Nursery World - Strategic planning: Taking the initiative (1)

Can local authorities plan integrated early years services in the face of a profusion of new Government policies? Simon Vevers reports

The Government extolled the virtues of service integration in its recent Green Paper Every Child Matters, but to early years practitioners the way in which its plethora of early years initiatives have been rolled out has often appeared anything but joined up. In spite of this contradiction, many local authorities have succeeded in forging partnerships and realising the concept of integration.

For Barbara Trevanion, assistant director for partnership and community development at Peterborough council, the secret of success is to fashion Government initiatives to meet local priorities. She says, 'When an initiative comes in we look at how it is going to help us reach our strategic aims. We try to control the initiatives rather than letting them control us.'

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