Total commitment - the future of public services?

摘要

It's always raining in Wigan, right? Yet despite arriving during the inevitable winter downpour, I find there is a warming glow emanating from one corner of this Lancastrian town which, like many former mill and mining areas, is now characterised by pockets of embedded unemployment, poverty and low aspiration.Under the banner of the CLG's Total Place programme, councils, their strategic partners and local health and education bodies across the Manchester city-region (including Wigan MBC) have joined forces to trial a new system designed to tackle some of these social ills at their very root: 'wraparound' children's services, including tightly co-ordinated schooling.