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The local authority Social Services Departments are going to get a bad press during the next year or two This seems quite certain, because of the attitudes and activities of certain Members of Parliament. There appears to be quite a vogue nowadays for Members to open debates, ask questions and make speeches not so much for their impact on the floor of the House as for the amount of press coverage they will earn and the press always seems ready to oblige. Overready to oblige,#one feels sometimes; the newspapers seem to reflect only what goes on in Parliament instead of disagreeing or tackling the same subjects in different ways or ever really developing any particular attitude of their own. Anyway, there are a large number of MPs who are already baying away like sonorous bloodhounds about shortcomings in the social services, and if these bay-ings have so far been publicised mainly in the social work journals, nevertheless, a good many have found their way into the popular dailies. We may be pretty sure that the press are slowly being brought around t0 the idea that it is fashionable and profitable to Publicise gaps, shortfalls, errors of commission and m?re particularly errors of omission in the Social Services Departments. Two questions seem to arise from this. Will the bad press be deserved? And even if deserved, ought there to be any publicity at all? It may be helpful first of all to list the statutory duties which have poured like a torrent upon the