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Department for Education and Skills, 2003
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
Every Child Matters main page
Related issues
The 2003 Green Paper, Every Child Matters, published
alongside the Government's response to Lord Laming's Report
into the death of Victoria Climbié, proposes a range of measures
to reform and improve children's care. The aim is to protect
children, but also go beyond, and maximise the opportunities
open to young people to improve their life chances and fulfil
their potential.
The Green Paper mentions a number of related areas to improve
the life chances of children at risk including parenting,
fostering, young people's activities and youth justice. It
proposes to build on what has already been achieved (including
Sure Start, raising school standards and steps to eradicate
child poverty), through new Sure Start Children's Centres
in the most deprived neighbourhoods, full-service extended
schools and more activities for children out-of-school through
a new Young People's Fund. There will also be increased investment
in child and adolescent mental health services and speech
and language therapy.
There are additional reforms proposed to the youth justice
system, including extending the Intensive Supervision and
Surveillance Programme by making it an alternative to custody,
and making a greater use of residential placements such as
intensive fostering for young offenders.
There are four main areas for action:
- supporting parents and carers
- early intervention and effective protection
- accountability and poor integration
- workforce reform
A Parenting Fund of £25 million over the next three years
is proposed, with universal services providing information
and guidance to engage parents in their child's development,
targeted and specialist support to parents requiring additional
support and compulsory action through Parenting Orders as
a last resort where parents are condoning a child's truancy,
anti-social behaviour or offending.
Early intervention will be addressed by improving information
sharing between agencies on children in their area with the
contact details of the professionals who work with them, a
unique identity number and common data standards, coordinated
in each local authority by one lead officer responsible for
ensuring data is collected across services for children. Children
known to more than one specialist agency should have access
to one named professional to lead on their case. Professionals
will be encouraged to work in multi-disciplinary teams based
in and around schools and Children's Centres.
The aim is to make working with children an attractive, high
status career and to develop a more skilled and flexible workforce,
including a common core of training for those who work solely
with children and families and those who have wider roles
to develop a more consistent approach to children's and families'
needs.
A Director of Children's Services will be accountable for local authority education and children's social services while the Government has created a new Minister for Children, Young People and Families within the Department for Education and Skills to coordinate policy across Government. Responsibility for children's social services, family policy, teenage pregnancy, family law, and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service has been brought into the DfES.
The National Literacy Trust submitted a response to the
Department for Education and Skills. We support the vision
of the Green Paper to improve the life chances of all children;
however, we believe that there should be a greater emphasis
on language and literacy in the strategy. You can download
our response as a Word document.
For more information,
including a summary of the Green Paper, a summary for children
and young people, the Green Paper in full and the resulting
Children Bill, visit www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/publications
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