Children's Trusts will help to deliver better services and outcomes for children, young people and their families. Children's Trusts are the government's preferred model for achieving local integration.

Children's Trusts integrate local education, social care and some health services for children and young people. Trusts can also include Connexions, Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) and Sure Start local programmes. Other local partners may include: housing, leisure services, the Police, youth justice, independent sector organisations such as voluntary organisations, and community sector organisations such as churches.

It is proposed that by 2006 most Local Authorities (LAs) should have a Children's Trust. These will normally be led through a Local Authority.

A Children's Trust will have three core features:

• clear short and long term objectives covering the five green paper outcome areas of: enjoying and achieving, staying safe, being healthy, making a positive contribution, and economic wellbeing.
• a Director of Children's Services is in overall charge of delivering these outcomes and is responsible for services within the Trust and coordination of services outside the organisation.
• A single planning and commissioning function supported by pooled budgets. This would involve developing an overall picture of children's needs within an area, and developing provision through public, private, voluntary and community providers to respond to those needs. The Trust should involve children and families in putting together the picture of their needs and in designing the services to meet those needs.

Children's Trusts will develop the following key characteristics:

• co-located services such as Children's Centres and extended schools.
• multi-disciplinary teams and a key worker system.
• common assessment framework (CAF) across services.
  information-sharing systems across services so that warning signs are aggregated, and children's outcomes are measured across time.
• joint training with some identical modules so that staff have a single message about key policies and procedures such as child protection and can learn about each other's roles and responsibilities.
• effective arrangements for safeguarding children.
• arrangements for addressing interface issues with other services, such as services to parents with mental health problems.