The Government's Action Plan for Children and Adolescents 1997-1998 was intended to initiate new institutional developments that, in strengthening attention to the issues of childhood and adolescence, would make it produce concrete regulatory, administrative and cultural policies.

A policy for children demands a number of major reforms: the education systems, the framework law on social services, support for family responsibilities, adjusting working time to accommodate time for care and family. This initial Action Plan indicates the short-term and medium-term priorities for action.

A significant part of the Plan is occupied by preventive policies, understood both in a general perspective (prevention of distress in children and promotion of well-being) and in a specific perspective (e.g. preventing abuse, etc.).