SUPERNANNIES to help parents rein in badly- behaved children will not be sent to York after the city missed out on funding for a Government-sponsored scheme.

Ten other local authorities across the Yorkshire and the Humber region won funding for a network of parenting experts to combat anti-social behaviour.

Families in cities across the region including Leeds and Hull will get one-to-one help and will also be offered parenting classes as part of the £4 million Government project.

But Patrick Scott, director of children's services at City of York Council, said York already had similar schemes to offer parents help and had been chosen as a "pathfinder" area for another parenting scheme.

He said: "There is certainly a need to offer support for parents, but we are already doing that. It is very important and we are already doing work on this.

"The Government has got any number of schemes going on and there is no way we can take part in all of them."

The funding announcemement came as a study was published showing that 51 per cent of people in the region thought parents failing to bring up their children properly was the main cause of anti-social behaviour.

Just under half of people said that better parenting would do most to reduce crime and four out of five people in the region said parents should be made to take more responsibility for their children's behaviour.

Coun Carol Runciman, the council's executive member for children's services, said she would welcome more funding for schemes aimed at parenting education.

She said: "I would guess they are going to the bigger metropolitan cities that have considerably larger areas of deprivation than we do.

"We do have quite a lot of parenting education going on. I would be happier if there were more, and any funding that we can attract to increase that is money well spent. I think parenting education should go on before young people are parents, when they are at school."