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1. Every Child Matters
2. Children’s Trusts
3. Extended Schools
4. Children's Centres and Early Excellence Centres
5. Children’s Act 2004
6. Children’s Workforce Strategy
7. Childcare Bill Consultation
8. Youth Green Paper

Every Child Matters
In 2003, the Government published a green paper called Every Child Matters. This was published alongside the formal response to the report into the death of Victoria Climbié.
The green paper built on existing plans to strengthen preventative services by focusing on four key themes:

1. Increasing the focus on supporting families and carers - the most critical influence on children's lives
2. Ensuring necessary intervention takes place before children reach crisis point and protecting children from falling through the net
3. Addressing the underlying problems identified in the report into the death of Victoria Climbié - weak accountability and poor integration
4. Ensuring that the people working with children are valued, rewarded and trained

There was a wide consultation with people working in children's services, and with parents, children and young people.  Following the consultation, the Government published Every Child Matters: the Next Steps, and passed the Children Act 2004, providing the legislative spine for developing more effective and accessible services focused around the needs of children, young people and families.
Every Child Matters: Change for Children was published in November 2004.  This is a new approach to the well-being of children and young people from birth to age 19.
The Government's aim is for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to:

• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve economic well-being

This means that the organisations involved with providing services to children - from hospitals and schools, to police and voluntary groups - will be teaming up in new ways, sharing information and working together, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life. Children and young people will have far more say about issues that affect them as individuals and collectively.
Over the next few years, every local authority will be working with its partners, though children's trusts, to find out what works best for the children and young people in its area and act on it. They will need to involve children and young people in this process, and when inspectors assess how local children’s services are doing, they will listen especially to the views of children and young people themselves.
In March 2005 the first Children's Commissioner for England, Professor Al Aynsley-Green, was appointed to give children and young people a voice in government and in public life. The Commissioner will pay particular attention to gathering and putting forward the views of the most vulnerable children and young people in society, and will promote their involvement in the work of organisations whose decisions and actions affect them.

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Children's Trusts
Children's Trusts bring together all services for children and young people in an area, these are underpinned by the Children Act 2004.
They will support those who work every day with children, young people and their families to deliver better outcomes - with children and young people experiencing more integrated and responsive services, and specialist support embedded in, and accessed through, universal services. People will work in effective multi-disciplinary teams, be trained jointly to tackle cultural and professional divides, use a lead professional model where many disciplines are involved, and be co-located, often in extended schools or children's centres.

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Extended Schools
Extended schools are those that act as a focal point for a range of family and community services such as childcare, health and social services, adult education and family learning, and study support. The DfES is currently promoting the concept of extended schools with the aim that by 2006 there will be at least one full extended school in each local authority area, focused mainly in areas of disadvantage. By 2008, at least 1,000 primary schools will have 8am to 6pm wrap-around childcare, and the expectation is that the majority of schools will be part of a network or partnership that, together, provide community services.

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Children's Centres and Early Excellence Centres
Children's Centres are one-stop shops for parents and children, offering early education and childcare, family support, health services, employment advice and specialist support, on a single site, providing easy access for parents and easy referrals between services. Parents should be able to get information about other local services, eg local play facilities.
Many Children's Centres are existing Sure Start Centres, Neighbourhood Nurseries or Early Excellence Centres - supported by an investment of £435m over three years between 2003-06. The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced in July 2004 that an extra £100 million will increase the number of Children's Centres from a planned 1,700 to 2,500 in the 30% most deprived communities.

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Children’s Act 2004
The following is a brief account of the key parts of the Act that specifically relate to the Change for Children programme in England.

• Sections 1-9 provide for the establishment of the new Children’s Commissioner for England, who will also have a role across the UK for reporting on non-devolved matters, working closely with counterparts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Commissioner’s job will be to raise awareness of the best interests of children and young people and to report annually to Parliament, through the Secretary of State, on his findings.
• Section 2 makes clear that the Commissioner will not act as a last court of appeal for individual cases.  Instead the Commissioner will look at how bodies, including Government and the public and private sectors, listen to children and young people. The Commissioner will be able to highlight failures in complaints procedures and make recommendations for improvements.
• Section 3 gives the Commissioner freedom to look at an individual case with wider implications, for the purpose of learning broader lessons to inform public policy.
• Section 10 establishes a duty on Local Authorities to make arrangements to promote co-operation between agencies in order to improve children’s well-being, defined by reference to the five outcomes in Every Child Matters and a duty on key partners to take part in those arrangements. It also provides a new power to allow pooling of resources in support of these arrangements.
• Section 11 creates a duty for the key agencies who work with children to put in place arrangements to make sure that they take account of the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when doing their jobs.
• Section 12 allows further secondary legislation and statutory guidance to be made with respect to setting up databases or indexes that contain basic information about children and young people to help professionals in working together to provide early support to children, young people and their families.
• Sections 13-16 require that Local Authorities set up statutory Local Safeguarding Children Boards and that the key partners take part.
• Section 17 and the associated repeals in Schedule 5 establish a single Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP) to replace a range of current statutory planning. Details of what the CYPP should cover will be Set out in further secondary legislation and supported by guidance. There will be no requirement for the Secretary of State to approve the plan and Local Authorities categorised as excellent under Comprehensive Performance Assessment will be exempt from the requirement.
• Sections 18 & 19 require Local Authorities to put in place a Director of Children’s Services and Lead Member to be responsible for, as a minimum, education and children’s social service functions. Local Authorities have discretion to add other relevant functions, for instance leisure or housing, to the role if they feel it is appropriate.
• Sections 20-24 require an integrated inspection framework to be established by the relevant inspectorates to inform future inspections of all services for children. They also make provision for regular Joint Area Reviews to be carried out to look at how children’s services as a whole operate across each Local Authority area.
• Sections 44-47 put stronger requirements on Local Authorities to manage and monitor the current statutory notification scheme for private fostering arrangements. They also allow for a registration scheme to be set up if the notification arrangements prove to be inadequate.
• Section 49 allows for the secondary legislation to be made to bring in a minimum fostering allowance.
• Section 50 makes changes to allow consistent intervention across Local Authority education and children’s social service functions where it is shown to be necessary.
• Section 52 puts a duty on the Local Authority in its role as the corporate parent to promote the educational achievement of looked after children. This will ensure that decisions on issues such as placement and stability support better educational achievement.

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Children’s Workforce Strategy
The green paper, Every Child Matters, proposed a UK-wide pay and workforce strategy to address staff shortages and skill deficiencies in the various professions that work with children. It will be led by a children's workforce unit set up in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
Why is it needed?
In the wake of child abuse scandals, including the murder of Victoria Climbié, there have been calls for improved training for all professionals who work with children. Public vilification of the staff involved in these failures, particularly social workers, has exacerbated recruitment and retention problems. The latest government survey shows that 12.6% of children's social work posts across the country are vacant. In London, 13% of all social workers are agency staff. So the strategy needs to find ways of attracting more people into working with children and ensure that they stay on by providing better career development.
How will it achieve these aims?
A sector skills council for social care, children and young people will be set up. This will develop more flexible training routes into children's social work, such as work-based training for graduates, and common occupational standards and training for all childcare staff to enable people to move between related professions more easily. The new body will also work with existing regulatory and training organisations, such as the General Social Care Council and the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). Together they will form the UK children's workforce network, covering all staff working with children, young people and families, including health, law enforcement, sport and education professionals.
How will it improve inter-agency working?
The intention of the common occupational standards and training is to improve coordination among all relevant professionals. It should also ensure that safeguarding children becomes a priority for all staff, not just social workers, particularly those in close contact with families who have historically been less engaged in child protection, such as nurses and GPs. The TTA's role will be extended to train and develop the skills and roles of school support staff. The chief nursing officer will assess what more health visitors, nurses and midwives can do to protect children at risk of abuse and neglect. The DfES and the Cabinet Office are also trying to cut bureaucracy by identifying how different professionals' roles overlap.
What concerns are there about the review?
Some child protection experts, such as Eileen Munro, reader in social policy at the London School of Economics, fear that common assessments and training will lead to skills being dumbed down. Others, such as the Association of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) and the children's charity NCH, are more optimistic, but admit it will be a challenge to ensure that different professionals' distinct roles and skills are not compromised. Andrew Cozens, president of the ADSS, says the strategy must provide better rewards and conditions for social workers, like the Agenda for Change deal, which gives NHS staff a 10% pay rise over three years. Another big concern is how long the strategy will take to filter through in terms of improving frontline practice and boosting staff numbers. NCH estimates it may take five to 10 years.
When will it be published?
Nine months after the green paper the workforce review has barely got off the ground. Government officials have only just begun to consult with training organisations, professional and regulatory bodies, and children's charities, many of which acknowledge that the government's plans are still vague. The DfES says the strategy will be published in the autumn but as yet can offer no hint about what it might say.

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Childcare Bill Consultation

• Duty to be placed on Local Authorities to secure sufficient childcare to meet the needs of their areas;
• Propose that the duty will secure sufficient childcare for children up to the September after the child turns 14 (16 for disabled children)
• The aim is that the authority’s assessment of the local childcare market should generate an overall picture of parents’ use of and demand for childcare in the local authority area
• LAs will have regard to statutory guidance when carrying out assessment of parents need for and availability of childcare provision
• The duty will be fulfilled if the childcare market in a local area allows parents to make a choice about working
• Assessed through Joint Area Reviews process and will be part of Annual Performance Assessments
• Parents will be able to complain to authorities if their childcare needs are not met
• Lower income will be defined with reference to eligibility for the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit
• Need to consider the particular issues around access to childcare for black and other minority ethnic families, lone parents and those making the transition to work including those training;
• Consider parents working atypical hours
• At a community level the authority is taking strategic action with its partners to address gaps in childcare
• Aim for 3500 children’s centres by 2010
• Provide assurance of a longer term commitment to early years services without creating new administrative burdens or service costs for local authorities
• Build on existing duties for co-operation between relevant partners under the Children Act 2004
• Statutory requirement to establish a pro-active, accessible early years service focused on the under fives
• Key elements will be specified in legislation
• Guidance will be reviewed regularly and will allow flexibility for innovation and take account of local circumstances
• All early years provision will be required to be registered separately
  • Providers must ensure:
  • Staff are suitably qualified
  • Comply to staff:child ratios
  • Display certificate
  • Publish complaints procedure
  • Staff are CRB checked
  • At least 1 first aider
  • Have public Liability insurance
  • Health and safety risks assessed and reasonable adjustments made
• Providers who demonstrate these criteria will be eligible for financial support
• If provision is cancelled an alternative will be arranged by provider or manager of the provision
• Fees should reflect the cost of the service and any subsidy targeted on those who need it

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Youth Green Paper
On 18 July 2005 the Government published the Youth Green Paper, Youth Matters. It addresses key issues relating to how we support and challenge our teenagers..
Building on the ambition of Every Child Matters, which promotes the idea that all young people should achieve five key outcomes (being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being), Youth Matters aims to radically re-shape services for young people.
The consultation sets out a comprehensive package aimed at improving outcomes for all young people, with a particular emphasis on those who are disadvantaged.
Young people will have more choice and influence over services and facilities that are available to them and will be encouraged to volunteer and contribute to their local community, expanding on the work of the Russell Commission.
National standards will be set for the activities available to young people and local authorities will be given £40m over two years to develop innovative approaches to facilities for young people.  Local authorities will be supported to pilot "opportunity cards" which will offer discounts and top-ups to help more young people get involved in these activities.
The power will be put into the hands of young people by giving them and their parents a say about what services are available.  "Opportunity funds" will be created to spend on local projects young people want.
Youth Matters will give new opportunities to all young people, except where they become involved in unacceptable or anti-social behaviour. In this case opportunity cards would be suspended or withdrawn.

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