The Early Intervention Foundation's (EIF) aspiration to end late intervention should be accompanied by research into residential options for children....
Public money is needed in developing early intervention. It is predicated on saving money in the longer term. It needs to be made now.
If we are to succeed in our current rethinking of how we meet the needs of young people in need we should adjust our thinking about children's homes, fostering and adoption.
The message from the Early Action Task Force is loud and clear: to really make expenditure sustainable, as well as create a better society, switching more spend to early action is key.
Frank Field has hit the headlines again this week talking about how we measure poverty and improve life chances for children.
Essentially I wanted to help create a forum whereby members of the public who are predominantly members of no political party, could get together and have their say on "big issues" facing them, the local communities and our country.
The NHS Bill struggles on, and we will continue to fight it with every last sinew. But not everything this government will do will be as toxic, with the party or the people.
I watched intently yesterday as David Cameron announced a £450m plan to tackle Britain's worst 120,000 families. According to the Prime Minister, these families and their truancy, joblessness and anti-social behaviour cost Britain £9bn a year, and what we really need is someone to coordinate all the agencies that work with them to make them be less Shameless, more Waltons.
We want the Government as a whole to act now to mitigate the risk of failing to maintain investment in early intervention, which could ultimately lead to greater longer term problems, such as more children being taken into care. By planning carefully, and involving the voluntary sector in ensuring money given to local authorities for early intervention schemes is spent wisely, local and national government can avoid giving with one hand and taking with the other.
As a teacher and professed literacy geek, I cannot explain how terrifyingly unambitious government approaches to raising standards in literacy can be.
