It is based on a set of standards it expects all children's services to reach over a 10-year period. These are:
- Promoting health and well being, identifying needs and intervening early through a co-ordinated programme of action.
- Parents receive the information, service and support to ensure their children have optimum life chances and are healthy and safe.
- Child, Young Person and Family-Centred services are co-ordinated around their individual and family needs and take account of their views.
- All young people have access to age-appropriate services, responsive to their specific needs.
- Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people, where services address their identified needs.
- All children and young people have access to appropriate advice and effective services, which address their health, social, educational and emotional needs throughout the their illness.
- Children and young people receive high quality, evidence-based hospital care, developed through clinical governance and delivered in appropriate settings.
- Disabled children and young people receive co-ordinated, high quality child and family-centred services based on assessed needs. Enabling them and their families to live as close to ordinary lives as possible, promoting social inclusion.
- Children and families have access to timely, integrated, high quality multidisciplinary mental health services to ensure effective assessment, treatment and support.
- Children and young people have access to safe and effective medicines that are prescribed on the basis of the best available evidence.
- Women have easy access to supportive, high quality maternity services, designed around theirs and their baby's individual needs.
It gives children and families an active role in deciding their care. This will require partnerships between services, allowing early intervention as well as preventative services.
Focus is put on achieving those standards but in a local way - national targets are reduced to enable PCTs and Local Authorities to set local targets in response to local needs. Newly acknowledged quality standards should be reached with a framework showing direction for development.
Certain children (eg looked after children, homeless, teenage parents, youth offenders) get lost in the system and it is this that increases health inequalities. The Children's NSF suggests partnership working, and referencing these as Children in Special Circumstances (CISC).
Staff shortages in many parts of the country are one factor influencing workforce modernisation and role redesign. As well as the strong evidence that multi agency and disciplinary team working is more effective than single agencies, especially in combating social exclusion.
