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The government is proposing local registers of young children who are judged likely to be drawn into offending, drug abuse or teenage pregnancy as they get older.

Local authority chief executives have been told to take the lead in bringing together agencies to agree a strategy for improving services for children at risk, including identifying, referring and tracking (IRT) named children. If these proposals are really to work three questions have to be answered.

First, although some teachers say they can spot children in the early years of primary school or even younger who are heading for trouble, it is far from clear that their predictions are always accurate. Will the register be based on reliable indicators which ensure the right children are being picked up?


Second, there are many potential disadvantages to children to being cast as potential trouble-makers or teenage mothers. How will the registers avoid disadvantaging children further by prejudicing adults, including their teachers, against them, or becoming a badge of honour.

Third, what is the point in identifying, referring and tracking children unless there are in place services which will make a real difference to their lives? The Children Act 1989 already places on councils a responsibility to provide services to children who need them to secure a reasonable standard of health and development, but lack of resources for family support services has so far confounded the act's intentions. In a pilot exercise for IRT, Trafford identified 1,500 candidates for the new register out of a child population of 40,000 - nearly 4 per cent - so the focus is on a wide swathe rather than a handful of extreme cases. We will be letting these children down if we label them without providing the resources to help them. It is doubtful whether the £600m promised over three years from the Children's Fund is enough.