“GORDON Brown commits to immediate action on knife crime” was one of many of headlines prompted by the appalling number of recent stabbings among young people, and the launch of the headline-grabbing Youth Crime Action Plan.

By 2010 the plan aims to cut the number of 10 to 17- year-olds entering the criminal justice system by a fifth. But while the media has concentrated on ridiculing the idea that young criminals should tour casualty departments in meet-the- victim exercises, there was a much less publicised and more interesting health content in the action plan.

It proposes that permanent exclusion from school should trigger an automatic and comprehensive assessment of needs. More than one in 50 children are currently excluded temporarily or permanently. Exclusion can set up a negative spiral of failing academic achievement, which too often ends with criminality. But these children - which is what they are, not thugs - are not irredeemably bad. It is we who have failed them, not they us.

Research is increasingly revealing that many of these children have specific mental health problems, such as deficits in social intelligence and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which have gone unrecognised. Children with autism, for instance, are excluded from school about 20 times more than average. Children with ADHD are noted in the Crime Action Plan as being roughly four times more commonly found among high-rate offenders than infrequent offenders.

ADHD is controversial, but there is no doubt that it is a legitimate medical condition, and may go completely unrecognised, permanently blighting some children's lives. There is a case study in the Youth Crime Action plan of an excluded child who was only later found to have severe ADHD. It called to mind a troubled young man I interviewed recently whose ADHD was diagnosed at 12. With drugs, he settled down to some proper learning, but the medication was stopped when he fell between child and adult psychiatric services at 17. So he ended up in prison, where they said they didn't believe in ADHD and refused him the drugs that had helped. He still has ADHD - and a criminal record. The post-exclusion assessments the Government is proposing are a bit late in the day. Identifying problems such as ADHD early is the most effective approach, research indicates.

More effective help and support for parenting in early years may be more successful than hand- wringing once someone has been stabbed.

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