Developing Preventative Practices: The Experiences of Children, Young People and their families in the Children's Fund

Abstract

The Children's Fund was set up in 2000, in part as a catalyst to move forward interagency co-operation and child and family-led preventative services in local authorities. The initiative will run until 2008 and have total funding of £960m over the life of the programme. It is, therefore, part of a long-term strategy aimed at strengthening communities and families as places where children and young people can develop as healthy, responsible and engaged citizens. The initiative targets children and young people aged five to 13 years who are considered to be at risk of social exclusion in 149 partnership arrangements across all 150 local authorities in England. The National Evaluation of the Children's Fund (NECF) was commissioned in late 2002 and ran until March 2006. The NECF was co-ordinated by the University of Birmingham & Institute of Education. The evaluation examined the structures, processes and outcomes of the Children's Fund. The evaluation has generated a series of reports. 'Developing Preventative Practices: The Experiences of Children, Young People and their families in the Children's Fund' aims to address the overarching question of which Children's Fund practices and approaches promote good outcomes for children and young people and support their pathways to inclusion. The report uses the concepts of risk, resilience and protection to understand the responses of children and families to the services provided by the Children's Fund and the immediate impact these services have made on their lives, The report also begins to locate these experiences within some broader notions of social exclusion and inclusion in order to reflect on how learning from the Children's Fund might be taken forward.