In March 2007, the DCSF produced the Every Parent Matters agenda for parents, carers and families. It aims to promote the development of services for parents and recognises that parents, carers and families are the most important influences to children and young people. The government is working hard to make sure that parents and families have access to all the support, advice and guidance that they need from 0-19 years. Our partnership has welcomed this report and has now made parents and families our main focus for development and will constantly be updating this section with the rapid changes.

FAMILY LEARNING

It is an important aspect of our Children's centres (see section 'Under 8's') are accessible right across Northumberland and offer a coherent set of services both to support parents and families, to involve you properly at all stages of a child's learning and development.

There is now also a service directory which is full of information on where you can access activities, support and workshops.

Visit http;//northumberland.childrensservicedirctory.org.uk

Watch this space for the new Parenting Strategy soon to be published in its final draft.

There is more specialised targeted support at a local level to met the needs of families and communities facing additional difficulties which we will aim to signpost you to as we here about them.

The Change for Children programme is aimed at increasing access to more multi-agency services including children's centres, extended services, multi-agency teams. There is a lot of evidence of good practice within our partnership that shows this partnership working provides better information and support for parents and carers.