Every Child Matters

The Government's aim in Every Child Matters is for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to:

• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve economic well-being
 

Every Child Matters lays out expectations of all organisations that are involved in providing services to children to help achieve these five outcomes. It says that they must:
• Team up in new ways to better work together including creating new ways of working across the children’s workforce.
• Ensure that the child’s needs determine the help and support they get, not the needs of organisations.
• Share information about the children they are supporting and their services.
• Plan for services, delivered jointly at local level to see what works best for children and young people.

To make this happen, a series of changes have been put in place including:
• Interagency governance of children’s services at local level – children’s trusts have been created, with Directors of Children’s Services holding responsibilities previously covered by social services and education.
• Integrated strategy – ensuring that every Children’s Trust area has a children and young people’s strategic plan and also has a local children’s workforce strategy.
• Integrated processes – creating set ways of working and systems which are used by all agencies that provide services to children.
• Integrated frontline delivery – joining up services so children and families get the best possible deal and can access services in one place such as in a children’s centre.

The Government recognised that all this couldn’t happen without support for the development of the workforce, both in terms of the skills and qualifications of individuals within the workforce and also in terms of supporting more joined up working and common processes.

In response to the need to support the children’s workforce, the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) was set up in April 2005 to implement the workforce reforms in Every Child Matters

What does this mean for people working with children, young people and families?
The workforce development agenda is changing and new activities and products are being developed all the time. Many of these activities affect specific occupations, such as children’s social workers, foster carers or early years workers
 

Ensuring the voluntary and community sector (VCS) is not left behind: CWDC wants to work closely with local infrastructure organisations (LIOS) to ensure that all those working with children and young people know about the workforce reform agenda and is supported in making the changes needed to their skills, awareness, knowledge and working practices.We want the children, young people and families who receive services from voluntary and community groups to continue to get quality services.
 

CWDC also understands that many local VCS organisations that provide services to children, young people and families also provide many other services on a day-to-day basis and so may not see themselves as part of the children’s workforce. This means they might not be linked into their local children’s trust or specific children’s networks and may not hear about the workforce reform agenda.

(Information kindly reproduced from NACVA Briefting) 

For more information about Every Child Matters and other key agendas/issues that are important to developing  children and young people's activities please see the attached NACVA Children & Young People's Information pack