Email Newsletter: 27 November 2006
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The launch of the Action Plan
Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion launched in September and
set out the Government’s renewed drive to tackle social exclusion. The
Action Plan is based on five guiding principles:
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Better identification and early intervention: we will develop and promote
better prediction tools for use by front-line practitioners such as
health visitors and community midwives.
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Identifying what works: we will explore a common approach to rating
programmes by the quality of evidence behind them and encourage the
dissemination of best practice.
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Multi-agency working: including strengthening the role of Local Area
Agreements and extending data-sharing to help the most disadvantaged.
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Personalisation, rights and responsibilities: for example, we will pilot
service delivery based on budget-holding lead professionals.
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Supporting achievement and managing underperformance: we are working
across government to ensure that the next generation of Public Service
Agreements address the needs of the most excluded.
The Action Plan launch was a success with a gathering of five ministers
from key departments at Bromley-By-Bow Children’s Centre: Hilary Armstrong,
Minister for Social Exclusion, was joined at Bromley-By-Bow Children’s
Centre by Beverley Hughes, Minister of State for Children and Families,
Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health, Ruth Kelly, Secretary of
State for Communities and Pat McFadden, Parliamentary Secretary for Social
Exclusion. The media and many care professionals attended both the launch
and the reception at Whitehall.
The Prime Minister supported the launch with a BBC
interview[No 10 website] and a speech at the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation[No 10 website].
If you require a copy of the
Social Exclusion Action Plan, you can order one by following this link.
Delivering the Action Plan
The Task Force is now working in close liaison with other Government
departments to deliver on the proposals. Activity so far includes:
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In October, the Department for Communities and Local Government launched
its local government White Paper which set out the role of local
government in tackling disadvantage.
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The Children in Care Green Paper has been published by the Department for
Education and Skills and aims to increase educational achievement and
continuity in care, partly via a focus on budget-holding lead
professionals.
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The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) extended the Teenage
Pregnancy Strategy in September with their guidance document, ‘Teenage
Pregnancy: Accelerating the Strategy to 2010’, which introduces a wider
approach to teenage pregnancy, recognising the role that underlying
causes like exclusion play.
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On 9 November the Department for Health (DH) and DfES invited
applications from primary care trusts and local authorities wanting to
become demonstration sites for the parenting support programme for at
risk families. Further information is available on the
DH website.
New Director
In addition, the former Chief Adviser on Children's Services at the
Department for Education and Skills, Naomi Eisenstadt has now been
appointed the Director of the Social Exclusion Task Force in the Cabinet
Office.
Read the full press release.
Looking forward
In the summer the Task Fforce will produce a report on progress made since
the launch of the Action Plan. Between now and then, the Task Force will
continue to engage with stakeholders, via seminars and conferences, and
will work on a review of the causes of social exclusion in order to feed in
to the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
We are committed to the idea that no-one should be left behind, unable to
take advantage of the economic growth and social progress that the majority
of us enjoy.
Contact us
We are always eager to hear from frontline professionals regarding any
aspect of our work. You can email us using this address:
setaskforce@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk.
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unsubscribe, please follow this link.
Simon Kearney-Mitchell
Social Exclusion Taskforce
