Written question asked by Kali Mountford (Labour) on Monday, 22 May 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 25 May 2006. It was answered by Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Labour) on Thursday, 25 May 2006 on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills.

Children's Directors

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what guidance he has issued to children's directors on co-ordination of their different policy responsibilities.

Answer: There has been guidance since 2004 when ‘Every child matters: change for children’ was published along with a joint DH/DfES publication on supporting local delivery. The White Paper ‘Our health our care, our say’ (January 2006) set out expectations for joint working between PCTs, GPs and children's trusts, including commissioning of services, local area agreements, delivery through multi-disciplinary networks and teams, performance assessment and alignment of planning and finance cycles for PCTs and local authorities. Guidance for practitioners and managers is also kept up to date.Communications with local authorities are coordinated through a communications gateway which significantly contributes to the coherence of communications to local authorities.

Secondary information