The
Green Paper offers a major opportunity to comment on Government proposals,
and to assist with wide discussion of the issues, staff of the National
Children’s Bureau have prepared this summary. We are indebted
for permission to reprint.
Introduction
This Green Paper sets out policies to reduce the number of children
who experience educational failure, suffer ill health, become pregnant
as teenagers, are the victims of abuse and neglect, or become involved
in offending and anti-social behaviour. (Para 1.1)
There
was broad agreement that five key outcomes really matter for children
and young people’s well-being (Para 1.3):
• being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and
living a healthy lifestyle
• staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect and growing
up able to look after themselves
• enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing
broad skills for adulthood
• making a positive contribution: to the community and to society
and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
• economic well-being: overcoming socio-economic disadvantages
to achieve their full potential in life
The
Green Paper outlines key policy changes (Para 1.8) which have endeavoured
to improve outcomes for children and young people in recent years,
but declares there is more to do. Through an outline of key statistics
and in considering risk and protective factors the Green Paper places
the role of parents as paramount in improving outcomes and then links
this to the greater challenges faced if families are also poor.
Policy
Challenges:
• Better prevention
• A stronger focus on parenting and families
• Earlier intervention
To deliver these reforms the following must be addressed:
• Weak accountability and poor integration
• Workforce reform
The
answers to these five themes are the basis of the remaining chapters:
• Strong foundations
• Supporting parents and carers
• Early intervention and effective protection
• Accountability and integration – locally, regionally
and nationally
• Workforce reform
Responses
to the Green Paper Every Child Matters are due by 1 December 2003.
A children’s version and consultation are also available.
Strong
foundations – Chapter 2
The paper affirms the Government’s commitment to:
• Tackling child poverty (Para 2.1)
• Ensuring children have a Sure Start (Para 2.4) by:
o Extending the principles of Sure Start
o Improving access to ante and post-natal care
o Establishing a network of Sure Start Children’s Centres in
disadvantaged areas
o Extending free part time education to all three year olds
o Better early years support for disabled children
• Raising primary and secondary school standards and participation
in post 16 learning (Para 2.11) through:
o Improving School Attendance and Behaviour through the national behaviour
and attendance strategy
o Raising the attainment of minority ethnic pupils
o Special Educational Needs Action Programme which will focus on practical
measures to promote early identification and intervention, raise expectations
and achievement and build the capacity of schools and early years
settings, working with health and social care, to provide good teaching
and support for all children.
o Education and training in the teenage years improved through a more
flexible curriculum; developing the Connexions service; implementing
the Education Maintenance Allowance nationally; ensuring that every
child will be granted a Child Trust Fund; and examining the financial
support for 16-19 year olds.
o Integrating services through extended schools and clusters of schools,
with at least on in every Local Education Authority by 2006
• Increasing access to primary health care and specialist health
services (Para 2.22) through the National Service Framework for Children;
increased training for clinicians; increasing the number of speech
and language therapists; increasing the capacity of Child and Adolescent
Mental Health Services (CAMHS); continued investment in sexual health
and substances misuse programmes
• Building strong and vibrant communities (Para 2.38) Consultations
with children and young people show that they want ‘somewhere
safe to go and something to do’ in their communities. The Government
is widening access to a range of structured and unstructured, supervised
and unsupervised, activities. These include investment in the youth
service (£513m in 2003), Positive Activities for Young People
(PAYP) programme (£25m/1 year); Young People’s Fund (£200m);
PE and school sport (£459m/2003-6).
• Anti-social and offending behaviour (Para 2.42) Key measures
include:
o Ensuring that there are more effective powers to intervene positively
to address the behaviour of children under 10 who commit what would
be offences if they were over the age of criminal responsibility
o Making the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme the
main intervention rather than custody
o Rationalising the number of community sentences to create a new
simplified 'menu' community sentence
o Making greater use of a wider range of imaginative residential placements
for young offenders, such as intensive fostering
o Developing junior attendance centres into broader junior activity
centres
• Ensuring children are safe (Para 2.44) by addressing
o Bullying through school policies, police in schools, the Personal,
Health and Social Education (PSHE), citizenship education and the
National Healthy Schools Standard
o Supporting victims by supporting young victims and witnesses going
through the criminal justice system; treating young prostitutes as
victims not offenders; creating a new offence of commercial sexual
exploitation
o Children and young people suffering homelessness building on current
measures and consultations. By March 2004 no homeless family with
children should be placed in bed and breakfast accommodation, unless
in an emergency.
o Supporting children entering the country by: providing more training
for immigration officers, improved joint working, co-locating child
protection police officers at ports, providing well-managed care and
transfer to local authorities outside the South East. The Green Paper
requests views on how to provide more comprehensive and consistent
support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children building on the
work of the Refugee Council’s Children’s Panel.
Consultation Questions – Chapter 2
Views are invited on proposals set out in this chapter. In particular:
• How can we improve support for unaccompanied asylum seeking
children, building on the work of the Children’s Panel?
• How can we ensure that serious welfare concerns are appropriately
dealt with alongside criminal proceedings?
• How can we encourage clusters of schools to work together
around extended schools?
Supporting
parents and carers – Chapter 3
The Government intends to put supporting parents and carers at the
heart of its approach to improving children’s lives. Government
would welcome views on improved services such as:
• Universal parenting services (Para 3.3)
o National helpline
o Parents information meetings at key transition points (e.g. move
from primary to secondary school)
o Family learning programmes
o Support programmes for fathers as well as mothers
o Better communication between parents and schools
o Childcare, early years’ education, social care and schools
working more closely with parents
o Joint training on development and behaviour issues for children's
professionals
• Specialist parenting support (Para 3.4) through
o Home visiting programmes
o Parent education programmes,
o Family group conferencing
o Family mediation services
o Stress and relationship counselling
The Green paper also highlights the needs of and would welcome views
on helping:
• Parents and carers of disabled children (Para 3.7)
• Young carers (Para 3.9)
• Children with parents in prison (Para 3.10)
Where
parents are hard to engage the Green Paper proposes greater use of
compulsory measures. Increases in mainstream investment must be harnessed
to improve support for parents, and the Green Paper refers to the
Parenting Fund.
•
Improving fostering and adoption services (Para 3.14) states that
the Government’s first objective for children’s social
services is to ensure that all children are securely attached to carers
capable of providing safe and effective care for the duration of their
childhood. Emphasises:
o High quality permanence planning
o Supporting foster carers through improved training
o Recruitment of foster carers
o Ensuring the full costs of care are covered
o The Choice Protects programme which outlines investment in care
placements and the modernisation of adoption.
Consultation
Questions – Chapter 3
Views are invited on the proposals set out in this chapter. In particular:
• How can good quality decision-making by social services in
relation to achieving permanence for the children for whom they are
responsible best be achieved?
• Building on Choice Protects, what more can we do to recruit
and retain more foster carers who are able to meet the needs of looked
after children?
• How can local authorities, working with the voluntary, community
and private sectors, develop a range of specialist parenting support
services?
• Working with local authorities and other existing providers,
what steps should the Government take to make home visiting services
more widely available?
• What further action could be taken to extend the use of direct
payments by families with disabled children?
• What more could be done to improve services for children and
families of offenders?
Early
Intervention and Effective protection – Chapter 4
Improving
information collection and sharing
(Para 4.3) To address the evident failures of professions and agencies
to share information in the interests of children and young people,
the long-term aim is to integrate information across services and
ensure professionals share concerns at an early stage.
To
achieve this Government wants to see a local information hub developed
in every authority consisting of a list of all the children living
in their area and basic details including:
• Name, address and date of birth
• School attended or if excluded or refused access
• GP
• A flag stating whether the child is known to agencies such
as education welfare, social services, police and Youth Offending
Teams (YOTs), and if so, the contact details of the professional dealing
with the case
• Where a child is known to more than one specialist agency,
the lead professional who takes overall responsibility for the case.
The
long-term vision is that information is stored and accessed electronically
by a range of agencies, based on national standards and capable of
interaction with other data sets.
Practitioners
could have the ability to flag on the system early warnings when they
have a concern about a child, which in itself may not be a trigger
or meet the usual thresholds for intervention. The decision to place
such a flag of concern on a child’s record, which could be picked
up by another agency making a similar judgement, lies with the practitioners.
There is a balance to strike between sharing enough information to
help safeguard children effectively and preserving individuals’
privacy. Government wishes to consult on:
• When information can be shared for preventative purposes without
consent.
• Whether warning signs should reflect factors within the family
such as imprisonment, domestic violence, mental health or substance
misuse problems amongst parents and carers (Paras 4.5 and 4.6)
Systems
would hold records for every child or young person resident in a local
authority area. National standards would be in place to ensure reliable
and secure exchange of data between local authorities, including upper
and lower tier authorities (Para 4.7)
To
progress this Government is running trailblazers at present. It also
aims to remove the legal, technical, organisational, professional
and cultural barriers to sharing information. (Para 4.8)
Common
assessment framework
In order to address the duplication of assessments Government will
look at the extent to which the North Lincolnshire Common Assessment
model (a single assessment undertaken within an hour for basic information)
can be rolled out. It will also look at how children can be active
in the assessment process, and how assessment can identify strengths
and opportunities as well as needs and risks. In the light of views
expressed during the consultation period, the Government will set
up a team to draw up and develop a common assessment framework by
March 2004 with a view to introduction by September 2004 (Para 4.16)
Lead
professional (Para 4.18)
The Government would welcome views on how to improve case management,
and at the minimum to ensure that where a child is known to more than
one specialist service, there is a designated ‘lead professional’
who would coordinate service provision. The lead professional role
may be best fulfilled by someone from the service that has the most
contact with the child day to day. The lead professional could also
act as the ‘gatekeeper’ for information sharing systems.
Multi-disciplinary
teams (Para 4.23)
Multi-disciplinary teams, working in places accessible to children
and families, are seen as the way forward. They should be able to
benefit from a wide range of professionals working together, without
losing the advantages of those professionals’ individual specialisms.
The
multidisciplinary teams would use the common assessment framework
and be responsible for ensuring children’s needs are met effectively.
This would involve (Para 4.27):
• Identifying children at risk, or receiving referrals and self-referrals
• Contacting and engaging children and their families and gaining
their trust
• Working with the child and family to develop an individual
action plan setting out the key goals agreed with the child and the
parents and the resources that would be harnessed to support these
goals
• Either providing services from within the team or brokering
support from mainstream and specialist services
Co-location
around schools, Sure Start children’s centres, and primary care
There is a strong case for basing multi-disciplinary teams in and
around the places where many children spend much of their time e.g.
schools, Sure Start centres and primary care centres (Para 4.28).
Other settings, such as neighbourhood-based services, will still be
important, particularly in re-engaging young people who have left
school at 16 and are not in education or training (Para 4.29). Recommends
schools work in clusters to be more effective around deploying multi-disciplinary
teams collectively, retaining children in the education system, providing
access to personal development opportunities and providing pastoral
support to all children.
Effective
Protection (Para 4.33)
The Government is publishing alongside this Green Paper, ‘Keeping
Children Safe’ - its detailed response to the Victoria Climbié
Inquiry Report and the Joint Chief Inspectors’ report on safeguarding
services. The barriers to implementing effective child protection
procedures will be addressed through:
• Clear practice standards across services, setting out what
should be done in relation to child protection
• Shared responsibility across all agencies through new statutory
duties
• Someone in charge locally with statutory responsibilities
for child protection and coordinating the work of social services,
police, housing, education, and other key services
• An inspection system that assesses how well agencies work
together to create an effective system of protection
• Workforce reform to ensure all people working with children
are trained in child protection.
Immediate
steps to be taken by the Government include (Para 4.36):
• Revising and shortening the existing range of Children Act
1989 regulations and guidance
• Auditing safeguarding children activity of local authorities
with social services responsibilities, NHS bodies and police forces
• Raising the priority of safeguarding children amongst all
relevant agencies/organisations
Consultation
Questions – Chapter 4
Views are invited on proposals set out in this chapter. In particular:
• What currently gets in the way of effective information sharing,
and how can we remove the barriers?
• What should be the thresholds and triggers for sharing information
about a child?
• What are the circumstances (in addition to child protection
and youth offending) under which information about a child could or
must be shared without the consent of the child or their carers?
• Should information on parents and carers, such as domestic
violence, imprisonment, mental health or drug problems, be shared?
• How can we ensure that no children slip through the system?
• What issues might stand in the way of effective information
transfer across local authority boundaries?
• Should a unique identifying number be used?
• Views are also invited on the proposals relating to multi-disciplinary
teams:
o What are the barriers to developing them further in a range of settings?
o How can we ensure multidisciplinary teams have greater leverage
over mainstream and specialist services?
Accountability
and Integration - locally, regionally and nationally – Chapter
5
The Government wants to move to a system locally and nationally where
there is:
• Clear overall accountability for services for children, young
people and families
• Integration of key services around the needs of children,
in particular education, social care, health, youth justice and Connexions
The
Government’s aim is that there should be one person in charge
locally and nationally with the responsibility for improving children’s
lives. Key services for children should be integrated within a single
organisational focus at both levels. To achieve this the Government
will:
• Legislate to create the post of Director of Children’s
Services, accountable for local authority education and children’s
social services. Current legislation requiring appointment of a Chief
Education Officer and a Director of Social Services will be amended
to reflect this. The responsibilities of the Director of Social Services
must include children’s social services and education but need
not be limited to these services: the Director may also be responsible,
for example, for housing and leisure services. The key is that there
should be one person in charge of children's services and clarity
at all times as to who that person is. Government will also legislate
to introduce a duty on local authorities to promote the educational
achievement of children in care. (para 5.10)
• Legislate to create a lead council member for children to
ensure clear accountability at official level (Para 5.11)
• In the long term integrate key services for children and young
people under the Director of Children’s Services as part of
Children’s Trusts. Children’s Trusts will normally sit
within the local authority and report to the Director of Children’s
Services who will report through the Chief Executive to elected members.
(Para 5.13) The key services within Children’s Trusts are: the
Local Education Authority - potentially all education functions; Children’s
Social Services; community and acute health services, such as community
paediatrics, health visiting, teenage pregnancy coordinators. Primary
Care Trusts will be able to delegate functions into the Trusts and
pool funds with the local authority. Children’s Trusts may also
include Youth Offending Teams and Connexions (Para 5.14). The Government
is keen that Connexions should play a full part in Children’s
Trusts by asking Connexions Partnerships to use Children's Trusts,
where appropriate, as their local management committees and expecting
Connexions business plans to be signed off by local Children’s
Trusts before Ministers will agree them (Para 5.21). Trusts will need
to work closely with organisations outside the Trust, such as the
police, the Learning and Skills and voluntary organisations (Para
5.22). The move to Children’s Trusts is an ambitious agenda
and the pace of change can vary according to the local agenda (Para
5.18).
• The key features of a Children’s Trust will be (Para
5.16):
o Clear short and long term objectives covering the five Green Paper
outcome areas
o A Director of Children’s Services in overall charge of delivering
these outcomes and responsible for services within the Trust and coordination
of services outside the organisation
o A single planning and commissioning function supported by pooled
budgets
• Require local authorities work closely with public, private
and voluntary organisations to improve outcomes for children. Local
authorities will be given flexibility over how this partnership working
is undertaken.
• Legislate to ensure that local authorities have a duty to
set up Local Safeguarding Children Boards consisting of representatives
from the partner agencies including housing, health, police and probation
services. These Boards will be the statutory successors to Area Child
Protection Committees, and will be chaired by the Director of Children’s
Services (Para 5.25). They may decide on pooling resources and may
have power to commission independent Serious Case Reviews and draw
out public health lessons (Para 5.26)
• Regional arrangements – The Government will examine
how national government can support localities more effectively, and
how existing regional arrangements can be built upon (Para 5.27)
• National arrangements (Para 5.28) - the Government has created
a new Minister for Children in the Department for Education and Skills.
The reform brings together policy responsibility for schools, local
education authorities, children’s social services, Connexions,
teenage pregnancy, family policy, Child and Family Court Services
and family law into a single department. In addition, the Minister
is responsible for coordinating policies for children, young people
and families across Government. The Children’s Minister will
work with a board of stakeholders, including local government and
the voluntary sector, to improve the delivery and cohesiveness of
Government policy on children and young people. This single focus
will ensure integrated policy development and unified national leadership
to develop:
o A standard setting mechanism within the Department for Education
and Skills, charged with removing barriers to productivity and reducing
the bureaucratic burden.
o An integrated inspection framework and lead inspectorate for children
to ensure services are judged on how well they work together rather
than in isolation
o An intervention and improvement mechanism to drive up performance
everywhere, and intervene in areas where national standards are not
being met.
• Standard setting – involves rationalisation of targets;
streamlining planning requirements; rationalisation of funding streams;
ensuring national guidance on service standards is clear (Para 5.32)
• In addition, in relation to child protection, the Government
intends, subject to consultation to place a duty on all relevant local
bodies (e.g. such as the police and health organisations) in exercising
their normal functions, to have regard to safeguard children, promote
their well-being and work together through these partnership arrangements.
(Para 5.35)
• Inspection - Government will ask Ofsted to take the lead in
developing a framework for integrated inspections in consultation
with the Commission or Social Care Improvement, Commission for Health
Improvement (CHI) and the Audit Commission. Where appropriate they
will bring together joint inspection teams to carry out area based
inspections (Para 5.36). The integrated framework would build on a
child-focused approach developed in joint inspections by tracking
children through the system, and asking them for their views. It could
also encourage the involvement of young people in inspection teams
(Para 5.40)
• The Government will also create an improvement and intervention
function to drive up performance by sharing effective practice, and
intervening where services are failing. The Government will explore
how the principle of earned autonomy can be applied further to children’s
services and would welcome views on how success could be rewarded,
for example through less frequent inspections (Para 5.45). Para 5.46
gives a list of options of possible intervention.
Involving children in developing services
Views are invited on whether the Government should establish minimum
standards for the involvement of children and young people, and what
they could include (Para 5.47).
The
Government is committed to providing more opportunities for children
and young people to get involved in the planning, delivery and evaluation
of policies and services relevant to them (Para 5.48). Involving children
and young people is important in its own right, but also as a way
of creating bottom-up pressure for change in services (Para 5.47)
Children’s
Commissioner
The Government intends to legislate at the earliest opportunity for
the appointment of a statutory Children’s Commissioner. The
Commissioner would:
• Act as a Children’s Champion independent of government
• Speak for all children but especially the disadvantaged whose
voices are too often drowned out.
• Advise government
• Engage with others such as business and the media whose decisions
and actions affect children’s lives.
• Develop effective ways to draw on children’s views,
locally and nationally, and make sure they were fed into policy making.
• Test the success of policies in terms of what children think
and experience
• Work with the relevant Ombudsman and statutory bodies to ensure
children have quick and easy access to complaints procedures that
work.
• Only investigate individual cases where the issues have a
wider relevance to other children, as directed by the Secretary of
State.
• Have the duty to report to Parliament through the Secretary
of State for Education and Skills.
• Report on progress against the outcomes for children, as a
result of action by government and others, drawing on but going wider
than the reports arising from joint inspections of children's services.
Consultation Questions – Chapter 5
Views are invited on proposals set out in this chapter. In particular:
• How can we encourage better integration of funding for support
services for children and young people?
• Should all authorities and other relevant local agencies have
a duty to promote the well-being of children?
• How best can young people be involved in local decision-making
and should the Government establish, for example, minimum standards
for this?
• Should Local Safeguarding Children Boards be statutory, and
what should their powers and duties be?
• How can we develop, enhance and encourage the Children’s
Trust model?
• What services should be required to form part of Children’s
Trusts, and what are the risks in involving more services –
for instance, aligning Connexions geographical structures with Children’s
Trusts?
• How can inspections be integrated better?
Workforce reform – Chapter 6
The Green Paper outlines the problems with the current workforce and
its existing efforts in making improvements e.g. 3 year degree for
social workers. The Government will develop a pay and workforce strategy
to improve the skills and effectiveness of the children’s workforce.
The reform agenda will be driven forward though a new Children’s
Workforce Unit in DfES. The Unit will be complemented by a new Sector
Skills Council (SSC) for Children and Young People’s services
to ensure that employers are fully involved in the process of reform.
(Para 6.20)
The
reform of the children’s workforce is aimed at raising the attractiveness
and status of the work as well as improving skills and collaborative
working (Para 6.21). The Government plans to develop a package of
measures, broadly similar to those already in place for teaching,
to increase recruitment and retention for others working with children.
Views
are invited on the following package of measures:
• Pay and financial incentives (Para 6.28) - The Children’s
Workforce Unit will need to consider the following questions in developing
reforms:
• What could be achieved through new pay arrangements, and what
are the risks of change?
• How can resources be targeted at areas with the greatest recruitment
and retention challenges?
• How best can fairness as well as efficiency be ensured within
such a system?
• What use should be made of golden hellos and training bursaries?
• How can good performance be incentivised and rewarded?
• Is there potential to develop a scheme to support the retention
of vital frontline social care staff, drawing on the lessons from
the Advanced Skills Teachers initiative?
• How can flexible working patterns be supported?
• How can the ‘climbing frame’ qualifications approach
developed in the early years sector whereby people can move across
different professions as well as progress upwards be applied more
broadly?
Bureaucracy
and workload (Para 6.29): The Children’s Workforce Unit will
undertake a comprehensive workload survey to look at how to increase
the time spent working with children and families, by cutting out
unnecessary paperwork, improving support from supervisors and administrators
and better use of ICT.
Recruitment
and entry routes (Para 6.30): The Children’s Workforce Unit
will develop a high profile recruitment campaign for entry into the
children’s workforce, including general advertising and targeted
recruitment
Improving
skills and teamwork (Para 6.33): Children’s Workforce Unit will
examine how to develop collaborative approaches with frontline staff
to identify and overcome the barriers they face in improving services
to children. As joint working becomes the norm, clarity about roles
and responsibilities will be all the more important. This may mean
that some of the labels worn today will need to be changed in order
to communicate clearly who is doing what within a reconfigured, modernised
workforce. The Government would like to see an extension of this recognition
of advanced skills in the workforce so that the most skilled professional
staff can be rewarded and newly qualified staff given strong incentives
to develop their expertise. Developments could involve
• An extension of the current senior practitioner posts
• Consideration of a consultant social worker role (Para 6.35)
Children’s Workforce Unit will develop a programme to foster
the highest calibre of leadership in children’s services. The
Unit will also have an important role in supporting the efforts of
local authorities in recruiting Directors of Children’s Services.
(Para 6.36)
Common
core training and continuing professional development (Para 6.38):
Government intends to develop national occupational standards and
a modular training and qualifications structure across the widest
possible range of workers in children’s services. The Children’s
Workforce Unit will also seek to increase the availability of high
quality continuous professional development for all who work with
children. There will be a common language and understanding of children’s
needs. Proposed content for a common core of training for all professionals
working with children is (Para 6.41):
• Understanding the developmental nature of childhood.
• Parents, parenting and family life.
• Managing transitions.
• Understanding child protection.
• Understanding risk and protective factors.
• Listening to and involving children and young people.
Government welcomes views on whether these headings are broadly right
and how they might best ensure that training for different professional
groups develops a shared understanding of the relevant issues.
Health
visitors, children’s nursing and midwifery (Para 6.43): The
Chief Nursing Officer will undertake a review of the contribution
that health visitors and other nurses and midwives can make to children
at risk in the light of the Green Paper and their wider public health
and health care responsibilities
Child
and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) (Para 6.45): The Government will
develop a coherent multi-agency strategy for mental health skill development
within all children’s agencies. It will address the continuing
and additional training needs of the CAMHS workforce, including from
all those agencies that make up a comprehensive CAMHS service, and
the development of new career pathways.
Delivery
The initial phase of work will be completed by Spring 2004. Key steps
include:
• An assessment of present and future demand and need
• A clear and accurate assessment of employment patterns and
the skills required for work in this sector
• Assessment of skills supply and demand
• Development of a strategy for skills in this sector
• Development of a targeted recruitment campaign, specifically
designed for this sector
• Review of occupational standards and skills development provision,
the identification of significant gaps and action to fill these
• Commissioning high quality training provision where the market
is currently not providing this
• Work with employers and staff to consider how a new approach
to pay could address current problems and support desired changes
Development
of Sector Skills Council
The Children‘s Workforce Unit will work with all the relevant
key partners to establish a Sector Skills Council (SSC) for Children
and Young People’s Services. SSCs are UK-wide bodies. (Para
6.50) Government intends to prioritise work on professions linked
to children’s social work, but a Children and Young People’s
Services SSC will also need to cover the wider children’s workforce,
from early years right through to Connexions and youth work. One key
role would be to encourage new models of training, and promote the
highest quality, as responsive as possible to the employer and customer
rather than institutional priorities. This might in due course be
secured by direct funding of professional courses (Para 6.51).
Consultation
Questions – Chapter 6
Views are invited on proposals set out in this chapter. In particular:
• What are the priorities that the workforce reform strategy
should tackle to improve recruitment, retention and incentives for
those working with children?
• Should all those working with children share a common core
of skills and knowledge?
• Should there be a common qualifications structure for all
those in key roles working with children? If so, which roles should
it cover?
The
Green paper also contains a ‘Timetable for Action on Information
Sharing’ which relates to the proposals in Chapter 4.
Published
alongside the Green Paper are:
‘Keeping Children Safe’ – the response to the
Victoria Climbie Inquiry
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters/pdfs/KeepingChildrenSafe.pdf
‘Youth
Justice – the next steps’ (Home Office)
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters/pdfs/youth-justice-english.pdf
Regulatory
Impact Assessment on the Green Paper
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters/ria.shtml
Social
Exclusion Unit Report ‘Raising the Educational Attainment of
Children in Care’
www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk
Policy and Innovation Department, National Children’s Bureau
9 September 2003
