1.  The process of reform begun over 12 months ago under the banner of Every Child Matters is leading to significant changes in the support offered to children and families. There is virtually no structure or policy untouched by this process, which includes—but is far from limited to—the Children Bill currently finishing its passage through parliament. Throughout this period 4Children has campaigned for the development of joined-up solutions to children's policy problems: from departmental reform within central government, to more unified funding arrangements, through to integrated delivery models such as children's centres and extended schools. Through a wide range of lobbying activities and development work we have sought to demonstrate how the development of an integrated framework across the age range would contribute to achieving the government's Every Child Matters ambitions (not least each of the five key outcome measures).

  2.  This submission aims to assess the totality of the Every Child Matters process; assessing the progress made to date and also the steps still needed to create a genuinely integrated offer to children and families. 4Children's focus begins from the needs of children and families for high quality community services, growing from local service hubs such as children's centres and extended schools. However, this agenda informs policy and practice across all children's services; indeed our philosophy is that a genuinely preventative offer is impossible without both trusted, local front line support and an appreciation of the essential interconnectivities between all the sectors and professionals that touch children's lives.

  3.  After a brief introduction to 4Children and the work we do, this submission sets out both the vision and rationale for a universal, integrated framework, whilst considering the progress made over the past year and the work still to be done. In this sense it is diagnostic and evaluative, whilst also pointing to some possible future steps. To finalise, we set out what we consider to be the key aspects of a genuinely reformed children's service sector—embodying the spirit and aspirations of Every Child Matters—and assess how far the government has got so far. In addition to this submission, 4Children would be delighted to extend this discussion and supply further information to the Committee's inquiry, in the form of oral evidence.

WHO WE ARE

  4.  4Children (formerly Kids' Clubs Network) creates opportunities that enable all children to fulfill their potential, and all parents to access the support they need. The organisation aims to place children at the centre of policy development and service delivery, matching community support with family needs; building a better future for every child.

  5.  The organisation has led the lobbying for, and development of, childcare and out of school activities over the last 20 years supporting a growth of out of school provision from 500 schemes in 1993 to 10,000 today; supported by the National Childcare Strategy. 4Children now seeks to build on these achievements to ensure that all children and families get the support they need in their community.

  6.  More than anything, 4Children is about making a difference—about identifying issues and about devising and delivering solutions. It is also about change—about refocusing services onto the needs of children and their families, about bringing fresh thinking to old problems. From our continued support of the out of school sector to broader specialist support; from children's services as part of extended schools, to provision for older children; and from support for childcare businesses and social enterprises to developing quality services and training opportunities, 4Children is at the cutting edge of the children's sector.

  7.  Our aim is to ensure that all children, aged 0-16, and their families benefit from community based services throughout their childhood, empowering them to realise their potential and aspirations. Based in or around school, 4Children wants to see the development of universal, integrated services—from early years to out of school, providing children and young people with the space and capacity to learn, build relationships and develop the skills necessary to live healthy and enjoyable lifestyles.

DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

  8.  The Every Child Matters Green Paper, and the reform and investment programme which is flowing from it, have provided a major opportunity to transform the nature of children's services and the cultural approach to how they are delivered.

  9.  For many years, services for children and families have been defined by their lack of cohesion and inconsistency leaving behind a trail of failed approaches and a catalogue of children who suffered as a result. The new era of integrated children's services has the potential to be a powerful catalyst to redefine every aspect of policy development and delivery. More than anything, it has the potential to move away from the complex, targeted and high risk fire fighting services that now dominate the landscape of support for vulnerable children and move towards a truly integrated and preventative universal framework through which targeted services can be delivered.

  10.  Much of this approach already exists through a wide range of Government initiatives—in delivery (from Sure Start to the Children's Fund), structurally (from LSPs to Children's Trusts), and strategically (from preventative strategies to extended schools). The challenge of Every Child Matters has been to move these approaches away from initiative status and into mainstream policy and delivery. Equally, sustained improvements still need to be achieved in delivering on effective inter-agency cooperation and planning at both the strategic and service delivery levels. This requires the focus to be on improved outcomes for children and not on protecting organisational interests, including budgets. Government rhetoric on this has been strong, but has not always been backed up by action.

  11.  To achieve this level of change over the coming months and years requires a bold lead from Government, backed up by significant and sustained investment, coupled with a real understanding of the challenges and potential obstacles to effectively implementing reform. Up until now, barriers to organisational and professional co-operation have not been fully understood and acknowledged; inhibiting effective and enduring change. Delivering on the vision of joined-up children's services needs to be backed up by a coherent and integrated infrastructure and funding regime, with a dynamic delivery machine, which fosters culture change as well. Over the past year the Government has made considerable progress, however the scale of the task remains sizable, and the transformation required needs strong leadership.

  12.  The implications for the workforce are profound requiring a new profession of workers skilled in the delivery of integrated opportunities for children with more specialist workers able to offer particular services (supported by a strong shared understanding of children's needs). To achieve this, a major challenge is to dissolve some of the damaging professional boundaries and divides that characterise the existing workforce settlement. We need a sharpened understanding of what interventions are needed and are most effective for children and families; especially enabling professionals to evaluate their work and communicate more effectively with each other. Again, the government has recognised these challenges and has taken some welcome, if limited, steps. However, a fundamental review of the workforce, rather than piecemeal adjustments, is still required.

  4Children believes that delivering integrated services for children and families requires the following:

—  placing children's needs being at the heart of policy and organisational priorities;

—  joined up policy development;

—  joined up infrastructure;

—  joined up delivery; and

—  a programme of service transformation and culture change.

PLACING CHILDREN'S NEEDS AT THE HEART OF POLICY AND ORGANISATIONAL PRIORITIES.

  13.  Articulating children's needs as the central justification for children's service reform is crucial, not least to engaging sectors and professionals in the change agenda and, ultimately, to achieving improved outcomes for children. Given the wide ranging and often complex changes being undertaken under the Every Child Matters banner, a continual focus on the overarching objective of improving children's lives should be the rallying call for reform. Ministers should be congratulated for regularly returning to this essential point, but now need to drive through change on the back of the considerable political capital and professional consensus they have helped to create here.

JOINED UP POLICY DEVELOPMENT

  14.  The starting point in developing an integrated framework for children's services must be a coherent policy base. The current myriad of services for children have grown from distinctly different rationales and starting points which inherently affect their approach, value base, culture, outcomes, funding rationales and delivery mechanisms.

  15.  As a result services have, at best, remained uncoordinated and, at worst, ended up clashing and undermining each other—with professional boundaries, hierarchies and budgets too often determining the intervention rather than the child's best interests. Children have too often been seen as the domain of either their parents or the specialist children's agencies, rather than the corporate responsibility of us all. Ultimate responsibility for children's well-being is sometimes passed between individuals, departments and agencies; as the Climbié, inquiry all too graphically reminded us. These were key challenges the government acknowledged in Every Child Matters, and culture change is undoubtedly a difficult process. Structural changes centrally, and plans in the Children Bill to reform local government, provide an opportunity for a step change, but again stronger leadership is required to overcome the entrenched traditions of divided policy agendas.

  16.  The establishment of the Children, Young People and Families Directorate within the Department for Education and Skills provides the foundations for a coherent policy approach. This Directorate needs to both lead, and be part of, a wider policy discussion with local Government, other agencies, and professionals working with and for children. Key priorities should be:

—  Establishing the intellectual base for government intervention in services for all children, 0-16;

—  Establishing the need and evidence base for services;

—  Establishing the evidence of effective delivery mechanisms.

JOINED UP INFRASTRUCTURE

  17.  Traditionally, the infrastructure around children's services has positively worked against co-ordination and joined up thinking and delivery. Prior to the recent departmental reforms, seven Government departments had an involvement in services for children and families—each with their own concerns. This has been addressed in part by the creation of the Minister for Children, Young People and Families, but Ministers and officials in the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department for Trade and Industry and HM Treasury are all still involved in policy for children and families. This still necessitates a strong cross-departmental approach which is not always in evidence.

  18.  Central complexity has been mirrored locally, with interventions from social services, education, health, the police, childcare, leisure, regeneration, voluntary sector and more all creating and supporting services which are designed to support children but driven by their own agendas. Even where there have been strategic interventions such as Children's Service Plans, the needs of statutory services and the strength of the cultures of the established departments have dominated. Rolling out the integrated agenda embodied in Every Child Matters to local authorities and their partners remains one of the central challenges on the reform process.

  19.  Many local authorities have not had the vision, will, capacity or resources to make a bold move towards a corporate vision and strategy for children and families. New money that has been available through initiatives such as the Children's Fund, Sure Start, study support and childcare have helped authorities begin to broaden their horizons, and develop new services, but the short term nature of particular programmes—combined with incoherent funding and reporting mechanisms—has meant that they remain at the experimental or initiative stage. The need now is to take these approaches and mainstream them, as part of a coherent central and local infrastructure, rationale base, funding stream and workforce. Whilst the government appears to support such measures in principle, they have not yet been able to drive them through in practice. We acknowledge that such radical changes will not happen overnight and so the government should be congratulated for the progress made, but encouraged to be bolder and go further.

  20.  The size and scope of this change—which the Every Child Matters process has begun—should not be underestimated. Experience of consistent initiatives, not least the rollout of early years and childcare, demonstrates the sometimes limited capacity of strategic leaders, planners and deliverers at local level. 4Children therefore believes genuinely delivering a new framework of services and support for children requires a robust transformation, intervention and support programme from Government—focused on leading, advising, supporting and monitoring the development and implementation of ambitious action and transformation plans in every area.

  21.  Centrally, Government has brought services together within the DfES, which has undoubtedly given a focus to the reform process. Co-locating services within this Department is an important move and reflects the importance of learning as a central concern for services for children. However, co-location is not an end in itself—especially given the continued influence of the other departments. The Children, Young People and Families Directorate should be encouraged to develop policy and strategy across the piece; to establish and drive through a strong rationale for integration in all aspects of children's services. More broadly, the Directorate will need to " hold its own" in a department which has been understandably dominated by schools. Schools clearly remain the key mechanism in delivering children's education, as well as being a crucial site for the delivery of wider services. However, clear connectivity with other agendas, as well as learning, needs to be weaved in - from early years, to out of school, play and Connexions. 4Children believes this should be the catalyst for a wider debate about the role and purpose of the school within a local community. Such a debate, whilst politically controversial, will be a necessary prerequisite for developing genuinely joined-up children's services.

  22.  Locally, the central drive for co-ordination and integration needs to be mirrored through strategic bodies capable of planning and managing (though not always directly delivering) local services. Children's Trust pilots are currently investigating this approach and each will have to tailor its work to local needs. However, the broad point is that they need to look beyond traditional tried and tested methods—empowered with the necessary direction, knowledge, and funding. They need to achieve connectivity and high standards to create local integrated frameworks, which will require confidence, vision and flexibility at all stages.

  23.  A key element of infrastructure reform, aimed at improving delivery, must include new arrangements for funding. The plethora of current government initiatives and programmes aimed at children means that integrating funding streams is likely to be difficult to achieve in the short term as each has its own funding arrangements, timescales and outcomes. However, there are programmes, such as Sure Start, which co-ordinate areas of activity across traditional sectors which could provide a model for wider activity. As current programmes and initiatives come to an end and need extending or revising, the need to create a more coherent funding regime must be paramount. So far, the government has regularly acknowledged the weaknesses of the current position, but there is little evidence that funding across the children's services is anymore rational or closely aligned than before.

  24.  A new integrated infrastructure would have the capacity to create funding coherence—better matching resources to needs—by enabling Children's Trusts to co-ordinate and combine some funding in the short term. The aim must be to achieve national and local integration of funds over the next period—led by a new integrated Children's Fund to bring together funding for all non statutory services (and where practicable, statutory services) for children.

JOINED UP DELIVERY

  25.  Successfully achieving joined up delivery requires strong local models. The school clearly has a central role to play in the delivery of an integrated framework of provision, but is only part of the solution. Models of integrated centres for children, in or linked to schools, are therefore needed which have the potential to provide a wide range of services and support for children, across the age range, and their families.

  26.  The first phase of Children's Centres is currently being rolled out—with a commitment to one in every community in the medium term. Where children's centres offer an integrated model for young children, the extended schools concept must be further developed and evaluated for older children— both primary and secondary. Consistent evidence demonstrates that children who benefit from early intervention will fall back if that support is not sustained—extending support throughout the school years is therefore crucial, particularly at significant transition points in a child's life. A crucial next step therefore needs to be a programme of research, evaluation and consultation on the opportunities and challenges of the extended schools concept.

  27.  At present, there are high level political commitments from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, but the government must move to fill the vacuum of detail and aspiration. Ministers need to lead the agenda rather than be led by others, and avoid being bogged down in criticism of what they might do, in the absence of a positive vision. Achieving and sustaining a broad political, public and professional consensus on this issue is absolutely fundamental, as without it many of the practical improvements envisaged in Every Child Matters will not be delivered. There are plenty who are skeptical, even suspicious of the government's plans here, and it is not a battle that Ministers can win passively or by default. The risk to the government is that without strong leadership, combined with policy detail and investment, the reform process they have begun will remain at the organisational and structural stage - without benefits flowing through to children and families.

  28.  The delivery of local integrated centres will require significant investment from Government. Both Children's Centres and Extended Schools[75] will need start up and ongoing funds to sustain; especially in areas of disadvantage. There are, of course, significant sums already being invested in community based, preventative services. For example, early education, Sure Start, childcare, the Children's Fund, Connexions, PAYP, study support, and play activities are all being supported by central Government to a significant budget—over £3 billion per year in total. If contributions from neighbourhood renewal and regeneration, alongside parental spending, are included there is sizeable investment to be relocated around a universal integrated framework. A more systematic and efficient use of current resources, combined with a significant expansion of investment, is needed to fund the rhetoric and aspirations of Every Child Matters.

A PROGRAMME OF SERVICE TRANSFORMATION AND CHANGE

  29.  Children's Centres and Extended Schools need to be seen as more than co-ordination points for children's services. Their potential as positive support agencies for all children, their families and local communities must be developed. A broad exciting vision needs to be shaped, including: an early years offer, out of school support, childcare, play opportunities, support for parents, a social point for families, safe, fun places for teenagers to connect and be supported, and contact support for separated families. The government has made a compelling, and widely endorsed, case for better support for children and families (especially in the early years). It must now demonstrate how this support can transform lives and opportunities, to become trusted and reliable elements of the community landscape and an essential part of a modern welfare state. Then a political argument will have been won for a generation, beyond individual spending reviews or general elections.

  30.  On a local level, Children's Centres and Extended Schools, alongside targeted estate based interventions for children and their families, can be key tools in building capacity and resources within communities. Skilled childcare and community workers acting as brokers and communicators—helping people to find sustainable solutions through targeted interventions—provide a sustainable way of providing better long term outcomes for children. Out of box thinking, action and delivery will achieve better results. However, for this to happen, both service and workforce transformation is required, building on existing good practice, but acknowledging and changing what is not effective.

  31.  The workforce reform agenda, underway through the Every Child Matters process, is welcome and considerable progress has been made through the development of a new sector skills council and a set of common core competencies. However, it is vital that the big picture is maintained here. It needs to be acknowledged that the challenge may be welcomed by all in name but resisted by many in implementation—as professionals fear a watering down of their specialist area in the drive to create a new workforce. The recommendations on a common core training and continuing professional development need to be supported in implementation by a thought out programme of culture change (and extra investment to foster participation and goodwill in the process). This is an area that the government needs to be much bolder on as the challenges of recruitment, retention, low pay and low skills is acute and immediate. If the expansion in capacity planned is to be achieved—without sacrificing quality—swift action on the workforce is needed (both to plug existing gaps and to address long term issues).

  32.  Government and local authorities should recognise that a capacity building approach to encouraging potential new children's workers will yield very positive results over time, if backed up by the resources to enable people to participate in continuing professional development. There are already many positive examples of individuals who have joined one sector, through, for example, volunteering in a playgroup, moving on to an out of school club, before working on a part time or full time basis. Many have then taken the opportunity to train further and undertake a professional qualification, thanks to an accessible gateway into work with children. This capacity building approach should be more formally developed.

  33.  In developing the foundations of a new "Children's Profession" , a critical approach is needed to thinking through what child protection services today, including who delivers them. It can be argued that many childcare, health and education workers all carry out many aspects of what is defined as child protection work, particularly in the areas of detection, assessment, prevention, intervention, referral, family support, advocacy and brokering. Exploring these issues, both in relation to work practice now and workforce transformation in the future is as challenging as it is essential.

  34.  The government should be widely applauded for the reform process it has begun through Every Child Matters. Indeed, there have been considerable successes over the last year or so, with many more likely in the future. For example, it is widely accepted at a national policy level that Sure Start is working. Most professionals will say this is because of the multi-agency working and the financial and professional capacity that has been provided to kick start and implement the programme. The task for government now is to learn from progress made so far by extending good practice and successful service models across the country. Politically, all these reforms, coupled with the additional investment going in, needs to hang together into a meaningful and trusted story to children and parents about how their lives and their communities are being improved. The scale of these professional, policy and political challenges should not be underestimated. However, they can and must be confronted if the bold vision of Every Child Matters is to be realised, and if its enduring legacy is genuinely to be a transformation in the offer our society makes to children and families everywhere.

KEY TRANSFORMATIONAL STEPS AND GOVERNMENT PROGRESS TO DATE

  35.  Looking back across the past year, the following are the key aspects of reform that 4Children believe were, and are, crucial to delivering on the Every Child Matters vision. In some areas considerable progress has been made, in others we believe there is still much to do.

  36.  Transforming Policy:

(A)  Flowing from the legislative measures enacted through the Children Bill, robust guidance is needed for local authorities and other agencies on delivering these changes. This process should inform an update on the Every Child Matters vision marking progress to date and future ambitions for children and families.

  Guidance is expected once the Children Bill has received Royal Assent. This will need to place a high premium on the cultural and professional aspects of reform as well as the structural changes directed in the Bill. We await the expected autumn update of Every Child Matters: Next Steps.

(B)  A high level cross departmental implementation strategy should be established—with ambitious, timed targets on all aspects of policy and delivery. Built from within the Children, Young People and Families Directorate, this would engage other relevant departments—and the cross-cutting cabinet sub committee—to strategically develop policy as well as driving through delivery.

  Internal government reform means that this is largely in place. However, there remain inconsistencies and potential contradictions in the differing agendas of various government departments; the most obvious being between the Home Office and the DfES.

(C)  Guidance and support is needed to ensure policy review and development takes place regionally and locally across all children's services. Government needs to give a lead on empowering professionals to engage in evaluating and developing children's service policy and delivery.

  This function is expected the take place through Children's Trusts, however ensuring that professionals are supported to be fully engaged in the process of evaluating and monitoring policy is likely to face practical and cultural obstacles that will need to be overcome.

(D)  Robust mechanisms are needed to evaluate policy and the effect of interventions on children and families—extrapolating the linkages across sectors.

  The government has some mechanisms to evaluate individual programmes, such as Sure Start, so as to monitor their effectiveness, but Children's Trusts will need to think through how they will assess the overall impact of a range of interventions on children and families in their area.

  37.  Transforming Infrastructure:

(A)  A high level political commitment to developing a national universal infrastructure for all children and families.

  The Five Year Plan for Education and Learners set out high level ambitions to create universal services for all children and families in every community. These plans have also received the public endorsement of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. These commitments have the potential to provide invaluable political impetus to this reform agenda.

(B)  A clear timed implementation plan is needed marking the way towards creating such a universal infrastructure over the next decade; including a phased approach to roll-out, targeting towards particular disadvantage in the first instance.

  The forthcoming Ten Year Childcare Plan offers a key opportunity to set out a strategy to realise the political and policy commitments made by the Prime Minister and others. The government will need to produce a coherent and funded plan for expansion, including developing local capacity and infrastructure, which adds up to a clear and meaningful offer to children and their families.

(C)  Delivering on the Children Bill's aspirations, strong local strategic organisation within local authorities, involving other partners, should be established. This should include new Departments for Children and Families, bringing together education, social services and others to offer local integration and accountability.

  This process is already underway, and whilst the government is right to allow individual authorities to determine themselves how they move towards integration, the principle should not be relaxed. Ministers should also work towards ensuring that non-statutory partners are given a level of involvement and representation commensurate with their work with children and families locally.

(D)  A new integrated Children's Fund bringing together all non statutory preventative services should be instituted (bringing together and mainstreaming existing initiatives for children).

  The government has publicly acknowledged the inefficiencies and difficulties caused by the number and complexities of funding streams and have taken limited steps to address the problem. Much bolder action is now needed, especially in rationalising funding for the plethora of non-statutory services.

(E)  Children's Trusts must be required to undertake high level strategic research, audit, planning and commissioning for all services for children and families—to deliver a universal infrastructure of preventative services in every area for 0-16 year olds.

  A requirement for there to be Children's Trusts in every area over the coming years will become law shortly. These bodies will be charged with the responsibility of strategically planning and commissioning services. However, detail on the precise role and function on the Trusts is still patchy. These bodies need broad membership, a strategic mandate, financial muscle, high visibility and the power to act.

(F)  Models of good practice in strategic delivery of joined up services for children are needed, with additional funding for a phased number of trail blazer local authority areas. The development and support of confident strategic planning teams in each area should be considered—backed up by a national support, transformation and intervention programme and team.

  As yet, insufficient priority has been placed on supporting providers and authorities to share good practice, or on thinking through what strategic interventions can best help manage change and growth locally. Given the scale and rapidity of the planned expansion and reform, supporting change management well could be the key to the government's success.

(G)  Leadership and vision is essential to support the development of a more integrated children's workforce—with simplified and navigable training and qualifications pathways—to facilitate multi-disciplinary working and help tackle the problems of recruitment, retention and low skills.

  A workforce unit and a sector skills council have been established within the DfES but major reform stills appears someway off. A set of common core competencies for all those who work with children have been established and some qualifications tailored to the new integrated era have begun to be designed. However, these are minor progressions in an area where fundamental change will be required. Strong leadership and investment are essential if government is to overcome the considerable professional and political barriers to change. The workforce reform necessary to meet the coming challenges will occur only by design, not by accident.

(H)  National standards for children's services should be developed—with a national quality assurance scheme for local authorities.

  There appears to be no progress from government on developing such national standards, whilst the place of quality assurance schemes is increasingly uncertain.

  38.  Transforming Delivery:

(A)  There should be a clear articulation of how the Every Child Matters outcome measures relate to individual services and professionals—informing all other strategies.

  This will be a responsibility for local authorities as they deliver the aspirations of the Children Bill, however whilst recognising the need to respect local difference, it will be important that there is a consistency in the offer to children and families across the country.

(B)  Child impact measurements and statements should be a key part of relevant local authority policies.

  There is nothing to suggest that local authorities will be compelled to consider the impact of local policies on children, though some may well do so—at least informally—already.

(C)  Robust Children's Services Development Teams will be required in every local authority area—with responsibility for implementing the local strategic plan and developing linkages and best practice. An approved development plan to deliver ambitious local targets in the co-ordination of preventative services should also be considered—backed up by a development and leadership programme.

  The appointment of a Director of Children's Services, combined with other local organisational reforms set out in the Children Bill, offer the potential for such local strategic direction. Local authorities may well require support in leading and delivering on this process.

(D)  Funding and support will be required for the development of Children's Centres and Extended Schools in every area—especially to ensure that these are integrated with a range of other services and activities.

  Again, high level political and policy commitments have been made to rapidly extending these local delivery models. Details on timing and funding are expected in the Pre-Budget Report.

(E)  A high level Children's Champion in every local authority area could help drive through change and represent the interests of children.

  There is no central government commitment to such local champions—the Children's Commissioner will undertake a representative role nationally, and in some local areas, informal "children's champions" may exist.

November 2004