“If good people don’t grip difficult issues, bad people do”

Over the last 25 years, Louise Casey has made a name for tackling the most difficult social issues. A succession of governments, Labour and Conservative, have turned to her to address the challenges of rough sleeping, anti-social behaviour, troubled families, football violence and and police conduct.

This week she published her ‘audit’ into how gangs of men who groom and abuse vulnerable children has been addressed. Her trenchant conclusions forced a government U-turn about the need for a public enquiry.

Homeless Czar

I first met Louise Casey in 2000 when she was appointed by Tony Blair to be ‘Homeless Czar’. I was managing an emergency shelter for young homeless people in Soho funded by her initiative and she visited the shelter regularly.

She was completely different to the bureaucratic civil servants focused on audits and data returns. And she also differed from the politicians that visited, who generally (with the exception of Mo Mowlam), would listen earnestly, look concerned and express bland platitudes.

Hard questions

Casey asked far harder questions: Why were our beds were not full when there were still young people sleeping outside? Why were referral processes not working? What are systemic blockages? How can we change them?  

The visits were intense and she was demanding, belligerent and did not tolerate anything vague, fluffy or half-baked. Like Mo Mowlam, she also swore a lot:

“F**K me! That is F*****G ridiculous. We’ll sort that out.”

One night I remember taking a call around 11.30pm from my night staff:

‘Jon, some woman called Louise just turned up with 2 young people and is insisting we book them in. What do we do?’ 

It turned out that Casey had come out of a nearby pub, seen two young people begging who said they were homeless and marched them straight to our shelter on Dean Street.  It was hardly normal protocol but I told them to do what she said and that we’d sort it out in the morning.

Admiration

Like many others, I was sceptical about her methods at first, but I grew to greatly admire her. Better than anyone else, Casey can talk about complex social issues in a way ordinary people can understand.

I saw her take on the ‘soft-boiled’, overly-liberal culture of the agencies involved with an ambition to create authentic change. She knew the blind-spots of the public and voluntary sector and was bold enough to challenge complacency and shake the status quo.

This TV documentary, Street Sleepers, broadcast in 2000, gives a good window on her work in that era to address rough sleeping. I am interviewed on it at 8:40 and then 14:20:

Twenty years later, I worked with her again during the covid pandemic when I was working for the government as a Rough Sleeping Adviser and she returned to head up the Everyone In initiative to bring in rough sleepers into empty hotels. Along with Jeremy Swain and others, her drive and moral authority meant some great work was achieved and lives were saved.

Grooming and abuse

And this week, Baroness Casey has been all over the front pages because of her report into the collective failure to protect vulnerable young people from men who groom and abuse them.

With typical clarity, she put her finger on how institutional concerns about appearing racist meant agencies failed to protect the vulnerable. Her common-sense and practical focus has cut through the ideological and politically correct impasse which has blighted this issue for over 15 years.

Gripping difficult issues

In defending her conclusions against those who say it may inflame racial tensions between communities, Casey said something vitally important:

“If good people don’t grip difficult issues, bad people do.”

This is a principle relevant to all forms of leadership. Politically, we must have sensible conversations about complex issues like immigration. If we don’t, we end up feeding extremism. And in organisations, if leaders are unwilling to challenge bad behaviour then the rot starts setting-in.

At root, this is the problem that the church has had with safeguarding. Its illustrated in the brilliant film Spotlight about how the establishment in Boston in the early 2000s did not want the local newspaper to investigate the emerging abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Rather than protect the vulnerable, they safeguarded the institution.

Grasping nettles

We can all be inspired by Louise Casey’s example because we all face situations – professionally and personally – where we need the conviction to grip difficult issues and the courage to speak truth.

Nettles must be grasped – otherwise far worse thing develop. Ignoring problems multiplies suffering and pain. If good people do not grip difficult issues, then bad people do.