The Children's Fund is a government preventive intervention targeted at 5 -13 year olds and their families at risk of social exclusion. The initiative was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in July 2000 following a comprehensive spending review.
There are two main criteria for the Children's Fund:
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To maximise life chances for 5 - 13 year old children and young people at risk of social exclusion
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For statutory, voluntary and community sectors to work together in partnership to achieve the first criteria.
The Children's Fund sits between Sure Start which works with very young children and Connexions which supports 13 - 19 year olds. The initiative provides funding to be invested in preventive services outside the remit of mainstream statutory delivery.
The Children’s Fund is administered by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)
Principles of the Children’s Fund initiative
A preventative approach to promoting children’s well-being
The initiative is founded upon a proactive approach to promoting children’s well-being. Using established research evidence, the approach recognises the presence of both risk factors and protective factors in the lives of children. The principle is to maximise children’s exposure to protective factors and minimise their exposure to risk factors in order to secure overall improved outcomes.
Targeted at socially excluded children
The Children’s Fund is not a universal fund for all 5 to 13 year olds but is targeted at children likely to be experiencing social exclusion. As there are no nationally agreed definitions of social exclusion, the means of targeting are not prescribed; it can be at the neighbourhood level (in wards of concentrated deprivation) or at the individual level, working with identified individuals or groups of children and families.
Local implementation of effective and accessible multi-agency working
The Children’s Fund recognises the importance of flexibility in local implementation and local determination of priorities, promoting a ‘bottom up’ culture of planning and service delivery within an overarching strategic framework. It is hoped that the emergent local preventative strategy will link closely to effective pre-existing services and past traditions. There is a strong commitment to partnership between the statutory, voluntary and community sectors across the range of professions and disciplines working with children. This is underpinned by a belief that effective joint working to co-ordinate service delivery and the work of different professional groupings will avoid both the fragmentation and duplication of services for children.
Involving and consulting children
Working with children’s perspectives and views on service planning and delivery is central to the philosophy of The Children’s Fund. This approach draws on new models of children as ‘social actors’; as innovative and creative users of the world around them and as having social rights conferred upon them through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is also a strong commitment to the close involvement of parents and carers in service planning and delivery. Implicit to this is the understanding that adults can act as effective advocates for children. It is believed that sensitivity to the ‘child’s view’ will add value to the design and delivery of services and increase sustainability.
Mission Statement
The Children’s Fund is intended to provide a flexible and responsive approach to meeting needs and developing good practices for children at risk of social exclusion, supporting them and their families in breaking the cycle of poverty and disadvantage.
Overarching objective
The objective of the fund will be to provide additional resources over and above those provided through mainstream statutory, specific programmes and through the specific earmarked funding streams. It should engage and support voluntary and community organisations in playing an active part and should enable the full range of services to work together to help children overcome poverty and disadvantage.
Norfolk Children's Fund
Initially £380 million was rolled out across England over three years with funding becoming available for those areas in highest need under Wave 1 of the initiative in 2001. In January 2001 Norfolk became one of the first forty pilot areas to be invited to develop proposals to access Children’s Fund funding under Wave 1. Norfolk Children's Fund (NCF) is the only wave 1 Programme in the Eastern region.
Norfolk receives a 3 year funding allocation of £6.3 million. The first funding round terminates in March 2004. Funding rounds are linked to the 3 yearly treasury review. The last review granted a second funding round up to March 2006 at the same allocation rate.
Between 2003 and 2006, twenty five percent of the Children’s Fund service delivery will be specifically directed towards the reduction of youth crime. This particular strand of preventative work originates from the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Programme and is to be delivered in partnership with the Norfolk Youth Offending Team.
Norfolk County Council is the Accountable Body and Lead Agency for Norfolk Children's Fund. The CYPU directly control Programme delivery via a regional manager and her team who are based at Government Office for East of England in Cambridge.
The Programme operates through an overarching Partnership Board with an independent Chair. The Board is supported by 5 Local Partnership Groups; Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central (Norwich). The Norfolk Children's Fund Central Team are salaried staff who work with the Partnership to manage on an operational level.
The Norfolk Plan
Norfolk County Council was asked to develop a strategic plan for the Children's Fund locally. This had to receive direct ministerial approval before funding could be granted. The original plan was based on baseline data around children in Norfolk at risk of social exclusion, and baseline data showing poverty indices in Norfolk and how certain wards were ranked nationally.
The Partnership also chose to focus more specifically on three sub objective areas or themes that have particular relevance to Norfolk's needs:
• Rural isolation and hard to reach groups
• Family support
• Schools focussed
Interested parties from all agencies in Norfolk came together for an initial conference on the Children's Fund. A multi-agency partnership was formed, service proposals were developed of which the CYPU approved 11 for service delivery as Trailblazers. The Trailblazer services were launched in December 2001. Currently there are 52 services in place across the County with the longest running services having been in place for 22 months.
Preventive strategy/Green paper reforms
The national directive for local areas to develop a Preventive Strategy for children and young people at risk of social exclusion 0-19 implies that the Norfolk Children’s Fund itself will be required to ‘join-up’ with other key agencies and partners in the region to take forward a higher-level strategy.
At a recent national Children's Fund conference (October 8th 2003), Margaret Hodge Minister of State for Children and Young People indicated that the Children's Fund would form an integral part of the future Children's Trusts, this view was supported by the Director of the CYPU Althea Efunshile.
Nicky Dawson
Norfolk Children's Fund Programme Manager
