Analysis: Conservative Conference - What would a Tory government mean for young lives?

The Conservatives' annual conference might have been overshadowed by the global economic crisis but it provided an opportunity to take stock of where the party stands regarding children and young people. With the party currently on course to form the next government, it also served up vital clues about their direction of travel in key areas.

"The central task I have set myself and this party is to be as radical in social reform as Margaret Thatcher was in economic reform," pledged leader David Cameron in his keynote speech. "That's how we plan to repair our broken society."

The central themes of the party's plans include a desire to give the voluntary sector a greater role in service delivery and, influenced by calls from former leader Iain Duncan Smith's think-tank the Centre for Social Justice, to prioritise early intervention. "The returns from endless big-state intervention are not just diminishing, they are disappearing," Cameron said. "That's because too often state intervention deals with the symptoms of the problem. I want to deal with the long-term causes."