Schools will be expected to offer parenting advice, mental health clinics and youth offending workers under one roof, as part of proposals outlined today in the Government’s flagship Children’s Plan.

The plan is also likely to lead to school-based speech and language therapists, social workers and children’s health care as well as help with housing and benefits. It could also lead to police officers being permanently stationed in schools to provide positive role models and prevent antisocial behaviour.

Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, said yesterday that the ideal school of the 21st century would become a vital resource for the whole community, contributing to all aspects of children’s lives, not just their education.

“The Children’s Plan will set out what we can do to get excellent individual services – Sure Start centres and midwives, schools and GPs, youth centres and youth offending teams – working together with parents and services co-located in schools to spot problems early, tackle barriers to learning and then act effectively,” he said.

The initiative is intended to build on the government commitment for every school to offer extended services by 2010, with activities such as breakfast clubs, homework and curricular support clubs, sport, music, art and drama classes all becoming the norm.

The move coincides today with research which suggests that children from deprived areas gain the most from after-school clubs but are often excluded because they cannot afford to pay for them.

The report, from the charity New Philanthropy Capital, said that state funding often paid only for schemes to be set up and not for running costs.

The Children’s Plan has been prompted by concerns that academic progress in England’s schools has stalled, amid a more general public unease about the state of childhood in Britain, with fears about the pressures on children to grow up too fast in an increasingly menacing environment.

Central to the proposals will be a drive to help schools engage more effectively with parents, especially at secondary level. It will also suggest that parents be given a personal progress record on their child’s development from the early years to primary school.

Parents will be contacted by a staff member before their child starts secondary school and will be given regular progress reports. Parents’ councils will ensure that parents’ voices are heard at the school, while a parents’ panel will inform the Government of their views.

Mr Balls, speaking at a conference hosted by the End Child Poverty campaign, unveiled plans for an extra £90 million to be spent on respite care for disabled children and said the Government was determined to meet its 2010 target to halve child poverty.

But Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, who chairs the campaign, expressed concern that the Children’s Plan did not appear to have any new measures on child poverty. “We were devastated that the PreBudget Report cut inheritance tax to the tune of £3.6 billion instead of spending the £3.8 billion needed to hit the 2010 child poverty target. Time is slipping away and there is just one more financial year to go before we get there,” he said. “The Government has set up a child poverty unit, but my fear is that, since there is no Treasury involvement, the unit is to manage the failure to meet the 2010 target.”

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