Publications

While the council role in education continues to evolve, one thing that has remained constant is the vital role that councils play in driving school improvement to ensure that children, young people and their families all have access to a good school place.

Children's centres allow families to access the help they need to handle those early challenges, help to tackle inequalities, and give children a healthy start.

Every child deserves to look forward to a bright future. For that to be the reality, we must ensure practical steps are taken to create a society where good mental health is treated as just as important as good physical health.

Councils are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of all young people in their areas. When it comes to youth justice, that responsibility means working with young people to prevent them from coming into the youth justice system in the first place, and supporting those who do to make sure it doesn’t define them, and they still have good life chances.

Case studies and practical information.

Every child deserves a good school place, but that isn’t currently available to everyone. Government rules ban councils and council-maintained schools from helping academies and free schools improve. But given their excellent track record in maintaining high educational standards and in turning around failing schools, councils need to be recognised as effective education improvement partners, ready and able to support schools of all types.

Councils only want the best for the children and young people in their communities, but many children struggle to cope with the challenges they experience. Facing continuous family violence and without recourse to adequate help when they need it, we know that some young people go on to be involved in the youth justice system.

Results from a survey of local authorities that explored recent changes by central government to both funding and policy in the early years sector. The survey focused in the cap on central spend, maintained nursery schools, early years entitlements, provision for disadvantaged children and early years practitioners.

We want all our children to have bright futures. Key to that is ensuring that they have the emotional resilience and tools to make good choices, overcome challenges and move confidently towards where they want to be in adulthood. The current system cannot deliver that – so how can we ensure that it does?

This resource pack is designed to help councillors understand what permanency is, the factors that can have an impact and the questions that will help to understand what’s working well and what could be improved.