Social exclusion strategy launched by Hilary Armstrong

Social exclusion minister Hilary Armstrong today launched the government’s action plan to tackle social exclusion among groups including children in care, teenage parents and people with mental health problems

Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion promises better identification of problems and earlier intervention, and the promotion of multi-agency working.

As part of the plan, the government will set up 10 parenting support projects, led by health services, targeting families of children from pre-birth until aged two.

The government also hopes to develop more personalised services for children in care by extending the use of budget-holding lead professionals.

And it will publish a revised teenage pregnancy strategy targeting areas where there has been little progress in reducing teenage pregnancies.

In her foreword to the action plan, which is backed by several government departments, Armstrong said the current “one size fits all” delivery of public services was not working for the most disadvantaged people, so services needed to be more personalised.

The plan is published days after social work leaders told Community Care of their concerns  over the government’s plans for more early identification of children from “dysfunctional” families.