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Several new policy initiatives affecting children and their families emerged from the Conservative Party annual conference in October, with the emphasis on charitable rather than state provision.

Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin proposed a new approach to the problem of hard drugs, identifying children and young people who are on heroin or cocaine and giving them the choice of treatment or prosecution. He said that the parents of "messed up" four and five year olds needed help to be better parents based on "sound common sense".

He said programmes run by Stephen Scott and Carole Sutton, in London and Leicester, had been "spectacularly successful".

"We need to make these programmes available nationwide - not through an army of social workers, but through voluntary and charitable organisations." And he pointed to the work of the charity, the Centre for Adolescent Rehabilitation, in helping young offenders straight from custody and reducing reconviction rates. It involved "not just a period of incarceration but a long period beyond of active rehabilitation and reform," Letwin said.

Shadow work and pensions secretary David Willetts pledged to end the Conservative Party’s war on lone parents.

But like Letwin, Willetts was anxious to promote the role of the voluntary sector in taking over some public service provision. Charities were the "real heroes", he said.

Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said the party, if elected, would introduce a voluntary sector bill to break down bureaucratic constraints on the sector.