On 11 December Ed Balls launched the Children's Plan, a ten-year vision to improve schools and a step change in the way parents and families are supported to deal with the new challenges faced by young people in the 21st century. The plan can be downloaded from the DCSF website.

A national Parents' Panel will be created to advise the government on children, young people and family policy. Government will also do more to ensure services work with fathers not just mothers. Key points that affect our sector include:

• Funding over the next three years for each local authority to provide two expert parenting advisers. These experts will build on the network of Respect parenting advisers, and work through extended schools. They will focus on supporting parents to help each other.
• A key worker approach for the neediest families will be piloted. New Family Pathfinders will be delivered, building on the existing Family Intervention Project model.
• Greater contact between schools and parents, including: home-school contracts; more support at transition stages; Parents Councils; extension of the Parent Support Advisers programme. Funding over the next three years to provide more family learning.
• Schools, Sure Start centres, midwives, GPs, youth centres and youth offending teams are to work more closely, to spot problems early and support families. Sure Start outreach programmes are to be improved and expanded so that each centre in a disadvantaged area has a minimum of two outreach workers.
• A national telephone helpline service for parents will be developed called Parent Know-How. A pilot of intensive phone-based support from trained parenting experts will also take place, with the aim of reaching up to 10,000 parents over three years.
• The development of a national Parents’ Charter to describe the minimum level of support all parents can expect from their local authority.
• Work will be launched on how better to support parents and children during and after family breakdown. This will include Sure Start staff trained to support parental relationships at the time of a child’s birth.