A NORTH-EAST expert on child development has teamed up with a national retailer to tackle the UK's "co-ordination deficit".

Dr Madelaine Portwood, a senior educational psychologist with Durham County Council, believes that British children face a crisis because of changing lifestyles.

The fear is that growing numbers of young children are failing to master basic movement skills before they start school.

Educationalists now believe that many of these simple skills, such as crawling, running, jumping and climbing, and finer skills such as manipulating small objects, are vital in encouraging neural connections in the brain.

Such connections are understood to play an important part in early education.

Dr Portwood said that if children have not developed appropriate movement skills, largely because of the way families live today, it has a great impact on their learning.

Her concerns were triggered by a survey, which showed that 57 per cent of a sample of more than 400 three-year-olds from County Durham had difficulties with movement skills.

Since that survey five years ago, Durham County Council has led the way in England by introducing movement classes in nursery schools.

Now Dr Portwood has linked up with high street chemist Boots to provide a development pack that adults can use with under-fives to ensure they get the physical and mental stimulation they need to help them thrive at school.

She said: "I am hoping that the development will raise national awareness about the issue of co-ordination deficit. We are always hearing that something must be done about our children, but nobody is saying what we should be doing about it."

Dr Portwood has also been involved in assessing the importance of food containing essential fatty acids, including oily fish, in a series of high-profile trials in County Durham schools.