The Government is being urged to focus on healthcare and education for children over the next year.

The Children’s Rights Alliance will this morning issue its ‘report card,’ rating whether the commitments in the Programme for Government have been followed through on.

The report, due to be released at 11am this morning, will find that the government has made improvements in support for LGBT children - but needs to do more on issues like child homelessness.

Chief Executive of the Children's Rights Alliance is Tanya Ward:

"This year’s report card is going to look at the areas of child homelessness, health measures affecting children and also the area of child minding services and looking at quality control,” she said.

“There is some good news in this year’s report card and that will be more in the case of education and support services for LGBT children.”

She said there are a number of issues that need to be addressed:

“We are calling on the Government to really prioritise children in the next year to make sure that important inequalities that children are facing [are dealt with].

“Particularly in the areas of health care, education and - for toddlers and refugee children – we are asking the government to take concrete steps to end the inequalities that they experience on an everyday basis.”

When the card is released, the Government will get a grade from A to F depending on its performance in each area.