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Presentation to NAVCA Conference 30th March 2009
Every Child Matters
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What is it?

• Every Child Matters (ECM) is the overarching
  government approach to the well being of children
  and young people from birth to 19. In 2003 Tony
  Blair summarised the intentions as a range of
  measures to reform and improve childrens care
  crucially, for the first time requiring local
  authorities to bring together in one place under
  one person services for children, and at the same
  time suggesting real changes in the way those we
  ask to do this work carry out their tasks on our
  and our childrens behalf.

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Why was this change needed?
The key driver for change was the report of Lord
Lamings inquiry into the death of Victoria
Climbié, who died at the age of eight, after
suffering months of abuse from her carers, an
aunt and her partner. Laming made 108
recommendations to improve the safeguarding of
children, many related to better quality
guidance, training and practice. He said that it
was not possible to separate the protection of
children from wider support for families. The
report also coincided with the interest the
government was already showing in family support.
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The Laming Inquiry messages

• The need to identify and keep track of
  vulnerable children
• Improvements in identifying and recognising
  child abuse
• Services must be ethically aware and sensitive
  to cultural issues
• There must be greater consistency and clarity of
  response from agencies with protection
  responsibilities
• Better information sharing and communication
  across different agencies
• Need for common assessment frameworks across
  different agencies
• Structural changes to the way child protection
  services are defined, organized, resourced and
  delivered

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Laming messages continued..

• The need for new processes of inspection,
  monitoring and accountability
• Need to improve the effectiveness of
  inter-agency working and training
• The law on private fostering should be reviewed
• Case conferences should focus on establishing
  agreed plans to safeguard and promote the welfare
  of the child
• The Child Protection Register should be replaced
  with a more effective system
• The need for a Childrens Commissioner for
  England.

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Consultation Green Paper
The Government published a consultation green
paper in 2003 and the governments response was
to this consultation was issued in 2004 Every
Child Matters The Next Step. Paulo Ennels, the
then chief executive of the National Childrens
Bureau said of the programme this isnt an
agenda that the government has dreamed up and
imposed on us from on high this was designed by
the sector by children, young people and their
parents. Its early days but the direction of
travel is right.
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The Five ECM outcomes

• From the consultation it appeared that five
  things mattered most to children and young
  people. These were
• Being healthy enjoying good physical and mental
  health and living a healthy lifestyle
• Staying safe being protected from harm and
  neglect
• Enjoying and achieving getting the most out of
  life and developing the skills for adulthood
• Making a positive contribution being involved
  in the community and society and not engaging in
  anti-social or offending behaviour
• Economic well-being not being prevented by
  economic disadvantage from achieving their full
  potential in life.

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Key dates
November 2004 Publication of Every Child
Matters Change for Children March 2005
Childrens Commissioner for England, Professor Al
Aynsley-Green appointed June 2005 Publication
of Extended Schools Prospectus setting out the
services that all children should be able to
access through schools by 2010 2008 All local
authorities to have in place a director of
childrens services and a designated lead member
of childrens services End 2008 Every local
authority to have operational index in place
enabling practitioners to find out who else is
involved with the child they are working
with 2010 All children offered access to
extended services
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Childrens Trust and Extended Schools
Locally two key approaches Childrens Trusts -
set up to enable better multi-agency working
centred on an educational hub to ensure
wrap-around care for children and young people,
whether academic, social or health-related, from
birth to adulthood. Extended Schools - Because
of the importance of schools in childrens and
young peoples lives the decision was made to
centre services around them, drawing in health
and social care agencies. Plus.. in relation to
the Staying Safe outcome Local Safeguarding
Children Boards were set up
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Local Safeguarding Children Board
Their role is prevention as well as child
protection These have a requirement to
investigate all childrens deaths in their area,
including accidental deaths, in order to prevent
future deaths 2006 fourth version of Working
Together to Safeguard Children was published
LSCBs subject to inspection and review to see how
well childrens services are working together
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Implementing ECM Intergrated working and pooled
resources
The role of the Local Authority is to facilitate
and support the development of integrated,
coherent and targeted services for children and
young people based on co-operation between
agencies with a duty to co-operate. These duty
to co-operate agencies are legally required to
work together and if necessary pool their
resources. All services should be based on the
identified needs of children and young people
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Implementing ECM Supplementry guidance
Since the first Every Child Matters documents
were produced there has been a continuous stream
of supplementary ones. Most important are those
which relate to different services. Each of the
following have their own Every Child Matters
Change for Children guidance Eg. the health
service schools social care the criminal
justice system young people and drugs. In 2004
legislation was passed in the form of a new
Children Act to enable many of the issues raised
to become legal requirements
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Making ECM legal The Childrens Act 2004

• An Act to make provision for the establishment
  of a Childrens Commissioner to make provision
  about services provided to and for children and
  young people by local authorities and other
  persons to make provision in relation to Wales
  about advisory and support services relating to
  family proceedings to make provision about
  private fostering, child minding and day care,
  adoption review panels, the defence of reasonable
  punishment, the making of grants as respects
  children and families, child safety orders, the
  Childrens Commissioner for Wales, the
  publication of material relating to children in
  certain legal proceedings and the disclosure by
  the Inland Revenue of information relating to
  children.
• 15th November 2004

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The Childrens Act 2004 (contd..)
The Act forms the legal backbone for the national
strategy aimed at improving the lives of children
and should ensure more integrated services and
enhanced multidisciplinary working. It also
means that England has a Childrens Commissioner
with responsibility for services provided for
children and charged with ensuring that children
have a voice. The responsibility includes
arrangements to safeguard and promote the
well-being of all children, but particularly the
most vulnerable who may otherwise be unable to
make their views known. It is the legal
framework to facilitate a programme of change
over 10 years.
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What did it replace?
The 2004 Act built on and extended the 1989
Children Act. It was much stronger than the
previous Act because it made many more activities
legal requirements.
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The Childrens Act 1989
The basic, underpinning principles of this Act
which came into force on October 14, 1991
include The childrens interests are to be
paramount, the childs voice heard, and the
childs background (linguistic, cultural,
religious, racial, etc.), gender, age or
special needs to be taken into account Services,
both statutory and voluntary, are to support
families, which are believed, in the UK, to be
the best context for childrens upbringing A new
legal concept of parental responsibility is
established, and The different agencies within
local authorities and the community and voluntary
organisations, must work together to provide
effective services for children and their
families. The Act made legal history in that it
was the first piece of legislation to draw
attention to the duties of parents, rather than
simply reinforcing their rights over their
children. It also broke new ground in
integrating early years provision (day care) and
more general parent-child relationships,
especially those associated with divorce.
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ECM an Update
The Protection of Children in England A Progress
Report, was commissioned by the Childrens
Secretary Ed Balls in November 2008 and looks at
Childrens Services across England.
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The Protection of Children in England A
Progress Report
In his report,Lord Laming recognises that Every
Child Matters is the right framework for
safeguarding children, but that more must now be
done to ensure that it is implemented in practice
to provide the best quality care and protection
for every child at the front door of each of the
key services.
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Key Message from the report
A major change in the training and professional
development of social workers including a greater
focus on practical skills and specialist training
at the end of the first year of study Department
of Health prioritise recruiting and training more
health visitors to support very young
children. The staffing, training and status of
police child protection teams should be addressed
by the Home Office Ministry of Justice take
action to reduce the length of time taken to
complete court processes in care cases and review
the increases in court fees made last year
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Key Message from the report (contd..)
More is done to ensure children and young people
get support as early as possible to prevent
problems escalating and creating a risk of
serious harm A programme of management training
for key personnel in all of the main services in
order to ensure that these organisations are led
by strong, confident and able managers with a
clear understanding of their responsibilities
towards vulnerable children Steps are taken to
ensure that all professionals involved in keeping
a child safe share information, assess risk, and
make decisions effectively together to keep
children safe Systems are put in place to ensure
that GPs and Accident and Emergency staff have
the right information and training to identify
and protect a child they fear may be at risk,
especially across organisational boundaries A
greater focus on the skills and experience of
inspectors who evaluate frontline services which
aim to keep children safe The Serious Case
Review process is revised so that it supports
swift, effective learning of lessons when a child
suffers serious harm, and Ofsted inspect Serious
Case Reviews on how well they learn these
lessons.
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