Impact of Every Child Matters not yet clear, says social care leader

Impact of Every Child Matters not yet clear, says social care leader

The jury is out on whether the Every Child Matters agenda is narrowing inequalities between disadvantaged children, like those in poverty, care or custody, and their peers, a social care leader has claimed.

Andrew Cozens, strategic adviser, children, adults and health services, at the Improvement and Development Agency, said that it was too soon to judge whether the government’s efforts to make children’s services more integrated, child-centred and strategically planned had cut inequalities, as the government intends.

He said: “[The evidence] is not coming through so that politicians can pick up on positive national trends [in cutting inequalities].”

He added that the Local Government Association was commissioning work on identifying good practice nationally on narrowing gaps, but warned: “If Every Child Matters raises the game overall and doesn’t reduce disadvantages, an awful lot of effort would have gone into creating an infrastructure that would have left the basic inequalities in place.”

Cozens will be discussing this and other issues at a Communinty Care conference on integrating children’s services through joint commissioning in central London on 29 June.

Book your place to hear Cozens and leaders from central and local government, the NHS and the voluntary sector examine progress on Every Child Matters.

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