Welcome to 0-19, the new monthly magazine for all those professionals working to make a new start for children and young people. Every month we will bring you news, views, analysis and practical information vital in your work with children and families at risk of social exclusion. Whatever your background - in education, health, social care, or wherever else - we promise that 0-19 will be relevant to your needs. And we will bring you the latest information direct from Sure Start, Connexions and the Children's Fund.

Child poverty is one of the themes of our first issue. How ironic that in the same week as the Save the Children Fund launched its Beat Poverty campaign, the Prime Minister should float the idea of punishing parents whose children truant by docking their child benefit, or even their housing benefit. The very idea casts doubt on the prime minister's understanding of poverty and of the difficulties that confront parents .

Coming so shortly after the budget delivered new financial help for families with children, the proposal raises questions about the government's - or at least Tony Blair's - reasons for making the commitment to end child poverty in 20 years. Child benefit has always been a universal benefit without strings. More than a quarter of a century after the benefit was introduced by the late Barbara Castle, the government is now suggesting that it might be paid only to parents who meet certain criteria.

Even if the proposal goes no further, it has spelt out the message that public support for children is part of a bargain with parents. "Do what we want or lose the money," seems to be the line. If the government is serious about abolishing child poverty - and recent figures show that it still has a long way to go - it must realise that ideas like this one are the last way to achieve its aim.