The local authority is to employ a "children's champion" to speak up for the children looked after in council-run homes.

Particular emphasis will be placed on improving school attendance and exam results.

This is a worthy and intelligent aim in an age where vulnerable children can find themselves totally adrift in society once they leave the council's care.

Officials in the Social Services and Education departments are all too well aware of the problems involved in turning their charges into good citizens.

The traumatic nature of the children's unfortunate start in life, combined with peer pressure of the most negative kind, can often sow the seeds for "disaffection and social exclusion" -- the current jargon which can cover a variety of social ills including drugs, crime and prostitution.

Cllr Alan Wilkinson, speaking for the Conservative opposition on Bolton' Labour-run council, is no doubt right when he says the current initiative should have come sooner.

He says some of the children in Bolton council homes are apparently absent from school for months on end -- poor corporate parenting which lets the kids down.

We wish the children's champion well when he or she starts work next year.

Tightening-up the education of each individual child sounds like a very big job with a lot of frustration and heartbreak along the way.

The task will not be easy because anti-social attitudes seem to flourish in these homes.

It will be worthwhile, though, if more children can take enough from the education available to tread a more positive path in life.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.