Shhh... Every Child Matters lives on

9 August 2010 1 min read Ravi Chandiramani Early Years Education Social Care Youth Justice Youth Work Editorial

Watch out, the language police are about. An internal Department for Education memo lists 30 terms the government wants consigned to history, and the words that should be used in their place. Many relate directly to children's services.

Some of it is utterly pointless. Like the replacement of "narrow the gap" with "close the gap", or "delivery" with "implementation". "Integrated working" is out but "people working together to provide better services" (so integrated working, then) is in. Why use two words when seven will do? Perhaps the age of austerity doesn't apply to words.

But despite initial appearances, this is no silly-season story. The list goes beyond phrases that became tedious jargon under the previous administration. It includes the pillars of recent children's policy, namely Every Child Matters (ECM) and the five outcomes, and children's trusts. To this government, these terms clearly reek too strongly of Labour, while ECM in particular speaks of a grand project that is anathema to the coalition's thinking.

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