EARLY YEARS AND PLAY

The Children's Plan extends the 15-hour free childcare entitlement to 20,000 two-year-olds in disadvantaged communities, signalling a renewed effort to reduce child poverty. Completely free childcare will be piloted for an additional 12,000 two-year-olds.

The plan promises to improve advertising and publicity about the benefits and affordability of childcare to parents, but providers say this is of little use without a sustainable marketplace to provide the care in the first place.

"Inevitably we have to come to funding," says Steve Alexander, chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance. "The reality check is what's happening in the marketplace and the question of sustainability."

The government has provided cash for workforce development, promising money to supply cover for early years workers so they can take part in training. There is also a boost for the Graduate Leader Fund.

But Maxine Hill, policy and research manager at the Daycare Trust, says: "We hope the fund will be simple for people to understand. The worst thing is having big pots of money and nobody using it."

Meanwhile, playworkers can look forward to a national play strategy, to be unveiled in summer 2008. Adrian Voce, chief executive of Play England, says playworkers have been campaigning for a strategy since 2000. "We hope the various government departments that have responsibility for public space will work together," he adds. In addition, £225m will be spent over three years to revamp 3,500 playgrounds and create 30 staff-supervised adventure playgrounds for eight- to 13-year-olds in disadvantaged areas.

HEALTH

The plan puts an emphasis on improving all aspects of child health, including developing a Children and Young Person's Health Strategy with the Department of Health (DH). But Clare Tickell, chief executive of children's charity NCH, believes for the plan to work the DH has to be fully on board: "It will only work if the DH talks seriously about the definitions of health. They need to include mental as well as physical health."

A national obesity action plan is promised in the early part of this year.

Mental health features prominently in the plan with a review of child and adolescent mental health services in the pipeline. For that to take place, Linda McQuaid, director of nursing and provider services at Sutton and Merton Primary Care Trust, says the government needs to take stock of previous cuts. "They will have to look at what's been cut and if that has affected services before they head into another review," she says.

Disabled children have also done well out of the plan, receiving almost £100m for short breaks provision and extending the Family Fund. Steve Broach, campaign manager for Every Disabled Child Matters, says: "The difference will be if we get effective services for those children who need them and also get mainstream services reaching out to children with complex needs."

SOCIAL CARE

Young carers will benefit from a number of options put forward by the plan.

Danni Manzi, development manager for specialist services at the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, says these include personal support and strengthening the relationship between children's and adult services.

The plan examines extension of the Family Pathfinder model to offer preventive support for families. "It talks about a contract between the family, key worker and agency. I think we do need to have something so they all remain committed to working with the whole family," says Manzi.

The plan also considers the work of local safeguarding children boards and how working together can help better protect the young.

YOUTH JUSTICE AND YOUTH WORK

While much of the thrust of the Children's Plan is on education, it also contains the news that the government will give youth offending teams £66m to carry on the prevention work they have been doing with young people. Mike Thomas, chair of the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers (AYM), welcomes this, having urged for the situation to be clarified since current funding is due to run out in March.

"It's good but staff have already started to leave," he says. "There wasn't a huge amount in the plan for youth justice, but then I'd expect that, with the announcement of a youth crime action plan. We're looking forward to seeing what's in that."

There is extra cash for young people in the plan. Despite pledging £60m for improvements to youth clubs in Aiming High for Young People, the plan allocates a further £160m for youth facilities over the next two years.

Susie Roberts, chief executive of the Association of Principal Youth & Community Officers, warns that cash for buildings needs to be backed up with money to staff them. "There's a need for the local authority to find ways of enabling capital investment to be maximised through appropriate revenue," she says.

One gripe Roberts does have is that the Children's Plan is not more youth work friendly. "There's a strong schools focus but we know from Ofsted and from talking to children and young people that teachers can be embarrassed to deal with sex and drugs education," she says. "Some youth services are delivering that. With the youth alcohol plan that's been announced, a lot of youth services will be saying 'we do this already, build us into the plan'."

Joyce Moseley, chief executive of youth charity Rainer, says the plan is too schools focused. "There are some serious issues there," she says. "For example, schools will be closed for the holidays and for the young people we work with and some of their parents, the school represents the authority they're bucking against."

However, Moseley welcomes the move to produce a green paper to address the resettlement of young offenders leaving custody. "We've done a lot of work around resettlement and it shows the need to have a real focus on it if you're going to do anything to improve life chances and to reduce re-offending."

JOINT WORKING

The Children's Plan promises a number of measures to improve joint working, particularly the work of children's trusts. It emphases the key role trusts play in getting services to work together and pledges a spate of revised and extra guidance ministers hope will make trusts more effective. It also says the government wants more consistency in the effectiveness of trusts.

Martin Rogers, policy consultant at the Children's Services Network - part of the Local Government Information Unit, says the plan's clear emphasis on trusts driving joint working will be useful. "The plan makes the role of local authorities as the drivers of change much clearer than in previous policies and that should help them bring these services on board," he says.

But Rogers is less convinced by ministers' desire for more consistency. "I get a bit weary of this kind of rhetoric," he says. "The idea that you can create a system where everyone has got to be as good as the best isn't realistic. There are 150 local authorities out there and it would be amazing if there weren't some inconsistencies."

The plan also ties up a number of loose ends on joint working that previous policies haven't addressed. One example is a promise for guidance to get the Building Schools for the Future programme to include spaces to allow co-location of services.

"The extended schools and Building Schools for the Future policies launched around the same time and they should have been linked up then," says Rogers. "It's good that Ed Balls has recognised this and taken steps to get these programmes working together. Better late than never."

EDUCATION

Schools are at the centre of the government's plans to transform childhood. Pilots of alternative provision such as "studio schools" will aim to address exclusion from the system. A new Youth Culture Trust will pioneer efforts to provide five hours of "cultural activity" in and out of school.

At first glance ministers appear to have listened to the concerns plaguing the testing system. The plan outlines a move to "age not stage" testing, scrapping mass testing at a particular time of year along the lines of SATS and instead testing pupils when they are ready.

But the idea already looks beset with problems.

TESTING CHANGES

Since the plan was published it has emerged that one in seven of the 411 schools due to take part in a pilot has pulled out before it has even started due to the probable impact on teachers' workloads.

"Potentially, children will be tested even more than they are now because there will be two testing windows every year," says Alison Peacock, headteacher of The Wroxham School in Hertfordshire.

With children put in for tests at different times from each other and no change to the system of league tables, there is concern the move will do little to reduce the sense of competition and the stress for both pupils and teachers that surrounds testing.

Teachers' unions have welcomed recognition by government that not all children develop at the same rate.

But, as Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, says: "The unnecessary stress and pressure caused by tests, targets, tables and inspections needs to be reviewed and league tables have to go."

More universally welcome are measures to improve the attainment of children with special educational needs (SEN). More than £100m is earmarked for this including £18m to improve teaching for SEN children and there will be an Ofsted review of SEN in 2009.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Partnership with parents is a unifying theme of the Children's Plan and there are numerous measures designed to ensure a new relationship between schools and parents including parent councils and more parent support advisers.

The Children's Plan takes the extended schools programme to another level, outlining examples of how services such as health should increasingly co-locate on school sites. But is it a step too far?

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Lenders, says schools need the full support of a range of services to enable them to focus on educating children.