed the child’s plan to ensure they were looked after.

When we started, there were eight of us in the team, which covered all of Leeds - I had over 200 cases, which was ridiculous, really - it's a much bigger team now, so they have less cases. The numbers that were involved, I don’t know how I did it now.

What happens is that when a child is looked after in care, after the first month, I would do a review with the family, the child, if they're old enough to understand, the foster carers, school, health, all the all the people who are involved in that child's plan. Then there would be another review at three months, and then every six months while the child was looked after. As a reviewing officer I was there to to make sure that the plan was moving forward for the child and that they were getting the services they needed.

Then when I was 60, I went down to three days and kept a smaller caseload, but tried to keep the children who were moving towards independence, because I reviewed children from birth to well, 25, if they wanted to continue being reviewed, and they were in education. I had followed some children from primary school up to when they left care.

I think a lot of time, social workers change quite regularly to children. So being a reviewing officer who's seen a child grow I might, it might tell me things that I know are not right. I could say no, I remember when - when you did this or you said that. It helps the child to have that consistency.