How One British Consultant Quietly Convinced the World to Outsource Child Protection—With a Smile

Josh MacAlister: The Man Who Drafted the West’s Welfare Reboot and Strolled Away Like Nothing Happened
Bylines from London, Washington, and a very confused Strasbourg

If you haven’t heard of Josh MacAlister, congratulations—you’ve been spared another slide in the BBC’s endless PowerPoint of British policy wonks. Yet the ripple effects of his 272-page review of England’s children’s social care system are now washing up on every shore that still believes the state should occasionally protect children rather than simply tag them for future tax harvesting. From Berlin’s Jugendämter to California’s overwhelmed foster-care contractors, MacAlister’s blueprint—officially titled “The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care,” unofficially “Operation Please Don’t Sue Us Again”—has become the Rorschach test for how rich countries plan to outsource their guilt.

MacAlister himself is the sort of softly-spoken former teacher turned consultant whose LinkedIn photo screams “I own at least three identical navy jumpers.” He cut his teeth at Teach First, the philanthropic Ponzi scheme that parachutes Oxbridge graduates into schools long enough to pad out a memoir, then landed at Frontline, the social-work equivalent. Somewhere between lecturing on attachment theory and sipping ethically sourced flat whites, he convinced the UK government to hand him £200 million and a mandate to fix a sector held together by institutional inertia and clip-art clipboards.

The resulting report is a masterclass in bureaucratic ventriloquism. It recommends sweeping away “stifling” safeguarding regulations (translation: expensive) and replacing them with a cozy triad of data dashboards, private-sector “practice partners,” and an army of semi-volunteer “family help” teams—think Uber, but for preventing toddlers from eating cigarette ash. Critics call it privatization in a cardigan; supporters call it “innovative.” Both sides agree on one thing: it will be trialed first in areas where local newspapers have already died, minimizing awkward headlines.

The international community has watched with the queasy fascination usually reserved for slow-motion train derailments or German coalition talks. In Australia, policy nerds are cribbing MacAlister’s “kinship navigator” app to map which distant relative can be guilt-tripped into taking yet another child. In Japan, officials study his “multi-agency safeguarding hub” concept, wondering if it can be kawaii-fied into a pastel vending machine. Meanwhile, the World Bank is quietly translating the report into seven languages, presumably so developing nations can learn how to underfund child protection while sounding profoundly caring.

Global implications? Let’s just say if MacAlister’s model sticks, the next generation of defense contractors will diversify into “family resilience services.” Imagine Lockheed Martin-branded foster homes: bedtime stories come with a small-print end-user license agreement. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has already drafted a politely furious memo, which, in UN terms, is the diplomatic equivalent of setting something on fire.

Yet MacAlister remains gloriously unruffled. He has accepted no permanent government post, preferring the lucrative after-dinner circuit where he tells rapt audiences that “outcomes-based commissioning” is definitely not a euphemism for “fewer outcomes, lower commissioning.” Last month he was spotted keynoting a conference in Singapore titled “Building Resilient Childhoods in the Age of Data Exhaust,” an event so dystopian it could have been scripted by Black Mirror’s intern.

The cruel joke, of course, is that every wealthy nation faces the same demographic arithmetic: aging taxpayers, shrinking workforces, and a political allergy to raising revenue. MacAlister’s report merely dresses this math in the language of empathy and “evidence-based innovation.” If the children’s sector is being quietly asset-stripped, at least it’s wrapped in soft wool and delivered with a PowerPoint slide featuring a stock photo of smiling Black girl holding a butterfly.

So raise a glass—preferably something artisanal with a tragic backstory—to Josh MacAlister: the consultant who proved you can indeed polish a systemic abdication of responsibility until it gleams like TEDx gold. As Europe debates his model, as Silicon Valley tweaks it into an app, and as another fiscal year ends with fewer social workers and more press releases, remember the immortal wisdom inscribed on every government white paper: “Less is more, unless you’re the child.”