Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg recently backed early intervention when he was keynote speaker at 4Children's launch of its manifesto for children, Making Britain Great for Children and Families.

Mr Clegg told guests at the Commons reception launching the manifesto that ‘you cannot have a strong society without strong families'.

He added that ‘at a time of prolonged pressure on public spending' it was vital to ensure money ‘is used to best effect'.

The answer he said was ‘start young as the earlier the intervention the more you save.'

He also backed the idea of ‘family hubs' set up by 4Children to provide support from pregnancy through to teenage years as ‘a good example of the state aggregating itself
so it can respond to human needs.'

In cross-party support for more family-focused public services Liz Kendall, shadow care minister, told delegates that public policy ‘needs to understand family life' and that government departments were still poor at joining up' to ensure families received priority.

Claire Perry, assistant government whip, said that Whitehall departments needed to work at a ‘human scale'. The UK spends 60% of its children's services budget, or £2bn a year, on the care system with 70,000 in care but this could be reduced if troubled families had greater support before their children had to be taken into care with designated family support workers ensuring services are joined up.

This is also the basis of the community budgets programme.

4Children's manifesto calls for a new family commitment nationally and locally to include a major overhaul of support for vulnerable families with a shift to early intervention. It wants a major house building programme of affordable social housing, family friendly planning and public spaces, local children and family centres for children 0-9, universal childcare for children 0-14 and an extension of flexible working.

Its report also included new polling showing that 58% of people think that family life is harder today than it was 20 years ago and 40% believe that it will get worse for today's children.

Over a quarter of parents do not think their neighbourhood is a good place in which to grow up while 60% of those polled think the state should focus on services to families although almost half feel it does not.

The report says that children in Britain ‘fare badly' when compared to some other parts of the world with ‘unacceptable levels of poverty.'

Some 3.5m are living in poverty, 11.5% of children are starting school without essential behavioural skills, 33% who enter secondary school are overweight and over 1m in England are not in education, employment or training.