The Children's Fund is a central part of the Government's agenda for children and families and aims to make a real difference to the lives of children and young people aged 5 - 13 years who are at risk of social exclusion. It is managed within the Directorate for Children, Young People and Families which is part of the Department for Education and Skills.

The emphasis is on the development and provision of preventative services that are 'joined-up' through effective multi-agency working.

It is hoped that through this work children and young people will grow up:

• healthy
• emotinally secure and confident
• having succeeded at school and stayed out of trouble
• living in a safe place
• having had the opportunity to succeed in achieving their dreams

The key objectives for the Fund are:

1. To ensure that there is an agreed programme of effective interventions that pick up on early signs of difficulty, identify needs and introduce children, young people and their families to appropriate services, ensuring:

• close and co-operative working between relevant agencies
• clear responsibility for the management of each child's or family's involvement
• services are sufficiently flexible and accessible to ensure informal and self-referrals

2. To ensure that children and young people who have experienced early signs of difficulties receive appropriate services in order to gain maximum life-chance benefits from education, health and social care and to ensure good outcomes by:

• increasing provision of the right kind of preventative services that will combat problems before they escalate
• ensuring services are accessible to those most in need
• actively involving children, young people and families as service users in planning and delivering services and creating individual packages of support
• empowering children, young people, families and communities to take responsibility and control of solutions for themselves.

The Children's Fund is recognised as developing good practice in the commissioning of preventative services and as such is expected to have a key role in the development of Children's Trusts.