JOBLESS families could get "benefits bonuses" worth thousands of pounds a year for finding work, making their children behave or living more healthily under radical plans being considered by the Government.

The payments - based on a US scheme - would be handed to deprived parents for meeting a range of good citizenship targets.

Alongside extra cash for getting a job and re-training, people could be rewarded for ensuring children attend school and visit the dentist regularly.

They could also get windfalls for attending parents' evenings and helping out at schools. Under the original initiative in New York, Opportunity NYC, families can claim up to £3,000 a year for three years.

Gordon Brown will set out proposals for a "contract out of poverty" in a speech to the Welsh Labour Party conference today.

He is to insist there must be an "opportunity revolution" to give poor families incentives to raise their standards of living.

The speech will be seen as an admission that the Government's ambitious pledge to end child poverty by 2020 has run into trouble. The initial target of a million reduction by 2005 was missed by some 300,000, and campaigners believe relative deprivation is rising again.

Behaviour

Opponents will also claim that Labour's "nanny state" is trying to meddle in people's lives by forging such detailed links between benefits and behaviour.

Mr Brown will say: "Think what we can achieve in our century if - instead of unlocking only some of the talent of some of the people - we are able for the first time to unlock all the talent of all our people, and do so not simply as an economic necessity, but as a moral imperative."

Employment Minister Stephen Timms is due to fly out soon to see Opportunity NYC at work first-hand.

Mr Brown will promise to build on Family Intervention Projects, part of the Respect programme that tries to get families involved in persistent anti-social behaviour back on track.

He will also back moves to encourage more students from deprived backgrounds into higher education by strengthening ties between schools and universities.

Education campaigners have warned that top-up fees of £3,000 per year are hampering progress to get more teenagers from poor backgrounds to apply.

Before arriving in Llandudno, Mr Brown will meet a search and rescue team at RAF Valley on Anglesey and open a new environmental science centre at Bangor University.

What do you think? Have your say.