Joined-up policy making: Lessons from the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy 1998-2010

The Starmer government came to office pledging to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’ and to embed a greater focus on prevention in healthcare and supporting services – goals similar to those that underpinned the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, launched by the Blair government in 1998. Its ‘mission-led’ approach also seeks to recognise the cross-cutting nature of key policy challenges.

This case study – co-authored by IfG senior fellow Moira Wallace, who was director of the Social Exclusion Unit between 1997 and 2001, and Alison Hadley, who led the implementation of the strategy as head of the Teenage Pregnancy Unit from 2003 to 2012 – offers lessons both for cross-cutting issues in general and for the issue of teenage pregnancy and young parents in particular.