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Minister for Young People Paul Boateng has launched an attack on social services, dismissing as "fanciful" the idea that they should have a key role in administering the new government fund for services to support vulnerable children.

Speaking to Community Care, Boateng, who heads the new Children and Young People’s Unit, said social service departments had "let down children year and year upon year". He also ridiculed social services’ ability to work in partnership with other local agencies, and said the government would be setting up new local partnership organisations to administer the £380 million allocated by the treasury for preventive services aimed at 13-year-olds.

"I can remember it being a real issue to get social services and those responsible for children in care to attend parents’ days. They wouldn’t do it."

Boateng also said he wasn’t looking to deliver the fund through existing children’s service planning frameworks, although he had asked the National Family and Parenting Institute to examine how children’s services plans are working. "Make no bones about it, we’re not going to hang around with the children’s fund. We are getting this underway and we will be looking to local partnerships to be developed to enable us to get that money spent where it can do the most good."

The £380 million is part of the £450 million children’s fund announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in the July spending review. The remaining £70 million is to be distributed directly to community organisations through a network of regional children’s funds controlled by a voluntary sector organisation.

The Children and Young People’s Unit is due to be formally launched at a conference in November. Although Boateng is responsible for it, the unit, and its budget, are based in the Department for Education and Employment. It is to be led by a cabinet committee chaired by Gordon Brown.

Boateng also talked about government’s role in influencing people’s personal and family lives. People have a responsibility to care for their ageing parents when they became vulnerable, he said. Governments’ have an interest in "promoting strong, cohesive and stable families". "The evidence shows that marriage works best in terms of providing a stable context within which to bring up children."

A full transcript of the interview with Paul Boateng will appear on the Community Care website on Thursday 19 October.