These pages provide a summary of
the 2003 Green Paper Every Child Matters and an
overview of some early key documents. The Update section contains
a selection of recent news items. For the most up to date
information and publications from Every Child Matters, visit
www.everychildmatters.gov.uk
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Update
Overview
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Related issues
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Every Child Matters: Change for Children is a major new approach
to the well-being of children from birth to age 19. The Government
aim is for every child, whatever their background or circumstances,
to have the support they need to:
- Be healthy
- Stay safe
- Enjoy and achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic well-being
These are known as the five outcomes.
The Children Act 2004 provides the legislative framework for
taking forward the Green Paper Every
Child Matters, published in autumn 2003. The aim is
to transform children's services through maximising opportunities,
while minimising risk, for every child and young person. A
new Director of Children's Services in local authorities is
leading local change, bringing together education and children's
social services directorates. The role of the Children's Services
Director includes leadership within the local authority to
secure and sustain changes to culture and practices to improve
outcomes for all. A Lead Member for Children is expected to
provide political leadership within and beyond the local authority
to involve local communities in the Change for Children agenda.
This new remit fits alongside their key local authority responsibilities,
including the improvement of school standards in the context
of the New
Relationship with Schools.
Every local authority is charged to work with partners, including
Primary Care Trusts, to find out what is needed to support
children and young people, and then act on it. The appointment
of a Children's Commissioner in England, an independent adviser
to the Government who will also hear specific complaints,
will help to give children and young people a voice in this
process. Local authorities, Primary Care Trusts, and others,
will be expected to pool budgets into a children's trust to
support more joined up services on the ground.
Department for Education and Skills, 2004
This document provides an overview of the legislation and how
the proposals might work in practice. There will be a new duty
on agencies to cooperate among themselves and with other partners,
like the voluntary and community sector; schools are seen as
critical partners. Many schools now offer extended services,
and there will be further consultation to see how stronger links
between schools and other services can work, the role of schools
in information sharing and the concept of the 'lead professional'.
Department for Education and Skills, 2004
This document is about the setting-up of multi-agency approaches
to improving outcomes for children in local authorities. It
details outcomes for all local authorities to work towards,
and says that each authority is to draw up a single Children
and Young People's plan, to be in place by April 2006. Where
possible, local authority teams that deal with children will
be co-located, for example in Children's Centres and extended
schools.
The document talks about various initiatives that are being
developed around children's services, but does not mention
literacy specifically (and therefore the case for including
a literacy dimension in children's services will need to be
made). Local Area Agreements are being piloted, which include
a children and young people "theme". Other themes
include "healthier communities" and "safer
and stronger communities" (see below for more
on Local Area Agreements).
A Common Assessment Framework has been developed to provide
early assessment of children and young people's individual,
family and community needs. A Common Core of skills and knowledge
is to be introduced so that all those in the children's workforce
can share language and understanding of issues.
Every Child Matters: Change for Children
Department for Education and Skills, 2004
The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) published
this strategy for working with the voluntary and community
sector, alongside Every Child Matters: Change for Children
(outlined above). It sets out the Government's commitment
to working with the sector at both national and local levels,
and the actions the DfES will take.
The Government recognises that voluntary and community organisations
have a unique role in reaching out and delivering services
to people at risk of social exclusion. It expects that they
will help local authorities develop Children and Young People's
Plans and Local Area Agreements, as well as playing a role
in Local Strategic Partnerships.
This document, together with 'Engaging the Voluntary and
Community Sectors in Children's Trusts', can be downloaded
from
www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/publications
Local Area Agreements (LAAs) are voluntary, three-year agreements
between central government, local authorities and their partners.
They will deliver national outcomes in a way that reflects local
priorities. The Department for Education and Skills has been
working with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and other
government departments to pilot LAAs initially in 20 authorities.
A second phase involving 66 authorities starts in April 2006,
with a full national roll-out in 2007.
LAAs, children's trusts and local strategic partnerships
will give areas the opportunity to find solutions to local
problems using a number of pooled funding streams.
Take up for the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda has been
sluggish and too many schools have yet to buy the idea that
working collaboratively with other agencies to improve children's
wellbeing can improve their academic attainment. Indeed, say
enthusiasts, such collaboration is essential to it.
Addressing the national children's and adult services conference
in Brighton, education secretary Alan Johnson said ECM was
as important for schools as had been the seminal 1944 Butler
Act. Yet research published at the same event painted a gloomy
picture of schools' engagement with the programme, suggesting
that as few as one in 10 was "actively" involved with children
and young people's strategic partnerships, children and young
people's plans or children's trusts.
The research, part of the annual survey of trends in education
by the National Foundation for Educational Research, was carried
out for the Local Government Association and based on survey
returns in summer 2006 by 370 primary and 1,155 secondary
schools in England. Although there was a further rise in the
number of schools offering "extended" services such as breakfast
clubs and community activities - though no change in the small
numbers offering health, social care or public library services
- few respondents were enthusiastic. Asked to gauge the main
advantages of extended schools, the most popular answer was
"very little or none".
Max Friedman, a US performance management expert, is unsurprised:
across the globe, he says, professionals cling to their silos,
fragmenting services and trying to force users of services
to fit into artificial categories. And teachers are worse
than most. He said: "We are fighting decades, centuries of
narrow thinking about this. People are scared: it's a frightening
thing to step out of your traditional role and say: 'I'm going
to pitch in here.' We're used to protecting our turf, working
these narrow channels, but the ironic thing is that if you
get a community working together, the school's performance
will improve."
Schools that turn their back on collaborative working, that
cut themselves off from the community, will end up harming
themselves, says Friedman, who was briefly a maths teacher.
But he understands their reluctance. "The history of this
work is that social agencies would come and ask the schools
to do their job for them, basically, and the schools would
say: 'Woah, my job is to teach kids and I don't have the extra
capacity. Get out of here.' The way this is happening now
is different: it's agencies coming to the schools and saying:
'The kids in your school who are failing are the kids in juvenile
hall [court] who are failing and the kids in the health system
who are failing. If we work together, these kids are going
to do better in your school.'"
The ECM agenda is a singular opportunity to reshape children's
services, he thinks. "If that process of reshaping is simply
shuffling boxes and reorganising and changing how people check
for compliance, there won't be very much benefit from it.
But if it really means that agencies and people work together
differently across systems, then there is a chance for some
significant gain."
(Guardian, 1 November 2006)
In October 2006 the Guardian published
two special supplements on Every Child Matters, discussing
how it is working. The main items from the supplements may
be downloaded from www.guardian.co.uk/everychildmatters
A report from TES on how NHS reforms threaten to derail Every
Child Matters by leaving schools out of the picture. To read
the full article visit: www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2216467
(TES, 31March 2006)
Efforts to create effective new local authority children's
services departments are being undermined by the plethora
of central government advisers monitoring them, a think-tank
has warned.
In a report on reforming children's services, Demos, which
describes itself as "the think-tank for everyday democracy",
described an ongoing war of attrition between central and
local government that "can only have negative consequences
for young people". It called on central government to
abandon its "command and control" approach and said
local authorities should be able to commission advice as and
when they need it.
The report also called for changes to inspections to allow
local authorities and schools to get more from the process.
Demos is highly critical of the large number of central government
advisers assigned to local authorities. It gives the example
of one children's service department that had 19 separate
advisers working with it on everything from Sure Start to
drugs and the primary strategy.
Funding given by the Government to local authorities for
a wide range of activities and policy goals came with an "adviser"
attached, Demos found. Its report said: "The key point
here is the serious damage to the relationship between central
and local government that is being caused by the present lack
of clarity surrounding these 'advisory' roles. As it stands,
many roles combine advice and performance management, meaning
that authorities can feel unsure whether they are being advised
or monitored at any given moment."
The result was defensive or even adversarial relationships
between the two tiers of government, Demos argued.
The full report, The leadership imperative: reforming
children's services from the ground up is available at
www.demos.co.uk
(TES, 2 December 2005)
The next two years will be critical for the new children's
agenda. Bringing together more closely the agencies and individuals
who work with children makes good sense, if every child really
does matter, but it offers a tremendous challenge to school
leaders. How can each school play a central part? What does
collaboration with key people in health, social services,
the police and voluntary bodies really mean in practice? And
should each school now appoint a director of external relations,
as it would be called in other contexts, to ensure the best
possible results?
Schools have always worked with outside agencies. Sometimes
it is inevitable, if a child gets into trouble with the law
or a family falls on hard times. When different professionals
work together, it can prevent problems. For instance, the
early detection of a hearing or mobility problem brings health
professionals and educators together.
The Government's new agenda for children is enshrined in
the 2004 Children Act and the Every Child Matters guidance
attempts to formalise this collaboration through children's
trusts, which bring together all local services for children
and young people.
The role of children's trusts in this manner is to set policies
that will ripple out to every town and village. Looked-after
children often get a raw deal; the trusts can ensure that
they get a proper education and health care by monitoring
what happens to them in each region.
Schools have a massive role in the new children's agenda.
In some cases it is a part they play already, while in others
practices will no doubt change. Is it obvious, for example,
who is the key person inside a school for other agencies to
talk to?
From a school point of view there are two important angles:
initiating and responding. Schools deal with children every
day. Doctors only see them when they are ill. Often a teacher
may detect illness, abuse or simply discover a need before
anyone else.
Medics and social workers can only go so far, treating and
prescribing. Pupil behaviour is a classic example. Many children
whose behaviour is poor in school have a significant medical
or social problem that the school is powerless to address
on its own. Closer liaison with the health and social services
may make a difference.
It is important never to lost sight of the 'ordinary child'.
If every child really does matter, then those young people
who simply get on with their work, and appear on the surface
to have no problems are also to be valued.
(TES, 4 November 2005)
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