CYP Now - Editorial: Every child matters, but so does every vote

One of the central planks of the Government's programme to reform services for children is that policy, planning and delivery of services should be joined up not only at a national but also at a local level. This is why the Government wants councils to create directors of children's services to be in charge of both children's social services and education. At the same time, these local authority services and others such as health and youth justice are to be pulled much more closely together under children's trusts.

In many ways the five-year plan for education announced by Charles Clarke on Thursday supports this, with its assumption that care and wellbeing are as important as the curriculum (see News, p3; Analysis, p12/13). The spending review, set out by Gordon Brown on Monday, committed significant sums of money to making the programme a reality, and the next stages of tackling child poverty (News, p2).

Yet there are false notes. It is hard to see how the joining up agenda is served by giving schools greater autonomy, and by weakening the role of local education authorities. Yes, individual schools will still presumably be part of local children's trusts, though not managed by them. And yes, they will be inspected as much against the outcomes the Children Bill demands as against purely educational criteria. Yet there will now be an extra layer of complexity, and the task of getting institutions and the professionals who run them to work together on the ground will not be made any easier.

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