Question: The government will shortly publish its bill on child protection. What are your hopes on what it will contain?

Anne Longfield: We hope that the government will not only make significant progress around tightening up child protection procedures, but will also signal a much more extensive move towards integrating other services for children and families.

We were very pleased to see the Green Paper "Every Child Matters" take a broad view of services and support for children and young people, and we hope that the government press on with this agenda through this forthcoming legislation. We want to see a really robust approach to bringing services, funding and professions together and orientating them around the needs of the child and their family.

We believe that proposals informed by this would acknowledge both the need for strong reforms in the child protection field in response to the Climbie case, as well as the benefits of much broader and more fundamental change.

Question: So what are the potential benefits of these integrated services for children and families?

Anne Longfield: Evidence and experience demonstrates that children and their parents benefit most when the services and support that they receive are joined up, co-located and working together.

Everyone knows that in the past this has rarely been the reality. Too often services operate within artificial and sectoral boundaries that treat the same children in vastly different ways. The result has too often been that children and their parents get passed between different services or left to fall between them altogether.

Our core belief is that in every community there should be consistent and reliable places for children to be able to play and get the support they need and be looked after when their parents aren’t there.

These are just the basic things that every community needs. This provision could be delivered through a children’s centre or an extended school programme or an after-school club. Whichever way, every community needs this support and our mission is to get to the stage where this is part of the normal and natural community landscape.

Question: What has been obstructing the introduction of joined-up services?

Anne Longfield: The main obstacle to joining up provision is the different starting points and objectives of the different services and professions that support children.

Some strategies and agendas start from a social service or interventionist basis, other from an educational or careers background and still more from a play and leisure perspective. And that is to name just a few.

The impact of this situation is that from these initial policy rationales, come a whole raft of different practical approaches towards children and different ways of describing and talking about children’s needs.

Added to this, there are also a huge range of different funding streams, different outcome measures and different timescales.

In terms of funding, you’ve got different allocations of money coming from the government and from the lottery for child care, for study support, for out of school activities, for Connexions, for crime reduction programmes - often targeting the same children but with different objectives, starting points and professional cultures..

But of course for the children and young people themselves, they want somewhere to go and play with friends, somewhere they feel safe, and somewhere to take part in enjoyable activities and get the help, support or advice they need. But for too many, they just don’t get this at the moment.

Question: Does 4Children have experience of developing joined up services?

Anne Longfield: Yes, there are good models of joined up services delivering benefits. There are just not enough of them.

An important example is the Extended Schools concept. This is where schools extend the services they offer to become genuine community resources beyond the school day and throughout the year.

Another example is children’s centres where children can go before and after school to play, interact, learn and be safe. Where these receive proper support and funding they can become as reliable and important as the local primary school or the local GP surgery.

Children’s centres can provide a whole range of activities for children that link to the school curriculum, as well as being the base for co-ordinating and planning a whole range of community services.

We do not need to be prescriptive about what these centres offer and do; they can adapt to the needs for their local area. But it is fairly obvious that there will always be a need for good quality childcare, there will always be a need for places for children to play safely, and will always be a need for interventionist services for children in particular need.

And from all this follows our argument that we need a children’s centre in every area.

Question: The government has recently announced a pilot scheme in East London where schools will finish at lunchtime. What are your thoughts on this?

Anne Longfield: My ten year old was absolutely delighted - he came running in to tell me!

I think that this and similar pilot schemes have much potential in terms of enhancing the benefits of both formal and informal models of learning, but there are some possible concerns about the implications for working parents.

If you look at the education systems in Scandinavia, there are considerable differences in comparison with the UK. They are synthesising both formal and informal education and play throughout the school day - as well as starting children in formal education much later interestingly.

This mix of activities and experiences can be very positive for children in terms of both their social and cognitive development.

However, there are potentially some practical difficulties if any changes involved ending the compulsory school day much earlier than now.

It could potentially be a nightmare for working parents if the informal, possibly optional, activities take place after lunchtime say - rather than mingling different types of learning throughout the day.

Many parents and carers who are working, even those working part-time, already struggle to fit their hours around the school day. Given that today the majority of parents of school aged children now work, there is potentially a huge childcare issue. If informal learning and play in the afternoon is to be optional it could be a real headache for parents looking for childcare in the afternoon.

However, these concerns should not prevent us looking at the benefits of mixing formal and informal learning, and pilots are a sensible way of assessing the impact of such reforms.

Question: You have recently changed your name and broadened your policy agenda - what are the challenges ahead for 4Children?

Anne Longfield: This is a very exciting time for us as we have just launched a radical new policy agenda for children and families, along with our new name and identity as 4Children. Building on all our experience as Kids’ Clubs Network, we will continue to put children and families at the heart of what we do.

Whilst we have broadened our remit to see the needs and interests of children in their entirety, continuing to champion out of school provision will be a big priority for us. We have been campaigning on a policy document called "Next Steps" for a number of years, and we have set out how we can move towards achieving 20,000 out of school clubs by 2010; the equivalent of one at or near every school in the country.

We will also continue to campaign and lobby on better provision for older children. Our Make Space campaign, which aims to see 3,000 modern out of school clubs for teenagers created by 2015, is really gaining momentum. We are working with people in their communities to help them get funding and develop what they do.

Moving the agenda forward, we are also pressing both locally and nationally to develop and extend the children’s centre model. On a practical level we are working with schools to help them provide childcare, and with local authorities to develop children’s centres - especially looking towards centres that cater for children of all ages.

At present, the government programme for children’s centres is based around provision for under fives only. Whilst positive intervention in the early years is obviously crucial, we want children’s centres to support young people right through to when they are 16. So we will continue to lobby nationally on this issue and work with local authorities who want to develop this broader model.

We have been campaigning heavily in the run up to this year’s spending review to ensure that the government continues its investment in childcare. We have been pressing the Treasury to recognise value of investment, including of course, the long term pay off for society in both social and economic terms.

Additionally, we will be communicating our agenda for children and families throughout the year through a number of programmes and activities.

For instance, we’ve got a week of activities planned for June which will be all about encouraging children to speak up about what they want and the things that are important to them. "Shout Out Week" will be a really exciting opportunity for children to have their views heard. We will also be holding a conference on childhood in the summer that will highlight a number of the key policy debates.

This evolving agenda will link into our broader remit and new name as 4Children - which is all about putting the spotlight on children and childhood. We believe that as a society, we are really failing significant to care properly for our youngest citizens. We need a whole new approach and attitude to children that is about valuing them as individuals and supporting them as they grow up.

Our key message is that we need to move beyond just intervening when things go wrong, towards a situation where a universal framework for all children, in every community. Developing trusted and reliable support that becomes a natural part of everyday life will help to prevent many problems and damaging situations for children from arising.

This is our core aim, and we believe that developing a children’s centres in every community, along with a more integrated workforce and funding arrangement throughout the country is integral to pushing this agenda forward.