Education Secretary Michael Gove has praised the Scottish social workers who looked after him before he was adopted.
The Edinburgh-born Coalition Government minister said his life had been "transformed" by good social workers, who took him into their care for the first four months of his life after his birth in August 1967 to a young student single mother.
In a speech to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Mr Gove also said the best social workers deserved to be viewed on a par with doctors, barristers and teachers, although he also warned that the training of social workers needs major reform.
"As someone who started their life in care, whose life was transformed because of the skill of social workers and the love of parents who were not my biological mother and father but who are - in every sense - my real mum and dad, this is personal.
"A child's opportunity to flourish should not be a matter of chance - it should be the mission which guides all our actions.
"I believe we have not been either systematic, radical or determined enough in our efforts to reform the system of child protection in this country. But that is changing."
Mr Gove said many social workers believed their main role was to secure benefits and services for their clients, rather than forcing them to address their problems.
The Tory MP was four months old when he was given up. He was raised by his adoptive parents Ernest and Christine, both now in their 70s, in Aberdeen.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article