Child protection should form part of the national policing plan, a leading children's charity has said.

Chris Hanvey, director of operations at Barnardo's, has highlighted the need to focus on children in the light of the recent inquiry into the death of eight-year old Victoria Climbie.

"As far as child protection is concerned, it's only dealt with on one particular paragraph of the report [into the national policing plan] - almost as an add-on alongside counter-terrorism and road policing," he said in an interview with ePolitix.com.

"We would very much have liked to have seen the first annual national policing plan to have put child protection near the centre of the report."

When she died in February 2000, Victoria had 128 injuries on her body after suffering from the abuse caused by her aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, and the aunt's partner Carl Manning, both of whom are serving life sentences for her killing.

The report, handed to ministers on Monday, identified 12 occasions when local authorities, the police and health officials could have intervened.

Hanvey also called on the government to re-focus its drive to cut child poverty.

"There needs to be more of a focus on what we describe as 'hard to reach children'. These are the children with disabilities, children who come from families on very low incomes or who, for a whole range of reasons, don't easily access services.

"To some extent one of the many positives of low inflation is that it means unemployment is relatively low. This, in turn, has assisted the government in moving towards the attainment of its poverty targets."