Jenny Ravenhill, principal psychologist at the National Autistic Society's Radlett Lodge school
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? Politicians focusing on children with renewed enthusiasm to tinker, meddle and interfere with existing arrangements in the mistaken belief that this will solve all problems.
What is Labour's greatest achievement?
Greater funding for schools.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? Failing to undertake a thorough countrywide evaluation of the inclusion of pupils with significant special needs into mainstream schools.
Phil Street, chief executive, ContinYou
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Introduce a second delegated budget to schools, based on pupil numbers and weighted by social indicators, which had to be spent on pursuing the five outcomes in Every Child Matters.
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? Adoption of policies that go back to so-called traditional ways of educating children. This infers concentrating on what happens in the classroom.
Who should be children's minister? Margaret Hodge has done an impressive job. Other politicians are untested in this role so to avoid being accused of party bias maybe consideration ought to be given to someone who's a mix of Jamie Oliver and Homer Simpson.
Jane Ferguson, teacher and inclusion co-ordinator, Seymour Road Primary School, Manchester
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Ban all advertising aimed at children.
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election? A party that considers children has vision.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Sure Start.
Paul Hook, practice manager, Nottingham City Youth Offending Team
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
I would abolish all private education and ensure that all young people had access to the same education provision.
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election?
Moving people's attention away from their own self-interest to more long-term goals.
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? Children could be misrepresented by politicians and the media. I think the articulate middle classes tend to dominate the debate and the young children that we work with are disenfranchised from the whole thing.
Linda Mills, manager, The Laurels Day Nursery, Barnsley
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately? I would change the childcare element of working tax credit, and instead of paying it to the parent I would pay it to the nursery.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? The tax credit system that has helped parents in gaining employment.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? Not giving our older children the correct social opportunities.
Fiona Smith, children's and young people's nursing adviser, Royal College of Nursing
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
We need more funding for children and young people's services.
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election? It will highlight children's health issues that need to be addressed to ensure the future population's long-term health needs.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Probably the target and work around reducing child poverty.
Alan Chapman, head teacher, Evelina Hospital School, London
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately? Emphasise the importance of education, both for the individual and for the country. Abolishing tuition fees would be a good public start.
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election? I can't think of any benefit.
Political parties, especially during election campaigns, can talk about children as if they are somehow not people.
Oliver Clark, childminder, Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Bring back a higher tax allowance for married couples and an additional allowance for those with children.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Recognising how important the early years are to children's development.
Who should be children's minister? Bob Geldof.
Mairi Maciver Clark, nursery manager and a director of the Scottish Independent Nurseries Association
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? If politicians continue to use children as guinea pigs in their latest political education movement fad that has no sound scientific basis.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? How high they have put the early years on their political agenda.
Rachel Murray, director, Play Association Tower Hamlets
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Make play a statutory responsibility.
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? Many of the issues are portraying children and young people as a problem or as vulnerable.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Getting in. No, seriously, getting some way towards supporting communities to grow stronger through their own work.
Helen Johnson, team manager, Refugee Council's Children's Panel
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Withdraw the UK reservation on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? The continued detention of children for immigration purposes.
Who should be children's minister? Ms Dynamite.
David Eaton, head of the primary care liaison and consultation service at Blackpool Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Increase spending on child and adolescent mental health services and set clear standards and targets on services demonstrating how they are working together.
What is Labour's greatest achievement?
Children and young people having a national service framework.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? Not setting clear outcomes in the national service framework.
Felicity Collier, chief executive, BAAF Adoption & Fostering
What's the biggest way that having a high profile in the election might hurt children? Demonising children who have problems in school. This might seem voter friendly just because it has the support of responsible parents who want their own children to achieve. But it is at the expense of marginalised and distressed looked-after children.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Putting the importance of placement stability firmly on the agenda and putting adoption firmly centre stage for looked-after children.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? Not allowing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children the protection of the Children Act.
David Haslam, chair, National Obesity Forum
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election? Their health is prioritised.
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Recent activity on obesity and related conditions has been encouraging. The Wanless report, plus the public health white paper and its delivery plan, have made innovative and hard-hitting suggestions and proposals.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? The omission of obesity from the General Medical Services Contract. The contract was a chance to actually improve the management of obesity and related illnesses in the UK.
Francine Bates, chief executive, Contact a Family
What is Labour's greatest achievement? Reducing the number of children in poverty.
What is Labour's biggest missed opportunity? Failing to target the families of disabled children with anti-poverty measures.
Christine Lenehan, director, Council for Disabled Children
If you were Prime Minister, what single thing would you do immediately?
Recognise disabled children's poverty and triple child benefit.
What's the biggest benefit of children having a high profile in the election? It shows that children matter.
It's a shame that disabled children don't always seem to matter in the same way.
HILTON DAWSON MP FOR LANCASTER & WYRE
Hilton Dawson has a message for the Government as he prepares to step down after eight years in Parliament where he has won praise for his campaigning on children's issues.
"They are far too timid," he says. "I said to Tony Blair that he should apply his ringing phrase 'At our best when at our boldest' to children's services. Great statements like Every Child Matters are diminished by timidity in the face of opposition."
Dawson feels the Government's biggest achievement has been its determination to end child poverty. "Everything else hangs on that," he says.
If he could be Prime Minister for a day, Dawson would "stop being afraid of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child" and apply it across the board.
Dawson is modest about his achievements as an MP, but admits that he's proud to have brought "many more" children into Parliament to meet with MPs through all-party groups.
The good news for children's campaigners, though, is that Dawson, a qualified social worker, will not be lost to the sector.
He says he started thinking about stepping down from Parliament after the last general election, in 2001. "There was something in me that just decided I wanted to do more than being a government backbencher and simply spout on about issues," he says. "That was compounded by the publication of Every Child Matters because there's a huge exciting new world of children's services to be developed.
"These are enormous changes but they won't be addressed in Parliament. They will be addressed on the ground and I want to be a part of changing things." He will start off doing agency work and will spend some time at the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
"If anyone's got a good job for me, that's fantastic," he jokes.
