Groups unite to bat for children’s needs

An alliance to put the needs of children at the heart of the care system was launched this week.

The Alliance for Child-Centred Care aims to work with local authorities and young people to build examples of good practice and wants to influence social work training, inspection and national policy.

It builds on the 2004 Blueprint report on child-centred care, published by Voice for the Child in Care and the National Children’s Bureau, which recommended that the interests of the child should be put ahead of those of agencies and the adults around them.

The Who Cares? Trust, Fostering Network and A National Voice are among the other organisations that have joined the alliance. Education secretary Ruth Kelly and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service have pledged their backing.

John Kemmis, chief executive  of Voice for the Child in Care, said the alliance aimed to “change what seems a bureaucratic, insensitive system in which adults are concerned with structures rather than the child in the middle of it”.