Government launches measures to support vulnerable children

Children's minister Dawn Primarolo yesterday launched a number of initiatives, including an expansion of projects helping young carers, guidance to help professionals provide more support for children of parents with substance misuse problems, information on how probation and prison services must work together with children's services to help offenders maintain family ties, and local authority grants to help plan recruitment and training of professionals to help families at risk.

Primarolo said: "The package of measures announced today will help professionals working with families and make sure no child or family is left behind. As well as today's package, our planned changes to the role of children's trusts will place a clear responsibility on agencies to co-ordinate services to improve the wellbeing of children and young people. This will further ensure vulnerable children are not missed."

The areas which will deliver the latest Child Poverty Family Intervention Projects, part of a pilot scheme testing out innovative ways of determining what is effective in working towards the eradication of child poverty by 2020, are: Cheshire West and Chester, East Sussex , Worcestershire, York, Calderdale , Gloucestershire, Manchester, Derbyshire, Northumberland, Redcar & Cleveland, Suffolk, Enfield, Wakefield, Tameside, Sheffield, Blackburn with Darwen, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford. They join 20 other areas that are already delivering the projects.