Children's charity Barnardo's is setting up a new office in Derby to oversee its work in the East Midlands, including a new fostering project.

The charity's office will be in Nottingham Road, Spondon. Based there will be Jez Alcock, Barnardo's assistant director of children's services, who is currently based at a project in Nottingham supporting families who have seriously ill children.

It is setting up the office because of an expansion of its services in the East Midlands where there are currently eight projects.

These will include a new fostering scheme in partnership with Derby city and Derbyshire county councils and five other authorities, a new family support and community development to be set up later this month in Osmaston/Allenton, and a project in Leicester.

Meanwhile the charity is calling for sex education to be taught in all primary schools to stop children becoming pregnant after a 12-year-old girl in Rotherham last week told police she had had sex with five men but did not know which had made her pregnant.

At the moment sex education must be offered at secondary schools but there is no obligation on primary schools to include it in the timetable. Barnardo's spokesman said sex education at an early age made young people less vulnerable to abuse.