Laws can cement Labour's legacy for children

Since April, local authorities have been required to have children's trust arrangements in place. Now the government is eager to cement these commitments. Last week, it laid down the "legislative options" for strengthening children's trusts (see p4). These are to extend the "duty to co-operate" to schools; extend responsibility for local authority's children and young people's plans beyond councils to cover all agencies that have this duty; and to make children and young people's plans and children's trust boards statutory, prescribing some of their working arrangements in the process.

In a nutshell, through legislation the government wants to up the ante on all services for children and young people to work together at local level. There is a strong political undercurrent at work here. Given Labour's current plight, with the likely scenario of a Conservative election victory in 2010, it is eager to fortify the Every Child Matters agenda. As things stand, the Tories could come in and quietly roll back the tide. If two or three years from now, some councils didn't co-operate in putting in place robust children's trust arrangements, a Cameron government could turn a blind eye. But with legislation in place they would have to publicly dismantle the reforms with their own legislation to reverse the process. This would trigger justifiable protests that the Tories were failing to put the needs of children and young people at the forefront of policy and practice.