Background

In 2003, the Government published the green paper Every Child Matters. This was designed to improve the way that people and organisations work with children and young people. It was, in part, a response to the death of Victoria Climbié following months of abuse, which the services in contact with her did not detect. The Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda aims to help services for children to work together and share information, in order to prevent cases such as that of Victoria Climbié going unnoticed.

The scope of the ECM agenda is not limited to safeguarding children, however. It also sets out a number of proposals to improve the life chances of all children – providing those at risk with the services they need and using universal services to help every child develop to their full potential.

The Children Act 2004 provided the legal framework for these reforms, creating new roles and structures to ensure that services work together, with the needs of children and young people at their heart. A range of documents have been published to provide guidance and follow through the aims of ECM, including the white paper Every Child Matters: Change for Children (2004), the green paper Youth Matters (2005) and a wealth of more specific Every Child Matters publications aimed at particular aspects of children’s services.

This section of ECM Curriculum Contributions is designed to summarise the contents of these documents and their implications. A glossary of important terms related to ECM is also provided.